'Stranger Things' Season 4 Will Be the 'Darkest' Yet, According to Finn Wolfhard

Season 3 of Netflix's hit sci-fi series Stranger Things may have been dark, but it's apparently no match for the upcoming Season 4. As fans of the series await the batch of new episodes, series star Finn Wolfhard, who portrays Mike Wheeler, teased the tone of Season 4 in a recent interview, telling CBC's Listen it's the "darkest" yet.

Speaking with the outlet, Wolfhard noted that "every season" of the popular Netflix original "gets darker." Wolfhard recalled how ahead of Season 3, he "was like, this is the darkest season that there'll ever be," giving the nod to the "exploding rats and everything" everything else the season entailed, including a character's death. But even that is light compared to Season 4, with Wolfhard, according to ET Canada, teasing, "Season 4 so far, it's the darkest season there's ever been." Wolfhard added, "Every year, it gets amped up. Every year it gets funnier and darker and sadder, and everything. Every year, they amp it up."

Wolfhard's remarks only reaffirm those made by his co-star, Dustin Matarazzo, who told Us Weekly in an interview just last month that the upcoming season would be upping the scare factor. Summing up the season with a single word, "Yikes," Matarazzo teased that he believes "it's the scariest [season] out of the previous three." Although he didn't reveal any further details, he said he likes the darker tone "because it's very fun to film."

Stranger Things Season 4 has been years in the making, with Season 3 having dropped on the streaming platform back in July 2019. Like most productions, Season 4 was impacted by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, which halted filming and the debut of the season on Netflix. According to executive producer Shawn Levy, the delay did have some positive impacts, as it allowed the Duffer Brothers "to write the entire season before we shoot it and to have time to rewrite in a way that they rarely had before, so the quality of these screenplays are exceptional, maybe better than ever." Filming on Season 4 resumed in September, with the Duffer Brothers teasing in a statement, "a new horror is beginning to surface, something long-buried, something that connects everything," according to IndieWire.

Although details of the season remain unclear, it is known that there will be a few fresh faces. Horror icon Robert Englund of Nightmare on Elm Street will be appearing in the recurring role of Victor Creel, a demented character who was remanded to a psychiatric hospital for a brutal murder in the '50s. Game of Thrones actor Tom Wlaschiha will portray one of Chief Hopper's captors. Sherman Augustus (Into the Badlands), Mason Dye (Bosch), Nikola Djuricko (Legends), Jamie Campbell Bower (the Twilight franchise), Eduardo Franco (American Vandal), and Joseph Quinn (Howard's End) are also set to join the cast. Season 4 does not yet have a premiere date.