Stranger Things season 4

File:Stranger Things season 4.jpg Promotional poster
Starring	Winona Ryder David Harbour Millie Bobby Brown Finn Wolfhard Gaten Matarazzo Caleb McLaughlin Noah Schnapp Sadie Sink Natalia Dyer Charlie Heaton Joe Keery Maya Hawke Brett Gelman Priah Ferguson Matthew Modine Paul Reiser
Country of origin	United States
No. of episodes	7
Release
Original network	Netflix
Original release	May 27, 2022 (2022-05-27) – present (present)

The fourth season of the American science fiction horror drama television series Stranger Things, titled Stranger Things 4, was released worldwide exclusively via Netflix's streaming service in two volumes, with the first set released May 27, 2022, and the second to be released five weeks later on July 1, 2022. The fourth season takes place six months after the events of the third season, as a string of strange deaths, tied to the Upside Down, causes paranoia among Hawkins' residents.

The season, consisting of nine episodes, were produced by the show's creators the Duffer Brothers, along with Shawn Levy, Dan Cohen, Iain Paterson, and Curtis Gwinn. Returning as the series' regulars include Winona Ryder, David Harbour, Millie Bobby Brown, Finn Wolfhard, Gaten Matarazzo, Caleb McLaughlin, Noah Schnapp, Sadie Sink, Natalia Dyer, Charlie Heaton, Joe Keery, Maya Hawke, and Priah Ferguson, while Brett Gelman, Matthew Modine and Paul Reiser elevated to series regulars. Jamie Campbell Bower, Joseph Quinn, Eduardo Franco, Cara Buono, Tom Wlaschiha, and Mason Dye appear in recurring roles.

The first seven episodes of the season have received mostly positive reviews, with critics highlighting the performances (with Bower, Quinn and Sink receiving particular praise), visuals, action sequences, and the darker and more mature tone compared to the previous seasons, while some labeled it "overstuffed" due to the longer episode runtimes.

Premise

Set in March 1986, nine months after events of the third season, the fourth season is split between three main plotlines.

The first plotline takes place in Hawkins and features Dustin, Max, Erica, Steve, Nancy, Robin, and Lucas. Several teenagers are killed in mysterious ways. Eddie, the leader of the Hellfire Club, a Dungeons & Dragons group that Dustin and his friends have joined, becomes the prime suspect and is hunted down by Jason and members of the athletic teams at school, who believes Eddie had killed Jason's girlfriend through satanic powers. They discover that the murders were by Vecna, a powerful being that lives in the Upside Down, and begin their own investigation.

The second plotline involves Mike visiting Eleven, Will, and Jonathan at their new home in California. Due to the new events in Hawkins, Eleven is taken by Dr. Brenner and Owens to a secret facility to help her regain her powers, while Mike, Will, Jonathan and Jonathan's friend Argyle try to track Eleven down.

The third plotline follows Joyce and Murray who learn that Hopper may still be alive and are told to bring money to arrange for his transfer. Meanwhile, in a Russian gulag in Kamchatka, Hopper is held prisoner and is prepared to fight a Demogorgon that the Russians have captured.

Cast and characters

Main article: List of Stranger Things characters

Main

• Winona Ryder as Joyce Byers
• David Harbour as Jim Hopper
• Millie Bobby Brown as Eleven / Jane Hopper
  • Martie Blair as Young Eleven
• Finn Wolfhard as Mike Wheeler
• Gaten Matarazzo as Dustin Henderson
• Caleb McLaughlin as Lucas Sinclair
• Noah Schnapp as Will Byers
• Sadie Sink as Max Mayfield
• Natalia Dyer as Nancy Wheeler
• Charlie Heaton as Jonathan Byers
• Joe Keery as Steve Harrington
• Maya Hawke as Robin Buckley
• Brett Gelman as Murray Bauman
• Priah Ferguson as Erica Sinclair
• Matthew Modine as Martin Brenner
• Paul Reiser as Sam Owens

Also starring

• Jamie Campbell Bower as Henry Creel / One / Vecna
  • Raphael Luce as Young Henry Creel
• Cara Buono as Karen Wheeler
• Eduardo Franco as Argyle
• Joseph Quinn as Eddie Munson

Recurring

• Joe Chrest as Ted Wheeler
• Matty Cardarople as Keith
• Catherine Curtin as Claudia Henderson
• Tom Wlaschiha as Dmitri "Enzo" Antonov
• Nikola Đuričko as Yuri
• Gabriella Pizzolo as Suzie
• Rob Morgan as Officer Powell
• John Reynolds as Officer Callahan
• Sherman Augustus as Lt. Colonel Sullivan
• Mason Dye as Jason Carver
• Myles Truitt as Patrick McKinney
• Clayton Royal Johnson as Andy
• Tristan Spohn as Two
• Christian Ganiere as Ten
• Regina Ting Chen as Ms. Kelly
• Elodie Grace Orkin as Angela
• Logan Allen as Jake
• Hunter Romanillos as Chance
• Pasha D. Lychnikoff as Oleg
• Vaidotas Martinaitis as Warden Melnikov
• Nikolai Nikolaeff as Ivan

Guests

• Robert Englund as Victor Creel
  • Kevin L. Johnson as Young Victor Creel
• Dacre Montgomery as Billy Hargrove
• Amybeth McNulty as Vickie
• Grace Van Dien as Chrissy Cunningham
• Joel Stoffer as Wayne Munson
• Tyner Rushing as Virginia Creel
• Livi Burch as Alice Creel
• Logan Riley Bruner as Fred Benson
• Ed Amatrudo as Director Hatch

Episodes

No. overall	No. in season	Title	Directed by	Written by	Original release date
Volume 1
26	1	"Chapter One: The Hellfire Club"	The Duffer Brothers	The Duffer Brothers	May 27, 2022 (2022-05-27)
In a flashback to 1979, Dr. Brenner is shown to be experimenting on several other children possessing supernatural abilities until a mysterious incident kills all of the children except Eleven. In 1986—nine months after the events at Starcourt Mall—Joyce, Will, Jonathan, and Eleven have moved to California, where Eleven struggles with the loss of her powers and is routinely bullied by other students. Joyce receives a porcelain doll in the mail, seemingly from Russia, and finds a hidden note stating that Hopper is alive. In Hawkins, Mike and Dustin have joined their high school's "Hellfire Club," a Dungeons & Dragons club led by the eccentric Eddie Munson. As a result, they miss seeing Lucas win the basketball team's championship game. Max, who has broken up with Lucas, struggles to grieve Billy's death. Chrissy Cunningham, a student on the cheerleading team, is haunted by visions of her family and a ticking grandfather clock. While buying drugs from Eddie, Chrissy is possessed and killed by a sentient, humanoid creature from her visions.
27	2	"Chapter Two: Vecna's Curse"	The Duffer Brothers	The Duffer Brothers	May 27, 2022 (2022-05-27)
Hopper is revealed to have survived the explosion underneath Starcourt Mall, where he was captured by Russian soldiers and sent to a prison camp in Kamchatka. Joyce and Murray call the phone number posted on the note she was sent and speak to "Enzo," whom they deduce is Hopper's prison guard that he likely bribed. Enzo has them deliver a $40,000 ransom to his contact in Alaska. Mike flies to California to visit Eleven, where he and Will witness her being bullied by her classmate Angela; Eleven retaliates by striking Angela in the face with a roller skate. Max tells Dustin she saw Eddie run away the night Chrissy died. Along with Robin and Steve, they locate the traumatized Eddie and explain to him the existence of the Upside Down. Eddie and Dustin identify the entity that killed Chrissy as Vecna. Nancy and her fellow student reporter Fred investigate Chrissy's death; Eddie's uncle tells Nancy he believes the killer is Victor Creel, a Hawkins resident who was institutionalized after allegedly murdering his family decades prior. Fred is lured into the woods by visions of a girl he accidentally killed before Vecna murders him.
28	3	"Chapter Three: The Monster and the Superhero"	Shawn Levy	Caitlin Schneiderhan	May 27, 2022 (2022-05-27)
Sam Owens is visited by the U.S. Army, who shows him photos of Chrissy's death, and believes Eleven is responsible. The police arrest Eleven for assaulting Angela, but she is taken by Owens, who explains that Hawkins is in grave danger and reveals that he has been working on a program that may be able to bring back Eleven's powers. Eleven agrees to participate. Joyce and Murray fly to Alaska. Hopper bribes a fellow inmate to break his shackles using a sledgehammer. Nancy and Robin go to the library to look up information about Victor Creel, where they discover that Creel blamed his family's murders on a demon, which they believe to be Vecna. Jason, the basketball team captain and Chrissy's boyfriend, leads the team to hunt for Eddie, believing him to have killed Chrissy; Lucas abandons them. Max recalls that Chrissy had visited the school counselor before being killed by Vecna. She steals Chrissy and Fred's files from the counselor's office and learns they suffered from PTSD symptoms similar to hers. Max then hears Vecna call her name and has a vision of a grandfather clock.
29	4	"Chapter Four: Dear Billy"	Shawn Levy	Paul Dichter	May 27, 2022 (2022-05-27)
Joyce and Murray deliver the ransom payment to Enzo's contact Yuri, but he drugs them, planning to turn them over to the Russians for a larger profit. Hopper escapes the prison camp but is soon recaptured. Jonathan, Mike, and Will prepare to sneak away from two of Owens' agents left to watch them, but armed soldiers attack their house. They escape with the help of Jonathan's friend Argyle, bringing an injured agent with them. Nancy and Robin interview Victor Creel at the Pennhurst psychiatric institution. Creel recounts his family being tormented and killed by supernatural forces while he was arrested for their deaths. Fearing Vecna is about to kill her, Max writes letters to her friends and family and asks to be taken to the cemetery to read her letter to Billy by his gravestone. She is soon possessed by Vecna and finds herself at his altar in the Upside Down. Steve, Dustin, and Lucas learn from Nancy and Robin that playing music can break Vecna's spell and play Max's favorite song, "Running Up That Hill," on a cassette tape. This opens a portal through which Max escapes Vecna's control, successfully avoiding death.
30	5	"Chapter Five: The Nina Project"	Nimród Antal	Kate Trefry	May 27, 2022 (2022-05-27)
Owens takes Eleven to an abandoned ICBM silo in Nevada, where he and Dr. Brenner have developed a specialized isolation tank (dubbed "NINA") that allows Eleven to access memories of her time with other children at Hawkins Lab. Eleven attempts to escape and briefly regains her powers in the process, convincing her to continue with the experiment. In California, Owens' dying agent gives the boys a phone number for the NINA project that connects to a modem; Mike decides to enlist the aid of Dustin's girlfriend Suzie in Salt Lake City. Hopper is imprisoned alongside Antonov ("Enzo"). While being flown to Russia, Joyce and Murray subdue Yuri and crash-land in the wilderness. Max, Lucas, Steve, and Dustin regroup with Nancy and Robin and decide to investigate the Creel house; inside, they encounter flickering lights, which they trace to Vecna's movements in the Upside Down. Jason and his fellow players locate Eddie trying to escape in a boat while Jason and his teammate Patrick swim after him. Vecna kills Patrick in front of Jason and Eddie, causing the lights in the Creel house to burst.
31	6	"Chapter Six: The Dive"	Nimród Antal	Curtis Gwinn	May 27, 2022 (2022-05-27)
Eleven relives memories of befriending a lab orderly named "Peter Ballard," who warns her not to trust Brenner. She also recalls her ostracism by other test subjects, leading her to believe she was responsible for the lab massacre. Suzie helps Mike's group locate the NINA project's coordinates and joins them in their quest to find it. Hopper and the other inmates are given a large feast, which Hopper warns is to prepare them to be fed to the Demogorgon. He later manages to pickpocket a lighter, recalling that the Demogorgon's weakness is fire. Joyce and Murray force Yuri to take them to a nearby town where he stores his goods and decide to have Murray pose as Yuri to infiltrate the prison. Jason galvanizes Hawkins' residents at a town hall meeting against Eddie's supposed Satanic cult. Steve's group finds Eddie; Dustin notices his compass misbehaving and realizes there must be a new gate to the Upside Down nearby. They trace the gate to Lover's Lake, where Steve dives down to inspect it before being yanked into the Upside Down by a tendril and swarmed by bat-like creatures. Nancy, Robin, and Eddie dive down after him.
32	7	"Chapter Seven: The Massacre at Hawkins Lab"	The Duffer Brothers	The Duffer Brothers	May 27, 2022 (2022-05-27)
Joyce, Murray, and Yuri enter Kamchatka and witness Hopper, and his fellow prisoners, fight the Demogorgon. Hopper holds the creature back with a flaming spear while Murray and Joyce subdue the guards and open the prison doors, allowing Hopper and Antonov to escape. Joyce and Hopper reunite. Dustin, Lucas, and Erica theorize that Vecna has spawned a gate at the site of each murder, which they communicate to Steve's group in the Upside Down. Both parties reunite at the gate inside Eddie's trailer, where Chrissy died. Robin and Eddie safely exit while Vecna possesses Nancy; she discovers that he is Victor Creel's son Henry, who killed his mother and sister with his psychic powers before falling into a coma and being placed in Brenner's care. Henry became subject 001 in Brenner's experiments and later the orderly Peter that Eleven befriended. Eleven finally remembers Henry committing the lab massacre and trying to kill her when she refused to help him eradicate humanity; Eleven overpowered Henry and sent him to the Upside Down, where he became Vecna.
Volume 2
33	8	"Chapter Eight: Papa"	The Duffer Brothers	The Duffer Brothers	July 1, 2022 (2022-07-01)
34	9	"Chapter Nine: The Piggyback"	The Duffer Brothers	The Duffer Brothers	July 1, 2022 (2022-07-01)

Production

Development

As with seasons past, planning for the fourth season of Stranger Things began before the preceding season's release. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly that ran shortly after the third season's release, series' creators Matt and Ross Duffer revealed the series' creative team had already met on several occasions to discuss the show's future. On September 30, 2019, Netflix announced it had signed the Duffer Brothers for a new multi-year television and film deal that was reportedly worth nine figures. To coincide with the production deal announcement, Netflix also announced the renewal of Stranger Things for a fourth season by releasing a brief, minute-long teaser on YouTube.

Writing

Commenting on the previous season's ending, Ross Duffer divulged the process of connecting story arcs between seasons:

We don't want to write ourselves in a corner so we try to have these early discussions with the writers just to make sure that we're setting ourselves up to go in the right direction. We don't know a lot, but we do know a lot of the big broad strokes. At the end of season two, we knew about Billy. We knew that the Russians were going to come in. We didn't know the mall and stuff, but again, we know these big broad strokes. That's sort of where we are in season four. We have the big broad strokes. 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 Duffer indicated one of the plot's "broad strokes" is the main center of action being moved out of Hawkins, Indiana, for the majority of the season, a series first. He also indicated the several loose ends left by the ending of season three, such as Hopper's perceived death and Eleven being adopted by Joyce Byers and relocating with her new family out of state, will all be explored sometime during the fourth season. The Duffers later expanded on their previous comments, saying that "epic" triptych structure of the fourth season was one of the main contributing factors to its exaggerated length. They likened it to the HBO series Game of Thrones in terms of its sheer scale, runtime, and newer, more mature tonal shift, as well as having split their characters across multiple distant locations.

Another contributing factor to the show's newfound extended length was the expressed goal of the Duffers to finally provide answers to uncertainties regarding the series' long-simmering mythology, which they have been slowly revealing like "layers of [an] onion" over the past three seasons. Halfway though writing the fourth season, Matthew and Ross realized they were going to need a ninth episode to include all of their desired plot points, which Netflix in turn "quickly approved". During production on the first season, the duo prepared a twenty-page document for Netflix that explained the show's universe, including what the Upside Down is, in clear detail. In turn, material from said document dictated certain plots while writing the season. The Duffers wanted to spend more time within the Upside Down in this season, as the narrative of the third season gave them little opportunity to explore it further.

Since the fourth season is the longest-running season produced so far, the Duffers and Netflix opted for a two-volume release plan. In a letter from the Duffer Brothers posted by Netflix, the duo revealed they wrote over 800 pages of dialogue and action across the season's nine scripts, and that the fourth season is nearly double the length of any of the previously released seasons.

In an interview on the Netflix podcast Present Company With Krista Smith, Ross Duffer discussed season four's much more mature tone, which he indicated will be at least partially achieved by "[leaning] into" the horror genre:

When we pitched it to Netflix all those years ago, we pitched it as the kids are... The Goonies in E.T. That's their storyline. And the adults are in Jaws and Close Encounters [sic] and then the teens are in Nightmare on Elm Street or Halloween. But, this year, we don't have the kids. We can't do The Goonies anymore. And so, suddenly, we're leaning much harder into that horror movie territory that we love. It was fun to make that change.

Winona Ryder's real-life rise to stardom in the late-1980s will determine the show's chronology, with the Duffers indicating they are being mindful of her early career, especially the release of the 1988 Tim Burton film Beetlejuice: "That's the threshold we can't cross, which is once Winona is a superstar in the world, like the show has to stop, because [the paradox will make the kids' heads] spontaneously combust or something."

In a May 2022 interview with Entertainment Weekly on their Around the Table series, the cast have stated that this season feels like "five movies into one", comparing it to "Scooby-Doo-meets-Zodiac-killer" while also being a "stoner action-comedy" and a "Russian prison movie".

The character of Eddie Munson is based on Damien Echols, one of the West Memphis Three that was wrongly convicted in 1994 of the deaths of three boys due to his appearance which residents tied to being part of a satanic cult. The writers drew from Paradise Lost, a documentary covering Echols, for Eddie's story.

As they had done with the Demogorgon from the first season, the Duffers opted to use the Dungeons & Dragons character of Vecna as the basis of this season's antagonist, something that the child characters would recognize and understand the dangers due to their familarity through the role-playing game. While Vecna was not fully introduced in Dungeons & Dragons materials until 1990 through the module Vecna Lives!, and only had been alluded to in the lore prior to that, the Duffers believed that Eddie was an advanced gamemaster that was able to extrapolate how Vecna would behave for purposes of the show.

Casting

By November 1, 2019, casting had begun to add four new male characters to the fourth season's lineup, with three of the roles being teenagers and one of them being an adult. The teenaged roles were characterized as ranging "from a metalhead to an entitled jock to a character that sounds an awful lot like the twin of Fast Times at Ridgemont High stoner Jeff Spicoli", while the adult character was tied to the Russian storyline introduced during the third season.

On December 3, 2019, it was confirmed by the show's writers' room that Maya Hawke's character Robin would be returning for the fourth season. On February 14, 2020, Netflix confirmed David Harbour would return as Jim Hopper and that Tom Wlaschiha had been cast as a Russian malefactor. Priah Ferguson's promotion to series regular for the fourth season was confirmed in February 2020. That March, Brett Gelman's promotion to series regular was also confirmed. On October 27, 2020, it was reported that Maya Hawke's brother, Levon Thurman-Hawke, was cast in an undisclosed role. On November 20, 2020, Jamie Campbell Bower, Eduardo Franco, and Joseph Quinn were cast as series regulars while Sherman Augustus, Mason Dye, Nikola Đuričko, and Robert Englund joined the cast in recurring roles for the fourth season; Englund, best known for portraying Freddy Krueger in the Nightmare on Elm Street films, had approached the Duffers for a role in Stranger Things, which fit well with the direction they wanted to take this season. On June 9, 2021, Amybeth McNulty, Myles Truitt, Regina Ting Chen, and Grace Van Dien joined the cast in recurring roles for the fourth season.

In the case of Bower, he was initially announced as Peter, and credits for his role in the first six episodes were listed as "Friendly Orderly". This was to hide the reveal that his character was the grown-up Henry Creel, who was the first test subject for Dr. Brenner and thus named "One", and that he would become Vecna following his battle with Eleven.

Filming

File:The Claremont House.jpg

The Claremont House in Rome, Georgia was used for external shots of the Creel House.

In February 2020, it was announced in a joint statement from the Duffer Brothers and Netflix that production had officially begun on the fourth season in Vilnius, Lithuania, at the recently decommissioned Lukiškės Prison. After production wrapped in Lithuania, filming resumed in the United States in and around the Atlanta metro area, the primary production location of previous seasons. However, after two weeks of filming, all Netflix productions, including Stranger Things, were halted on March 16, 2020, due to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. A significant portion of filming occurred at Albuquerque Studios in New Mexico, which Netflix acquired in 2018.

After several delays, filming finally resumed on September 28, 2020, in Georgia. On October 1, 2020, Natalia Dyer, Sadie Sink, and Gaten Matarazzo were all spotted filming scenes at the Hawkins Middle School and Hawkins High School sets. The three were also spotted filming scenes at the set for Dustin's house the following day. Filming took place in late 2020 around Rome, Georgia, including exterior shots of the Claremont House, which was used as the Creel House in the show. On January 27, 2021, Matthew Modine was spotted filming scenes in Atlanta. On March 15, 2021, set photos were leaked of a trailer park in Griffin, Georgia that was dressed with tendrils from the Upside Down. In June 2021, David Harbour said filming was set to wrap in August. The same month, Joe Keery, Sadie Sink, Natalia Dyer, Maya Hawke, Priah Ferguson, and Caleb McLaughlin were spotted filming a scene that involved buying weapons from a store. In September 2021, Noah Schnapp stated that filming had finally wrapped.

To visually distinguish between the season's three storylines, costume designer Amy Parris revealed that each of the plot's locations will have their own distinct color palette: "It's so fun because [the production team gets] to kind of capture California versus Hawkins through color. So, Hawkins still looks very saturated. We don't have as much as the dusty, rusty brown of Seasons 1 or 2 ... And in California, we get to incorporate baby pinks, and fun teals and purples. It's way more sun-soaked and saturated as opposed to the richer colors of Hawkins." American shoe company Converse designed three different styles of shoes using the Hawkins High School colors to be worn onscreen during a scene depicting a pep rally.

According to Bower, for the key scenes of the massacre at the Hawkings lab, Brown herself helped to direct Martie Blair, who played the younger version of Eleven, so that the multiple filmings of Eleven's interactions with Henry in the lab, some with Brown and some with Blair, were consistent in Eleven's mannerisms.

Post-production

In April 2022, The Wall Street Journal reported in an article scrutinizing Netflix's recent production expenditures that the total cost to produce season four of Stranger Things was around $270 million, which amounts to roughly $30 million per episode.

Episode 1 warning card

Season 4's release on May 27, 2022, occurred three days after a mass school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, where a gunman fatally shot 21 people. In the aftermath of the tragedy, and considering that Episode 1's cold open — a scene that had been released as an online tease one week before the premiere — features graphic images of dead bodies (including those of children), Netflix added a warning card before the prior season recap that automatically plays before Episode 1. The card, which is shown only to viewers in the United States, reads thusly:

"We filmed this season of Stranger Things a year ago. But given the recent tragic shooting at a school in Texas, viewers may find the opening scene of episode 1 distressing. We are deeply saddened by this unspeakable violence, and our hearts go out to every family mourning a loved one.”

Visual effects

Due to the season's considerable length, thousands of visual effect shots were commissioned and rendered during the two-year production and post-production processes. However, the Duffers wanted to rely more on practical effects than computer-generated ones, similar to how the first season was produced. For example, the season's major threat from the Upside Down, a humanoid creature called Vecna, was "90% practical", which the Duffers found created a better presence on the set for the actors to respond to rather than a prop for later computer-generated effects. Barrie Gower, a make-up artist that had worked previously on Game of Thrones and Chernobyl, provided the look for Vecna and other creatures. Vecna was loosely based on the Dungeons & Dragons villain of the same name, though the character in the universe of the show is a human "who mutated into a monster from overexposure to the Upside Down ... he's been subjected to all the environments and all the surroundings of the Upside Down basically for 20 odd years." Jamie Campbell Bower, who plays the human character that is turned into Vecna, also played the role of Vecna with the use of planned prosthetics. Gower designed Bower's Vecna costume with "anemic" skin whose integration with the toxic environment of the Upside Down was apparent through the inclusion of "lot of roots and vines and very organic shapes and fibrous muscle tissue." To achieve this look using mostly practical effects, Gower disclosed that he and his team took a full body cast of Bower, to later sculpt to meet their design needs:

We started off with his life cast, and to make sure everything was going to be super skin-tight, we reduced the life cast by a certain percentage all over, so once we had a plaster form of his entire body, our guys here started modeling the body in all shapes and forms in the Plasticine, which took several weeks to do that. From that, we split the body up into various sections... I think it was about 18 pieces in total, and they all went on to their own respective formers made out of either fiberglass or epoxy resin. And then we made molds of all the separate Plasticine pieces and then once we had these molds, we were able to create prosthetic appliances, and we've done them in a mixture of materials.

Once the outfit was prepared, it took about seven hours of work to fit Bower into it.

Music

The non-original soundtrack companion album for the season, titled Stranger Things: Music from the Netflix Original Series, Season 4, is set to be released digitally in two parts by Legacy Recordings on May 27 and July 1, respectively.

Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill" is featured multiple times during the season, including as part of the key scene in episode 4 with Max escaping from Vecna. The Duffers had envisioned a powerful emotional song for Max and has tasked music supervisor Nora Felder to determine which song would be used. Felder came upon "Running Up That Hill", which the Duffers agreed was a great fit for both the music itself and the theme of dealing with God. Felder knew that Bush had been cautious on music licensing before, but after contacting her, Felder learned Bush was a fan of the show, and after reviewing the script pages where the song would be used, agreed to grant licensing rights for the show. In a similar manner to the resurgence in popularity of the song "The NeverEnding Story" from its use in the third season, Bush's song saw a resurgence in popularity following the release of season 4. It reached the number one position on the iTunes download chart the week during the season's first broadcast, and saw an increase of over 8,700% on streaming charts, reaching the second-most heard song on Spotify playlists in the United States and the fourth-most song for worldwide charts. This also caused the song to re-enter charts in numerous countries, including the United States, where the song re-entered the Billboard Hot 100 at number 8 on the chart dated June 11, 2022, charting higher than its original peak of number 30 back in 1985. It also gave her her first Number 1 album on the Billboard Alternative Album chart for the same week for Hounds of Love, the album containing "Running Up That Hill". Other songs featured in season 4, such as Dead or Alive's "You Spin Me Round", Musical Youth's "Pass the Dutchie", and Falco's "Rock Me Amadeus", also saw increased streaming playbacks of around 1,784%.

Marketing

The season's official announcement showed a ticking grandfather clock in the Upside Down and ended with the tagline "We're not in Hawkins anymore," which led many news outlets to speculate the show's setting would be relocated to Russia. A teaser was released on February 14, 2020, showing that Hopper was still alive. On October 2, 2020, the show's various social media accounts posted two photographs from different sets: A poster for a pep rally hanging in a hallway at Hawkins High, and a clapperboard in front of a grandfather clock in the Upside Down, a scene that was first depicted in the season's initial teaser trailer. A second teaser was released on May 6, 2021. On August 6, 2021, a sneak peek was released featuring most of the core cast and announcing that the show would return in 2022. On September 25, 2021, a third teaser was released, showcasing the house that was previously owned by the Creel family. The final teaser was released on November 6, 2021, and showed inside Will's and Eleven's lives in California, with the episode titles for the season being revealed on that same day. On February 17, 2022, the social media accounts associated with Stranger Things released four teaser posters, one to coincide with the four teasers that were previously released, and a fifth poster, announcing the release date of both volumes. On March 23, 2022, Netflix released various stills from the upcoming fourth season. On April 12, 2022, the first official trailer was released online. On May 20, 2022, the first eight minutes of the season's first episode were released online.

Release

The fourth season was released via Netflix's streaming platform in two volumes, with the first volume of seven episodes being released on May 27, 2022, and the second volume of two episodes to be released five weeks later on July 1, 2022. The season will have nine episodes.

Reception

Critical response

On Rotten Tomatoes, the fourth season holds an approval rating of 92% based on 131 reviews with an average rating of 7.85/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Darker and denser than its predecessors, Stranger Things' fourth chapter sets the stage for the show's final season in typically binge-worthy fashion. On Metacritic, the fourth season has a score of 69 out of 100, based on 28 reviews, indicating "generally favourable reviews".

Reviewing for The A.V. Club, Saloni Gajjar gave the season a "B+" and said, "Stranger Things still injects an enthralling backstory into its well-established universe. It’s an indication that the final two episodes of Volume 2 (dropping on July 1), despite its movie length, will only elevate season four." The Guardian's Jack Seale gave it a 4 out of 5 stars and summarized it by saying, "Stranger Things is bigger, older, somewhat sadder – and as lovable as ever." Tilly Pearce of Digital Spy also rated it a 4 out of 5 stars and said "Stranger Things continues to be the beautifully addictive nostalgic thrill ride we know and love. Season four is without a doubt the strongest offering to date and by far the most ambitious." Tara Bennett from Paste gave it a score of 8.1 out of 10 and wrote, "There’s a lot to love about Stranger Things Season 4, especially when it comes to some of the character progression and the change in vibe which fully embraces the tropes of the best of ‘80s horror." In a mixed review, Mae Trumata of The Upcoming gave it a 3/5 stars and said "Overall, this is a fun continuation to Stranger Things. For anyone who’s well acquainted and attached to the series and the characters, this is an addition that will either be appreciated or tired of, as it offers nothing significantly new." The "King of Horror", author Stephen King reviewed the season as "as good or better than the previous three", pointing out a "Carrie riff". However, King opined that the decision to produce it divided in two parts is "kind of lame".

Critics praised Jamie Campbell Bower's performance as the season's villain. Patrick Caoile of Collider said "For the first time, Stranger Things gives us a villain with layers. Through Vecna, Bower explores a compelling, more complicated villain than the monsters that came before. From his traumatic childhood as Henry Creel to the abusive experiments he went through as One and finally to his role as the Mind Flayer’s top general, Vecna is the perfect villain to pit against Eleven. While Vulture's Devon Ivie wrote, "[Bower] has the distinction of embodying three characters, each more unsettling than the last, as the episodes unfurl: a friendly Hawkins Laboratory orderly; Henry Creel, aka "One"; and the most significant villain of the series thus far, Vecna."

Accolades

TVLine named Joseph Quinn the "Performer of the Week" for the week of May 28, 2022, for his performance in the episode "Chapter One: The Hellfire Club". The site wrote: "Quinn took the teenager in short order from curious to concerned, then from panicked to so utterly horrified that he let out the kind of shriek that other shrieks hear and go, “Whoa.” All in all, Quinn’s debut was as auspicious as they come." Meanwhile, Sadie Sink was named as an honorable mention for the week of June 4, 2022, for her performance in the episode "Chapter Four: Dear Billy". The site wrote: "Sink [nailed the tasks of trying to put on a brave face for her friends even when Max was scared] while still maintaining the edge that her character had received upon enrollment in the school of hard knocks, she also played Max’s bittersweet monologue to her late stepbrother with a mixture of sincerity and regret that all but defined the word 'heartbreaking'."

Viewership

Netflix reported that by May 30, 2022, Stranger Things 4 had been viewed more than 287 million hours, surpassing the previous first-week viewership record from season 2 of Bridgerton which had 193 million hours in its first week. Earlier seasons of Stranger Things also broke into the top 10 viewed programs in the same week as Stranger Things 4's release.

External links

• Stranger Things season 4 on Netflix
• Stranger Things at IMDb