Stranger Things 4 was easily the biggest season of the Netflix hit yet, with every episode coming in over an hour and most clocking in closer to a feature-length 90 minutes. The season finale itself was a whole lot longer, with its 2 hour, 20 runtime being enough to beat out most Marvel blockbusters. The big questions fans have, then, is whether the fifth and final season will be just as mammoth-sized.
The answer to that mystery, it seems, is: not quite, but it’ll still be pretty darn hefty. Creators the Duffer brothers offered a lot of intriguing hints about their plans when it comes to wrapping up the streaming phenomenon while speaking to host Josh Horowitz on his Happy Sad Confused podcast (via The Wrap). This includes a promise that season five will be a little more concise than its predecessor, mostly because the last run will hit the ground running.
Matt Duffer admitted that he and brother Ross “don’t expect it to be as long” as ST4 because that had to include a “two-hour ramp-up” where the plot gained steam. That won’t be the case in Stranger Things 5 as everything will be “moving pretty fast” from the off.
He explained:
“Characters are already going to be in action, they’re already going to have a goal and a drive, and I think that’s going to carve out at least a couple hours and make this season feel really different.”
That said, the series finale might be a close match to season four’s closer in terms of runtime. In the same podcast, Matt Duffer criticized a trend he often sees in TV shows “where the penultimate episode is the strong episode and then they wind down on the last one.” In order to combat this, the siblings prefer to end out the season on chunky final chapters. For that reason, ST5‘s grand conclusion will be no shorter than 120 minutes. “I would expect the finale to be at least two hours,” Duffer revealed.
So, by the sounds of it, each installment of Stranger Things 5 won’t be quite so bladder-busting as season four, but fans don’t need to worry that the last episodes are going to fly by. Neither will the wait for it, as the Duffers have elsewhere let slip that they haven’t even started writing the final season yet.