Stranger Things Creators Tease Final Season Tone Will Mirror Season 1

Each season of Netflix’s Stranger Things has allowed creators Matt and Ross Duffer to explore slightly different tones, blending together action, horror, and humor to varying degrees, with the upcoming final season set to embrace the overall tone of the debut season. In this regard, rather than leaning into one specific tone, it will be an amalgam of everything that audiences have come to love about the program over the years, which means not only plenty of genre elements, but also lots of heart. The fifth and final season of Stranger Things isn’t expected to premiere on Netflix until 2024.

“[Season 5], the way we see it, is kind of a culmination of all the seasons, so it’s sort of got a little bit from each,” Ross Duffer shared at a FYC event, per Variety. “Whereas before each season was so distinctly… [Season] 3 is our big summer blockbuster season with big monsters, and [Season] 4 was the psychological horror. I think that what we’re trying to do is go back to the beginning a little bit, in sort of the tone of 1.”

With each season of the series also growing in scale, the final season looks to continue that trend, even if the overall tone will be more reminiscent to the intimate nature of Season 1.

In regards to the scale of these final episodes, Ross confirmed that is was “more aligned with what [Season] 4 is” and that “hopefully, it’s got a little bit of everything.”

In addition to the upcoming episodes tonally feeling more in line with how the whole series started, the narrative will also be focusing more on these characters we’ve been with for the last six years as opposed to introducing too many new supporting characters.

“Just as important as the supernatural, we have so many characters now, most of whom are still living,” Ross detailed. “It’s important to wrap up those arcs because a lot of these characters have been growing since Season 1. So, it’s a balancing act between giving them time to complete their character arcs and also tying up these loose ends and doing our final reveals.”

Stay tuned for details on the final season of Stranger Things.

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