‘Stranger Things 5’ Probably Won’t Be as Long as Season 4, Say the Duffer Brothers

thewrap.com:

Happy Sad Confused podcast interview with host Josh Horowitz, Ross Duffer bemoaned the pattern he sees on series’ closers “where the penultimate episode is the strong episode and then they wind down on the last one.” So they concluded that the trick to avoid such traps is to just make one long episode. “We’re more likely to do what we did here which is to just have a 2.5 hour episode,” Ross revealed of the intended “Stranger Things” Season 5 finale. “The wind-down is just part of a 2.5 hour episode,” Matt added. “I would expect the finale to be at least two hours.”Running nine episodes and lasting an approximate 13 hours, the fourth season of “Stranger Things” marks the creatives’ most ambitious installment yet.

The Duffers said that Season 5, while flexing a robust finale runtime, is overall likely to be shorter than Season 4. .“The only reason we don’t expect it to be as long is because if you look at it, it’s almost a two-hour ramp-up before our kids really get drawn into the supernatural mystery,” Matt explained. “You get to know them, you get to see them in their lives, what they’re struggling with, adapting to high school and so forth.

Steve’s trying to find a date, all of that. None of that obviously is going to be occurring in the first two episodes of [Season 5]. “For the first time ever, we don’t wrap things up at the end of 4, and so it’s going to be moving.

I don’t know that it’s going to be going 100 miles an hour at the start of 5, but it’s going to be moving pretty fast,” he continued. “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.