It’s been almost two years since we last checked in on all of the weirder happenings in Hawkins, Indiana, during which several people became part of a giant fleshy monster and destroyed a shopping mall, among other things. And although we’re still not sure when we’ll get to see Season 4 of Netflix’s hit series, Stranger Things star Finn Wolfhard assures us that when we finally do, it’ll be much more intense than anything we saw during the Battle of Starcourt.

Speaking in an interview with CBC Listen's q with Tom Power (via Bloody Disgusting), Wolfhard acknowledged that he and his co-stars make the same comment about every new season of Stranger Things, but only because it happens to be the Demogorgon’s honest truth:

“Every season it gets darker. Really, I will say with Season 3 I was like, this is the darkest season that there’ll ever be, like the exploding rats and everything. But really, Season 4 so far, it’s the darkest season there’s ever been. Every year, it gets amped up. Every year it gets funnier and darker and sadder, and everything. Every year, they amp it up.”

As a pretty major Stranger Things fan, I have to agree with Wolfhard - the show has absolutely gotten more intense with each season. And although Season 3 saw the series reach new heights of silliness (Hopper and Joyce’s endless bickering and the completely absurd Terminator-esque villain come to mind), it also contained some of the most grotesque violence and gut-wrenching consequences the beloved cast of characters has encountered so far. As I mentioned earlier, there’s still no release date for Season 4, but it seems reasonable to expect a new batch of episodes sometime later this year or in early 2022. The production was delayed last year due to the coronavirus pandemic, a turn of events which gave the Duffer Brothers time to fine-tune the scripts into some of the best episodes of the series according to executive producer Shawn Levy.