‘Stranger Things’ Star Offers Major Update About Season 4 of Netflix Series

Season 3 of Stranger Things dropped on Netflix in July 2019, and fans have been awaiting Season 4 ever since. No official release date has yet been announced for the show’s next batch of episodes, which the pandemic has delayed, but series star Gaten Matarazzo just shared a filming update in a new interview with Collider, explaining that there is no set end date due to COVID-19 restrictions.

“There’s very few dates that are reliable,” he said. “It really is more of a guesstimation on when we’re gonna be filming next, when we’re gonna be wrapping up when release is gonna be, all that jazz because we still don’t know on day-to-day if we’re gonna be filming next week. I should be filming like next month for a bigger chunk than I’ve had in a bit, but even though it’s coming up in about two weeks from now, I still don’t know an exact date. So because of that, there’s really no way to figure out when we’re gonna be wrapping.”

During past seasons, Stranger Things showrunners Matt and Ross Duffer, who also write the series, have finished writing the latest batch of episodes while filming. But because of pandemic-related shutdowns, they could finish writing all of Season 4 before going back into production. “This year, because of COVID, there’s no excuse for them not to have the [season] written completely,” Matarazzo said. “When we went in for our first table read, which was February of 2020, we expected to go right into filming and it was gonna be the same situation, they were gonna start with episodes all the way up through 5 and we were probably gonna do the same hiatus [to finish writing the season], but COVID hit and we only had like six episodes and so they were like, ‘We might as well finish.’”

Because of this, Matarazzo shared that the Duffer Brothers have “been able to relish in directing in their day-to-day.” “There’s nothing else distracting them other than what we’re gonna do today while we’re directing, and I asked them, ‘Do you guys sleep at night?’ they’re like, ‘Literally we dream about directing this show. We go to sleep and we have dreams that we’re just directing this show,’ it takes up their entire minds when they’re making this,” he explained. “So I think it’s a good thing because now they can take their focus off of what the show is going to be about, and now that they know it, they can focus on how they’re going to deliver. And I think it shows.”