‘Stanger Things’ Season 4 Wraps Up Filming
Stranger Things has been a steady hit for Netflix, and the series — steeped in 1980s nostalgia and terrific acting — continues its twists and turns into ever darker territory. As the cast of child protagonists ages up, so does the complexity of the series, and that means that fans have been left wondering and speculating about what will be coming next. Now that filming for Season 4 has officially completed, those rumors and whispers are getting even louder. What do we actually know?
‘Stranger Things’ follows a group of teens fighting off the end of the world
Stranger Things has earned plenty of accolades for its impressive cast of young stars and its eerie plot line that has left fans glued to the screen. Still, the first three seasons haven’t been particularly novel in the ground they’ve covered.
As The New York Times explains, “the first three [seasons] are like a recycling plant, harvesting old movies and tried-and-true formulas like endlessly renewable resources. A creature emerges from under Hawkins, Ind., the gang bands together to put down the threat, and the pattern repeats itself the next season, with only one or two narrative threads left dangling.”
Pop culture references have remained a steady force for the series with nods to Day of the Dead, mall culture, and Vacation popping up to round out the latest season’s contribution to the cultural zeitgeist. As the season ended, we saw the Byers family riding away in a U-Haul, and the relationships that move tore apart started an emotional outpouring from fans.
We know that the show has a defined endgame, and the creators have strongly hinted that Season 4 or Season 5 will be the last.
Season 4 is well underway with filming complete
Season 4 of Stranger Things was highly anticipated, but the pandemic wreaked havoc on the filming schedule. Filming officially began way back in February 2020, but it was almost immediately suspended, according to ScreenRant.
It wasn’t just the pandemic that kept the schedule going for this one, however. The creators have pointed to the particularly sprawling story of Season 4 as a complication that caused filming to take a long time, “owing to the amount of locations and ambitious nature of the season.”
All of that has left some fans worried that the aging cast will be difficult to shoehorn into the existing plot. Some have even speculated that Season 4 will need to undergo a time jump in order to keep the story logical and consistent since the stars are quite a bit older than they were the last time we saw them on set.
Teasers for ‘Stranger Things’ Season 4 focus on a new team
The latest teaser that dropped for Stranger Things Season 4 didn’t offer much in the way of clues about the plot. It does, however, cleverly avoid showing us the whereabouts for our wayward Byers family. Instead, the teaser focuses on those who remained behind entering a spooky house on the hunt for some kind of clues.
As a creepy grandfather clock ticks on in the background, the scene shifts from a 1950s suburban family living out some kind of haunted house horror to our well-known protagonists scouring the same house with flashlights decades later. What they uncover there will almost certainly be connected to the monstrous force that has been vexing them for the past three seasons, but viewers are going to have to wait to find out exactly how the tales will intertwine.
More to the point on most fans’ minds, they’ll also have to wait to see how and when Eleven and the Byers gang will be reunited with their old friends.
