The “Stranger Things” creators are still hard at work on the final season but when they pitched the story for the conclusion of the show, Netflix executives actually teared up…
It’s still going to be quite a while before the final season of “Stranger Things” lands on Netflix but the creators behind the hit series have already started work on those last episodes.
In fact, the Duffer brothers — Ross and Matt — had to detail their plans for the final season to executives at Netflix ahead of production and while they aren’t ready to give out any details, the story was so powerful that some people in the room were left in tears.
“We did get our executives to cry, which I felt was a good sign that these executives were crying,” Matt Duffer said at a “Stranger Things” event in Los Angeles. “The only other times I’ve seen them cry were like budget meetings.”
Shawn Levy, who has been a director and executive producer on the series since the start, witnessed the pitch meeting for the final season and he admits things did get quite emotional as the Duffer brothers laid out the fates for the characters and how they planned to end the show.
“As a witness and having been in that two-hour pitch room and having read this first script — I’m paralyzed with fear that I’ll spoil anything but I will say the thing about these Duffer Brothers is that even though the show has gotten so famous and the characters have gotten so iconic and there’s so much about the ’80s and the supernatural and the genre, it’s about these people, it’s about these characters,” Levy said.
“Season five is already so clearly taking care of these stories of the characters because that’s always been the lifeblood of Stranger Things.”
The Duffer brothers also stressed that a huge part of the final season is making sure that the story reaches a satisfying conclusion, which means wrapping up mysteries and story arcs for all the various characters.
So much of the appeal behind “Stranger Things” has been the supernatural twists and turns not to mention the mystery behind the Upside Down. While some revelations were made during season 4, the Duffer brothers acknowledge that there’s still a lot of work to be done to ensure audiences are happy with the ending and nobody is left hanging in the end.
“We do have quite a bit more to get in,” Matt Duffer said. “But just as important as the supernatural, we have so many characters now — most who are still living — and it’s important to wrap up those arcs. A lot of these characters have been growing since season one so it’s a balancing act between giving them time to complete their character arcs and also tying up loose ends and doing our final reveals.”
As part of a recent “Stranger Things” day celebration, the title for the first script of season 5 was revealed as “The Crawl” with the Duffers saying that work has already started on the second script as the writers continue moving ahead with the final season.
There’s no word yet when production might start on the final season of “Stranger Things” but it seems likely that the show won’t return until at least sometime in 2024 if not later.
