In the vast landscape of streaming, where more and more streamers are opting for a weekly release model, Netflix has staunchly remained committed to the method of releasing an entire season at once. However, for the latest season of Stranger Things, they opted to do things a little differently, releasing the first seven episodes of Season 4 in May, followed by the final two episodes in July. Episode 9, in particular, drew a lot of attention for its runtime of 2 hours and 19 minutes — to put that in perspective Captain America: Civil War, a superhero movie with an equally expansive cast, is only 30 minutes longer.
The decision to keep Episode 9 as one supersized installment rather than cutting it up into 2 parts was one that the Duffer Brothers arrived at after looking at the episode and struggling to find a natural break. As Ross Duffer told Collider's own Steve Weintraub:
I think we just couldn't find a good spot to break it because there's almost an hour of build-up tension, and then it just goes hard for an hour. Then we have our 25 minutes of coming down the coda. It would've just not been a very satisfying episode to stop it after that first hour. In our opinion, it just would've petered out. We didn't want to force an ending, so we just figured, well, it'll just be this monster episode. If you want to pause it, go ahead.
Though they couldn't find a good way to break the episode itself, it was unconventional for the season to be broken up in the way it was. As with so many things these days, the decision did not come from a deliberate decision in the writing, but rather was one born of necessity. With the extensive VFX required for a show of this scale, there were concerns that the nine episodes would not be completed in time. Matt Duffer commented on the decision to split, saying "the episodes, really, the episodes were not done [and] weren't going to all be done by May. But it was not designed to split."
When asked if they would consider writing Season 5 to have a deliberate break in the middle to allow for a staggered release in the vein of Season 4, Matt considered the possibility:
"I like what you're saying, which is, if we were to do a split again, write more to the split. Write to the split, which we didn't do. We're lucky that seven had that kind of ending with the Vecna reveal, that was just fortunate. It was just extremely challenging to get seven episodes out by May. I think that was the most challenging thing we've ever faced while making Stranger Things. So if we were to do it again, I would probably make the split earlier, like you're saying. I would write it into the narrative. I would love to see all eight at once, but it's also, people talk about it more when it's split up. It's way better that you guys split it up, we're able to keep writing about it."
While audiences have increasingly been calling for Netflix to stagger their release model to allow for discussion between episodes and to allow momentum to build, Ross Duffer made the case for the bingeing model as well, adding:
It's such a balancing act. Because I also like, as a consumer, I fell in love with TV, really [the] Sopranos, but I was not watching in real time. I was getting the DVDs on mail-in Netflix and just devouring it. So, it's such a balancing act. I do enjoy what we did this season, and that you get a bit of both worlds, and that you were able to devour a lot of content and get into the characters and story, but at the same time, allow for discussion and all that in between.
Whatever their plans for Season 5 — to split or not to split — happen to be, Stranger Things Season 4 is streaming on Netflix in its entirety now. Look for more from our exclusive interview with the Duffer brothers soon.