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Only the finale will be feature-length.

One thing many fans noticed of the recently-released fourth season of Stranger Things was that the episodes were very, very long. The last two episodes in particular were both long enough to be movies in themselves, being 90 minutes and two and a half hours long, respectively. During a recent appearance on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, the creators of the show, the Duffer Brothers, promised they aren’t going to do that again for the series’ fifth and final season. Mostly.

“We’re more likely to do what we did here, which is to just have a two and a half hour episode,” Matt Duffer said.

Matt said that the arc of the final season is “going to be moving fast,” though they haven’t yet decided if it’s “going to be moving 100 miles per hour.”

“Characters are already going to be in action, they’re already going to have a goal and a drive, and I think that’s going to carve out at least a couple hours and make this season feel really different.”

“I’m sure the wrap-up will be a lot longer,” Matt said, adding, “It’s going to be Return of the King-ish with, like, eight endings.”

The Duffer Brothers have confirmed they will begin writing the final season of #StrangerThings in August. pic.twitter.com/99N8zOStq0

— Stranger Things 4 (@StrangerNews11) July 4, 2022

As for why season 4 got so long in the tooth, Matt explained. “The only reason we don’t expect to be as long is because typically — or this season, if you look at it, it’s almost a two-hour ramp up before our kids really get drawn into a supernatural mystery. You get to know them, you get to see them in their lives, they’re struggling with adapting to high school and so forth. Steve’s trying to find a date, all of that,” he says.