EDITORS NOTE: This article contains spoilers for Stranger Things Season 4 Volume 2. With the incredible, heart-racing conclusion to Season 4 of Stranger Things arriving on Netflix over the weekend and ending on that ominous cliffhanger, fans are dying to know when to expect the show's fifth and final season. In an interview following the near-four-hour Volume 2, series creators Matt and Ross Duffer spoke to Collider's Editor-in-Chief Steve Weintraub and teased the upcoming final season — including when we might be able to expect it to arrive on Netflix.
Asking the question on everyone's mind, Weintraub questioned if the Duffers have a goal date in mind for Season 5 of Stranger Things. Matt Duffer responded, saying: "It depends who you ask. You know what I mean? That's what we're still figuring out. If you ask our AD, and our line producer, they want more time for production. Our post-production supervisor wants more time for post-production. So it's going to be a big discussion. How long does everybody get? Here's the thing, the more you shorten production, the more you shorten post-production, the more things get compromised."
Duffer went on, explaining that the writing and directing duo want to make sure they deliver the best version of Stranger Things possible and that involves a lot of moving parts. From writing to filming to the innumerable components of post-production, there are a lot of steps between beginning work on a season of any television show let alone one as massive as Stranger Things. Duffer continued, saying "It's just the balance of, 'Okay, how much are we willing to compromise to get the show out sooner? Is it more important to give everybody the time that they need to get this right, without being indulgent?' I'm sure we'll figure out what that line is, but my whole thing was I was never super worried."
With the COVID pandemic hitting just a little over six months after Season 3 of the epic sci-fi series arrived on Netflix, the Duffer Brothers are no strangers to lengthy hiatuses. Matt Duffer explains that despite the long break, he wasn't too worried about their timeline then and he seems to have that same excited resolve headed into Season 5. "Because of COVID," Duffer explained, "it would've been a two-and-a-half year break between three and four, and then it turned into a full three-year gap. I was never as worried about it as some people, just because we're 90s kids and I just grew up waiting at least a couple of years for movie sequels. If not longer." He also references the lengthy break between Avatar sequels, saying "I mean, look at James Cameron."
Just because quality is their number one priority does not mean that the Duffer Brothers plan to pull a Cameron and make fans wait a whopping 13 years for the next installment in their movie-style series. Quite the opposite, Matt Duffer assures us that they "want it as fast as possible, but as good as possible." He continued saying, "Ross and I will always favor quality, I think. At the end of the day, I think it's better that it's good than that it comes out quickly."
In speaking about what went into Season 4 on top of the pandemic-induced break, Ross Duffer explained that the visual effects for Stranger Things are on the same level as the MCU saying: "Our visual effects team, what they did, we were turning this stuff over in September, October [with] the number of visual effects shots that are in a Marvel movie done in a really fast turnaround time." Ultimately, it will come down to how long the scripts for Season 5 end up being. Season 4 came out to around thirteen and a half hours, and with the Upside Down spilling into Hawkins we're sure to see a lot of visual effects work in the final season. In the Season 4 finale alone, there are "more visual effects than the entirety of Season 3," according to Matt Duffer.
The Duffers also shared that they're set to begin writing the fifth and final season starting at the beginning of August. With the writing process naturally taking a handful of months we can likely expect Stranger Things Season 5 to begin filming sometime next year. Given the lengthy post-production requirements for the series, we can hopefully plan on diving back into the world of Hawkins and the Upside Down by 2025.