The fifth and final season of Stranger Things is still on hold due to the ongoing SAG-AFTRA/WGA strikes (pay up, Hollywood!), but when it does ultimately drop on Netflix, it sounds like it'll be bigger than ever before.
Stranger Things executive producer Shawn Levy says as much in a new interview with Total Film magazine, where the filmmaker compares this next batch of episodes to the average mega-budget summer blockbuster:
"There’s no way to be contiguous with season 4, and not, frankly, expand scale and depth. It’s major, major, cinematic storytelling that happens to be called a TV series. Stranger Things 5 is as big as any of the biggest movies that we see."
Much like its young cast, Stranger Things has really grown up over the past seven years, expanding its mythology in wild directions and putting its cast of characters through progressively bigger (and more sinister) plot developments. It tracks that the show's fifth season would up the ante, though it's hard to imagine how much bigger the show can get following season four, which included two 90-minute episodes and a two-and-a-half hour season finale.
Star David Harbour recently appeared on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, and echoed Levy's thoughts:
“I know where we net out and it’s very, very moving. That is the term I will use … It’s a hell of an undertaking, too. I mean, the set pieces and the things in the scripts that we saw are bigger than anything we’ve done in the past.”
Where will the Duffer Brothers take us in season five? For the time being, we have no idea, but the promise of a final season that's larger in scale than any previous season certainly has us intrigued. Stay tuned for more on Stranger Things S5 as further updates become available, folks!
