Stranger Things 4 Volume One delivered a whole lot of story. Those seven super-sized episodes needed their extended run times, too. The show juggled separate stories in Indiana, California, Russia, and the Upside Down. It also told multiple tales from different time periods. And it featured one giant, monstrous revelation. But if you thought you got a heavy dose of Hawkins goodness from the season’s first half, it sounds like the best is yet to come. The Duffer Brothers said Volume Two’s finale features more FX shots than all of Stranger Things 3 combined. And that will include an hour-long stretch that could be the most exciting sequence in show history.
Ross and Matt Duffer spoke to Empire Magazine about what fans can expect from the latter half of Stranger Things 4. They didn’t get into specifics of how Hawkins’ young Upside Down veterans will take on Vecna. But they did tease the amount of work that went into the showdown. Ross Duffer said “There’s an hour-long chunk in the final episode that just doesn’t stop. It’s the most complicated thing we’ve ever attempted to do.” He also said the sequence is all “tension and dread.” And that’s before “everything goes to hell.”
While we can only imagine what that will entail, Duffer did say the action would be long even for a movie. Of course, with a runtime exceeding two hours, the season finale will have more in common with a movie than a TV show. And it’s not like television isn’t capable of putting together record-setting sequences. Game of Thrones‘ “Battle of Winterfell” ran longer than the “Battle of Helm’s Deep” in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. That cinematic war lasted 40 minutes.
And it all took place in one dimension. Defeating Vecna will likely require a long and dangerous trip to the Upside Down. That’s why the question won’t be whether or not every character survives. The question will be whether or not we do.
