Stranger Things Creators Changed Original Series Ending Plan After Season 4 Release

Stranger Things has become a ubiquitous part of popular culture across its Netflix run, and there is undeniably a lot of hype to see how the show ultimately comes to a close. The show has been confirmed to be ending with its upcoming fifth and final season, and it's anyone's guess as to how the series will stick the landing. According to new comments by series creators Ross and Matt Duffer during WGFestival 2022 (via Netflix's TUDUM), even they reevaluated their initial plan for the ending following the release of Season 4 earlier this year.

"We reread the document," Matt explained. "We're like, 'That's cool, that's cool. That could be a lot better. That could be a lot better.'"

"Even the ending is a little bit different [now]," Matt said of the new ending. "A lot of the big ideas are the same, but the stuff that happens within, it's very different." 

How will Stranger Things end?

As the Duffer Brothers explained in an interview earlier this year, their original pitch for the series ending definitely went over well with Netflix executives.

"Listen. It's our process but it's just like, we really just try to focus on one season at a time," co-creator Ross Duffer explained in an interview with The Wrap earlier this year. "We do have an outline for season 5 and we pitched it to Netflix and they really responded well to it. I mean, it was hard. It's the end of the story. I saw executives crying who I've never seen cry before and it was wild. And it's not just to do with the story, just the fact that it's like, Oh my God, this thing that has defined so many of our lives, these Netflix people who has been with us from the beginning, seven years now, and it's hard to imagine the journey coming to an end."

"But we wrote it during the pandemic shutdown, the outline for 5, and then I haven't even honestly looked at it because it's just too overwhelming," Duffer continued. "We'll get into it."

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Stranger Things will return to Netflix at a later date.