Stranger Things fans have been waiting patiently – well, mostly – for season 4 for the longest time. The Netflix hit was last on our screens in summer 2019, and though production on the incoming fourth run of the supernatural series kicked off in early 2020 it’s taken an age to complete due to the pandemic holding up the shoot. But with filming on the verge of wrapping up, we can apparently expect some news very soon.
That’s what producer Shawn Levy is promising, anyway. The Free Guy director spoke with Variety and admitted that he knows the fans have been waiting for more from the Hawkins heroes for too long. He said the season itself is “coming soon enough” and that an update about its release date will be announced “quite soon”.
To state the incredibly obvious, it’s been way, way, way, way too long, and it’s coming,” Levy revealed. “It’s coming soon enough. And as for when exactly that will be announced – quite soon.”
In the same interview, Levy shared that filming has taken place in Lithuania (before the pandemic), Georgia and New Mexico, calling the scope of the season “sprawling.”
He went on to add, “It’s visually and narratively very ambitious, much more ambitious than the previous three seasons.”
In order to accommodate the slower production pace amid the COVID outbreak, many TV shows have stripped back the scale. However, as ST4 had already kicked off before the pandemic, the team had no choice but to press ahead with their ambitious plans, which – as Levy clarified – is the reason it’s taken almost two years to shoot.
“The delay is due in large measure to COVID and the pace at which we have to work to do so safely, but it also happens to be the season that we chose to go much bigger. It’s the scale of this season and the multi-settings of Season 4,” he explained.
As well as a wider range of locations – presumably Lithuania is standing in for Soviet Russia, where David Harbour’s Hopper is currently incarcerated – ST4 also has an enormous cast. Alongside all your old favorites, Jamie Campbell Bowell (Harry Potter), Eduardo Franco (Booksmart) and Joseph Quinn (Game of Thrones) have joined as new regulars, with the likes of Joel Stoffer (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.), Amybeth McNulty (Anne with an E) and Freddy Krueger himself Robert Englund in recurring roles.
While we wait for more specific info, we’re pretty sure Stranger Things 4 will hit streaming sometime in the early part of 2022.