‘Stranger Things’ Creators Discuss ‘George Lucas-ing’ Will’s Birthday, Updating Season 4 After It Premiered, and Their Not-So-Secret Spinoff Show
variety.comKate Aurthur editorThe fourth season of Netflix’s “Stranger Things” has been unlike its previous seasons both in tone (this time, it’s full horror) and the length of the show’s episodes (the finale, one of the two Volume 2 episodes premiering on July 1, will be two-and-a-half hours).
But according to Matt and Ross Duffer — collectively known as the Duffer brothers — they had no other choice.In an interview for Variety’s Showrunners Sitdown With Kate Aurthur presented by FX, the Duffer Brothers said that because of how “Stranger Things 4” was structured, with its four distinct storylines, “If you look at one of the episodes — like, you couldn’t cut it out 15 minutes early,” Matt Duffer said.
Ross Duffer cited the finale as an example: “Reel one is build-up dread. Reel two is action, chaos. And then, reel three is our traditional coda, come down after all of that.
You didn’t really want to break it after just the build-up. It wouldn’t feel like a satisfying episode. So, at a certain point we just said, ‘Well, it’s just a mega episode.’ If someone wants to pause it, they can!”And yes, Netflix has been on board with these unprecedentedly long episodes, as well as what they cost, which has been reported to be $30 million an episode.
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