Stranger Things 4 Opening Minutes Offer Bloody Trip Back In Time

How is this for making a point? Only an hour after going over how epic Netflix’s Stranger Things 4 is going to be, the streaming service released the first eight minutes as a way of making sure folks understand that when they say epic? They mean righteously epic. In the following scene, it’s September 1979 and Dr. Martin Brenner (Matthew Modine) has a question for Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) that changes everything…

So here’s how Stranger Things 4 breaks down: Volume 1 (on May 27) will consist of the first seven episodes; Volume 2 (on July 1) will run the remaining two episodes, totaling the season’s full nine-episode count. Now get this: those nine episodes will total approximately 13 hours. And why are those final two episodes being held until Volume 2? Because those two chapters clock in at nearly four hours long. And for a better sense of time, S04E07 is 1 hour 38 minutes, S04E08 is around 1 hour 25 minutes, and S04E09 is almost 2-1/2 hours.)

And to help you with your It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia/Pepe Silvia conspiracy board, here are more preview images deserving of their own red connective strings (you know who you are), followed by a mess load of previous previews:

Netflix’s Stranger Things stars Winona Ryder (Joyce Byers), David Harbour (Jim Hopper), Millie Bobby Brown (Eleven), Finn Wolfhard (Mike Wheeler), Gaten Matarazzo (Dustin Henderson), Caleb McLaughlin (Lucas Sinclair), Noah Schnapp (Will Byers), Sadie Sink (Max Mayfield), Natalia Dyer (Nancy Wheeler), Charlie Heaton (Jonathan Byers), Joe Keery (Steve Harrington), Maya Hawke (Robin Buckley), Priah Ferguson (Erica Sinclair), Brett Gelman (Murray), Cara Buono (Karen Wheeler), and Matthew Modine (Dr. Brenner). Now without further delay, we return you to your continued repeated viewings of the official trailer for the fourth season:

It’s been six months since the Battle of Starcourt, which brought terror and destruction to Hawkins. Struggling with the aftermath, our group of friends are separated for the first time — and navigating the complexities of high school hasn’t made things any easier. In this most vulnerable time, a new and horrifying supernatural threat surfaces, presenting a gruesome mystery that, if solved, might finally put an end to the horrors of the Upside Down.

With the tagline, “Every Ending Has a Beginning,” the official key art for the fourth season that was previously released began in Russia with a Hopper-Joyce reunion. From there, we see Eleven returning to her worst nightmare in the second key art poster. With the third poster, some familiar faces are investigating the truth behind the murders in the Creel house. While the fourth poster brings us to the Byers’ new life in California- one that’s about to get majorly upended. Because even though they’re all in different parts of the world, there’s still something linking them all. And then we received the final poster tying it all together. And now the good news: Stranger Things 4 is coming to you in two parts: Volume 1 premieres May 27 & Volume 2 quickly follows on July 1. The tough news? As The Duffer Bros revealed in a letter below, the series will end with the following fifth season.

Now here’s a look at the letter shared by the Duffer Bros announcing the series’ end with the fifth season, but teasing that more from the show’s universe might be on the way:

Now here’s a look at the episode titles for the fourth season, along with the announcement video: S04E01 – “The Hellfire Club”; S04E02 – “Vecna’s Curse”; S04E03 – “The Monster and The Superhero”; S04E04 – “Dear Billy”; S04E05 – “The Nina Project”; S04E06 – “The Dive”; S04E07 – “The Massacre at Hawkins Lab”; S04E08 – “Papa”; S04E09 – “The Piggyback”:

When the third season wrapped and with Hopper seemingly dead, the Byers and Eleven prepared to leave Hawkins. But as we’ve already seen and what becomes abundantly clear in the clip below, Hawkins has a reach that extends well beyond Indiana. So as much as Eleven is really looking forward to a great Spring Break with Mike, outside forces might have something to say about that (as you’ll see in the following teasers):

Previously, we learned that Jamie Campbell Bower (The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones, Sweeney Todd), Eduardo Franco (Booksmart, The Binge), and Joseph Quinn (Catherine the Great, Howards End) were joining the cast of Stranger Things as series regulars. Tom Wlaschiha (Game of Thrones), Sherman Augustus (Into the Badlands, Westworld), Mason Dye (Bosch, The Goldbergs), Nikola Djuricko (Genius, In The Land of Blood and Honey), and Robert Englund (A Nightmare on Elm Street Franchise, V) are also joining in recurring roles. In addition, Brett Gelman‘s Murray Bauman has been promoted to series regular. In addition, Amybeth McNulty (Anne with an E), Myles Truitt (Black Lightning), Regina Ting Chen (Queen of the South), and Grace Van Dien (The Village) have also joined the Stranger Things cast.

Checking in during this past weekend’s Deadline Hollywood Contenders conference and with more than a month to go until Season 4 Part 1 premieres, Matt Duffer & Ross Duffer had some additional intel to offer on what fans can expect from what’s sounding like an epic season in the making- both with the storyline and the literal size of the season & its episodes:

“Stranger Things” Season 4: Game of Thrones? “We kind of jokingly call it our ‘Game of Thrones’ season because it’s so spread out, so I think that’s what’s unique or most unique about the season. Joyce and the Byers family to have left at the end of Season 3. They are in California – we’ve always wanted to have that like ‘E.T.’-esque suburb aesthetic, which we finally got to do this year in the desert; and then we have Hopper in Russia, and then of course we have a group remaining in Hawkins. So we have these three storylines, are all connected and kind of interwoven together, but it’s just very different tones.” – Matt Duffer

“We didn’t know how big the season was going to get, and we didn’t even realize until we were about halfway through, just in terms of how much story that we wanted to tell this season. ‘Game of Thrones’ is one thing we’ve referenced, but also for us really what it’s about is revelations, in that we really wanted to start giving the audience some answers.” – Ross Duffer

Season 4 Comes with Answers: “Back when we did Season 1, Netflix just kept going ‘Can you explain all this mythology to us?’ So we wrote this giant 20-page document, which talked about everything in terms of what was going on and what exactly the Upside Down was. And then each season we’re just sort of peeling back the layers of that onion, so to speak. But this season, we really wanted to get into it and [reveal] some of those answers. But to do that properly, we needed time, so it just became bigger and bigger.” – Ross Duffer

Season 4 Brings A Lot More for Viewers Than Just an Extra Episode: “I don’t think we have an episode clocking in under an hour – even in Season 1, there were episodes that were like 35 minutes. You kind of forget that. This season, they’re very long, so I think it’s almost double the length of any season. So that’s one reason it’s taken so long. It does have this sort of epic quality to it. It’s a different feel, for sure.” – Matt Duffer