Major Update on ‘Stranger Things’ Season 4 Premiere Date

Stranger Things fans have been waiting on a new season of the hit Netflix show for almost two years, and according to series star Finn Wolfhard, they’ll have to keep waiting a while longer. In a recent video call, the 18-year-old said that Season 4 “should be out sometime next year, hopefully” and added that working on the new episodes has “been really fun.”

The upcoming season is currently filming, and Wolfhard’s co-star Gaten Matarazzo recently told Collider that filming does not yet have an 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.”

Matarazzo also shared that because of the pandemic, showrunners the Duffer Brothers were able to finish writing each episode before shooting, and as a result 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.”

During a recent appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Matarazzo confirmed his previous assessment that Season 4 will be “the scariest one.” “Ooh, yeah. That’s the one thing that I’ve noticed,” the actor said. “I was reading it and I’m like, ‘They are going for it this year. That’s pretty cool.’” Wolfhard agreed, sharing on CBC Radio that Season 4 will be the “darkest season there’s ever been.”

“Every season it gets darker,” he said. “Really, I will say with Season 3 I was like, ‘This is the darkest season that there’ll ever be,’ like the exploding rats and everything. But really, Season 4 so far, it’s the darkest season there’s ever been. Every year, it gets amped up. Every year it gets funnier and darker and sadder, and everything. Every year, they amp it up.”