Netflix has unveiled a new Stranger Things Season 4 teaser trailer, offering up our most substantial look yet at footage from the new season — while also confirming something we had all pretty much come to accept. Indeed, the Stranger Things Season 4 release date will not arrive until next year, as this new teaser trailer sets the release window for the next season in 2022.
That wasn't necessarily the original plan. Stranger Things 4 started filming in early 2020, but the pandemic shut production down for the bulk of the summer, and when things picked back up the new safety protocols made filming much, much slower. Indeed, executive producer Shawn Levy recently explained the Stranger Things Season 4 delay to us, noting that this is the season they chose to expand the scope of the series in a huge way — while there's still story to be told in Hawkins, Stranger Things 4 also has storylines set elsewhere. Which makes sense, given that last we left off the Byers family and Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) were moving away from Hawkins after the supposed death of Hopper (David Harbour).
Filming on Stranger Things Season 4 is close to finally wrapping, but the Netflix series has always had an intense post-production period owing to all the extensive visual effects. Harbour previously teased that Season 4 was not only his favorite season yet, but also the biggest by far:
"I mean, it's bigger, that's the first thing. In scope, in scale, even in the idea that we're not in Hawkins anymore. We, locale-wise, we're bigger. We're introducing new stuff, but we're also tightening and wrapping up in a certain direction to make it have a clear, clean specific, and definite ending at some point, which I can't really talk about."
Levy — who executive produces the series and also directs two episodes each season — echoed Harbour's comments and went so far as to say he and creators The Duffer Brothers "have the end in sight" and are plotting the show's endgame at this point. Whether that means Stranger Things Season 5 will be the show's last or not remains to be seen, but this new footage certainly will have fans more eager than ever to find out where this story is heading.
Check out the Stranger Things Season 4 teaser trailer below. Returning cast members include Brown, Finn Wolfhard, Gaten Matarazzo, Noah Schnapp, Caleb McLaughlin, Sadie Sink, Winona Ryder, David Harbour, Natalia Dyer, Charlie Heaton, Joe Keery, Maya Hawke, Priah Ferguson, Cara Buono, Brett Gelman, and Matthew Modine while new cast members this season include Jamie Campbell Bower, Eduardo Franco, and Joseph Quinn.