Exiting the Upside Down: Inside the Beginning of the End of ‘Stranger Things’ and Netflix’s Lengthy Season 4 Strategy

variety.com:

Stranger Things” — and Netflix execs have too. The show’s Season 4 arrival couldn’t come at a better time for the streamer, which could use a boost from its crown jewel series after a tumultuous spring.Here’s the good news for Netflix: With 9.5 million hours of the first season of “Stranger Things” viewed last week, it’s clear the Upside Down fandom is more than ready to return to Hawkins, Ind.

this Friday. Boasting longer episodes than ever before, and two more to come in July, Season 4 of the Duffer Brothers-created series is hoping to give viewers everything it’s got with its penultimate season.At the same time, Netflix is consciously deciding not to put all of its eggs in Eleven’s basket, so as to not put too much pressure on one series — however popular it may be — and its largely young cast to solve its growth problems. “There’s no one title that drives our business,” Matthew Thunell, “Stranger Things” executive producer and head of Netflix’s spectacle and event scripted programming, tells Variety. “Obviously, ‘Stranger Things’ is beloved around the world and when you talk about all of it, for us, it’s about how do we continue to create fan joy 365 days a year and that kind of investment in the characters and the extension of the stories.

It’s always thinking about the fans first.”Thunell is the Netflix exec who took the original pitch for “Stranger Things” from Matt and Ross Duffer in 2015, and was walked through the multi-season arc of the story.

That 1980s-set supernatural tale of Joyce (Winona Ryder), Hopper (David Harbour), Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown), Mike (Finn Wolfhard) and the rest of the Hawkins crew will conclude next year with its final season.