As fans have been enjoying, rewatching, and meme-ing the final two episodes of Stranger Things season four, there is one criticism that stands out among the rest: the finale is just too dang long. Luckily, the Duffer Bros know that, but they have a pretty valid explanation: the show just goes too hard.
“I think we just couldn’t find a good spot to break it because there’s almost an hour of build-up tension, and then it just goes hard for an hour,” Ross explained to Collider. Duffer adds that the episode would’ve felt incomplete and used.
“Then we have our 25 minutes of coming down the coda. It would’ve just not been a very satisfying episode to stop it after that first hour. In our opinion, it just would’ve petered out. We didn’t want to force an ending, so we just figured, well, it’ll just be this monster episode. If you want to pause it, go ahead.” It’s almost as if viewers could use something like a commercial break to split up the scenes, right?
Matt then explained that perhaps the timing could have been better, with the season split equally to help reduce that season finale bloat: “If we were to do it again, I would probably make the split earlier,” he explains. “I would write it into the narrative. I would love to see all eight at once, but it’s also, people talk about it more when it’s split up. It’s way better that you guys split it up, we’re able to keep writing about it.”
Despite the length, fans went all out: the series recently reached 1 billion (!!!!) hours watched, and it will likely keep climbing as viewers dissect each and every frame of the finale. They might as well just release the fifth season in theaters at this point.
As for if the final season will get the same split treatment, the Brothers add that it’s a balancing act. ” I do enjoy what we did this season, and that you get a bit of both worlds, and that you were able to devour a lot of content and get into the characters and story, but at the same time, allow for discussion and all that in between.” There sure was a whole lot of discussion!