After almost two years away, Stranger Things finally came back into our lives a few months ago.
In October, Eleven and the gang made their long awaited return to Hawkins for season 3 of Netflix’s sci-fi smash hit, and it was well worth the wait.
If you haven’t watched it yet, it’s time for you to invest in some serious telly time. But if, like us, you’ve already binged the entirety of the latest season, you’ll be scouting around for anything you can find out about future episodes of the show. Thankfully, there’s definitely going to be a fourth season of the sci-fi smash, so here’s everything we know about it so far.
Latest update:
Surprise! The first trailer for Stranger Things season 4 has arrived – and it contains a HUGE spoiler. Welcome back [character name redacted]!
Will there be a fourth season of Stranger Things on Netflix?
Yes! The renewal was confirmed in September 2019 on the official Stranger Things Twitter account.
A short video shows the series logo embedded in what appears to be the show’s alternative universe, the Upside Down, however on-screen text reads at the end: “we’re not in hawkins anymore”.
we're not in hawkins anymore pic.twitter.com/Y4hayuPKvu
— Stranger Things (@Stranger_Things) September 30, 2019
No official release date nor details of returning cast have been announced.
Netflix has also signed the show’s creators Matt and Russ Duffer (aka The Duffer Brothers) to a multi-year film and TV series deal.
It was recently reported that the hit sci-fi show could end with the upcoming storyline of season 4 spread out across two runs, according to rumours.
The second part of season 4 is likely to be promoted as season 5, but very much linked to the plot of the first part, according to We Got This Covered.
When will Stranger Things season 4 be released on Netflix?
There’s currently no release date for the next season but given that there was a 20-month gap between season two and three, we may not be returning to Hawkins until 2021 (and the teaser clip – see above – means we may not even see Hawkins again).
One fan on Reddit reckons they’ve figured out when season 4 will premiere – and it’s a theory based on the drawings seen in Will’s room during the Netflix season 3 set tour, which you can see below.
The drawing of a prisoner seen at 2:59 in the above video – which the fan reckons is of Hopper – has the number 403-X on the uniform. That number is the same as that of the room in the hospital where Nancy visited Mrs. Driscoll. Could 403 be an oh-so-subtle reference to the release date of season 4, then? The Reddit fan certainly thinks so, guessing that season 4 will be released on April 3, 2020.
And wait – there’s more. A release date of April 3 would fit nicely with season 4 apparently being set in 1986, the year of the Chernobyl disaster – playing to an existing fan theory that the events of Stranger Things will either affect or be effected by those in Chernobyl in the next season. An interesting theory, no?
Is there a Stranger Things season 4 trailer yet?
There is indeed! And it reveals a certain key character is not quite as dead as we thought they were…
Watch the brand new teaser in full below.
Has filming begun yet?
Yes! After rumours emerged that filming started in October 2019 from a new listing in film trade publication Production Weekly, an eagle-eyed fan has provided evidence.
“Filming has begun in Rome, Georgia. They’re currently filming behind my brother’s house on E 9th,” a fan remarked on Reddit, sharing a photo of a film set with Hopper’s iconic truck in view (via Daily Mail).
Who’s going to be in the cast for Stranger Things season 4?
We can expect most of the main cast to return, so Winona Ryder (Joyce Byers), Finn Wolfhard (Mike Wheeler), Millie Bobby Brown (Eleven), Gaten Matarazzo (Dustin Henderson), Caleb McLaughlin (Lucas Sinclair), Natalia Dyer (Nancy Wheeler), Noah Schnapp (Will Byers), Sadie Sink (Max Mayfield), Maya Hawke (Robin) and Charlie Heaton (Jonathan Byers).
However season 3 saw some major characters leave the show. Dacre Montgomery, who plays Billy, won’t be returning as his character died sacrificing himself to save Hawkins. And we also saw the tragic death of Hawkins’ chief of police Hopper, although the new trailer (watch above) revealed that the scruffy cop is in fact alive and (not so) well.
In the teaser, he can be seen working on building a railway track somewhere in a very cold and frosty environment.
In a press release, Netflix said: “We’re excited to officially confirm that production on Stranger Things 4 is now underway – and even more excited to announce the return of Hopper! Although it’s not all good news for our “American”; he is imprisoned far from home in the snowy wasteland of Kamchatka, where he will face dangers both human… and other. Meanwhile, back in the States, a new horror is beginning to surface, something long buried, something that connects everything…”
In a new interview with Entertainment Weekly, Caleb McLaughlin has cast doubt over the future of the show, and its cast in particular.
“It’s all up to [the show’s creators] Duffers and the writers if they want to keep going,” Lucas’ actor says. “Maybe they want to stop now. Maybe they don’t want to give anyone another season. Maybe they just want to leave you guys hanging like that.
“I talk to people about this all the time, we can literally leave you guys hanging on the Upside Down. No one really knows what the Upside Down is, we just know what comes from it, like Demagorgons and like the Mind Flayer, but the Upside Down is an alternate dimension of our world. Our world is so big so there’s more than just Demadogs, and Demagorgons and Mind Flayers, so no one really knows.”
Maya Hawke has also been talking to the press about her hopes for season 4, and where she can see her character Robin going.
Talking to Consequence of Sound, Hawke said: “Robin evolved a lot as we filmed the season. I think the Duffer brothers take a lot of inspiration from their actors, so the better the brothers got to know me, the more the character changed. But you would have to ask the brothers about that.
“Robin sees herself as an under-the-radar big fish in a small pond. She is really driven and works really hard at school, because she knows someday, she’ll make it out of Hawkins and she wants to be ready.
Speaking about her hopes for Robin in season 4, Hawke said: “I wanna see her at the video store. So many of the great minds of the ‘80s and ‘90s filmmakers and creatives started out working in video stores, and as far as I know, that environment hasn’t really been explored on TV. I think that would be really fun.”
Andrey Ivchenko, who played the part of Terminator-style villain Grigori, has also hinted that he could return for season 4. Whilst his character was seemingly killed off in the final episode of season 3, he revealed at the San Diego Comic-Con that a return could be possible.
He said: “It’s sci-fi, you know, so things can happen…For now, what I know is he’s dead. But who knows?”
Sources have also confirmed to TVLine exclusively that the show’s creators the Duffer Brothers are looking to cast four new male characters for season 4.
Three of the new characters are teenagers and one is an adult. The piece describes the new teenage characters as “a metalhead”, “an entitled jock” and a character that sounds an awful lot like the twin of Fast Times at Ridgemont High stoner Jeff Spicoli”.
The adult, meanwhile, looks to be pivotal in the Russian storyline that’s set to unfold in the new season.
What will happen in season 4 of Stranger Things?
When we left Hawkins we saw Joyce and her sons Will and Jonathan, along with Eleven, packing up their home into a removal van, ready to move away. This means Season 4 might see the gang separated, and the show move away from Hawkins for the first time.
Jonathan and Nancy reconciled after tensions throughout the third season, so could we see them attempting a long-distance relationship in the future?
In a new interview with Entertainment Weekly, creators the Duffer brothers have teased more about the “portals” which may take the characters out of Hawkins, Indiana, into different worlds.
“We have the big broad strokes,” Ross said. “It’s just now about filling in those lines in the details. We’re pretty excited about where it’s potentially going to go. Again, like we said, it’s going to feel very different than this season. But I think that’s the right thing to do and I think it’ll be exciting.”
Matt added: “I think the biggest thing that’s going to happen is it’s going to open up a little bit, not necessarily in terms of scale [or] in terms of special effects…but open up in terms of allowing portals into areas outside of Hawkins.”
He continued: “Assuming there’s a season 4, obviously the question of who that American is in that cell and then also what they’re doing with the Demogorgon, is a tease…That’s obviously going to play a huge role in a potential season four.”
More fan theories have also been popping up about what’s set to go down in our fourth trip to Hawkins. One Reddit user has some pretty big ideas about the next edition of the show, hinting that a huge nuclear disaster is set to be at the forefront of the plot.
Specifically, they believe that Eleven will spark the Chernobyl power plant disaster of 1986. The theory comes from the fact that Season 3 drew to a close in October 1985, just six months before the April disaster in the following year. It also links together with the Russian spies introduced in the most recent season, with the new theory believing that the disaster could even be fabricated in an attempt to cover up a battle between Eleven and the spies.
The possibility of such a storyline is backed by the Russians using reactors of a similar kind to open gateways in Season 3. It also comes back to the idea that Chief Jim Hopper isn’t actually dead, and is “the American” mentioned in Season 3’s mid-credits sequence.
There have also been rumblings amongst fans of something called The Winona Collision. It revolves around the possibility of casting a body double for Winona Ryder’s character, as the show’s setting in the ’80s causes some headaches when contrasted against real life timelines from the past.
“It’s a tough one because I’d love to [make episodes] faster than we do, but the reality is that our show is singular because we are unusually small as a creative team,” the show’s executive producer Shawn Levy told Mashable.
“We want to control every detail of every episode ourselves and that level of micromanagement, that level of authorship, and detail-oriented creativity, it simply takes more time.”
“We’re definitely trying to make the show as quickly as we can. We’re not in control of those things, but we don’t want to bullshit about those things.”
The Duffer brothers meanwhile have released a series of cryptic tweets (October 17), with each seemingly a clue to something that could be happening in the upcoming new season. You can see the tweets below:
anyway I think you’ll—— sorry I couldn’t get it done—— but you mean so—— and it’s been—— hope this is——— last until—— love—— pic.twitter.com/DjRNXbrlKC
— stranger writers (@strangerwriters) October 17, 2019
this is… not about a couple. https://t.co/mWsKNdpMUC
— stranger writers (@strangerwriters) October 17, 2019
it is… not about hopper.
— stranger writers (@strangerwriters) October 17, 2019
What about Eleven’s powers, is she going to get those back?
We’ll have to wait and see. At the end of season three Eleven loses her powers after battling with the Mind Flayer, and there was no sign at the end that these powers would return. Mike was confident they would – but time will tell on whether she gets them back.
Did Season 3 leave behind any Easter Eggs hinting at the storyline for Season 4?
Well, we’re glad you asked – yes!
Ever-eager Stranger Things fans have discovered another Easter Egg buried in Season 3, and it’s one they believe holds hints as to an unexplained death in the season, and potential ramifications for Season 4.
During a scene in Season 3, the phone number of Murray Bauman – an associate of police chief Hopper who is renowned for investigating conspiracy theories – is read aloud on screen.
Fans have now been calling the number – 618-625-8313 – and finding a message Bauman left for Joyce Byers (Winona Ryder) after Hopper was presumed dead in the finale of Season 3.
The message reads: “Hi, you have reached the residence of Murray Bauman. Mom, if this is you, please hang up and call me between the hours of 5 and 6pm as previously discussed, okay? If this is Joyce: Joyce, thank you for calling, I have been trying to reach you. I have an update. It’s about… well, it’s probably best if we speak in person. It’s not good or bad, but it’s something.”
There’s still much confusion among fans as to what actually happened to Hopper in the season finale (see above), and fans believe that this message is related to the police chief. Couple that with the revelation that he is in fact still breathing (thank you new trailer) and Russian prison guards referring to an unidentified “American” in the most recent episode, and it all starts to make a little more sense.
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