Stranger Things creators Ross and Matt Duffer and executive producer Shawn Levy have teased fans about what to anticipate in Season 5. With more ’80s pop culture references, answers and danger, the series’ final season will be “a culmination” of the earlier ones, they say.
“[Season] 5, the way we see it, is kind of a culmination of all the seasons, so it’s got a little bit from each,” Ross said during Netflix’s panel at Los Angeles’ Tudum Theater on Sunday. “I think that what we’re trying to do is go back to the beginning a little bit, in sort of the tone of [Season] 1. But also scale-wise, it’s more aligned with what [Season] 4 is. So, hopefully, it’s got a little bit of everything.”
The fifth season is moving “full steam ahead,” he said.
The premiere episode, entitled The Crawl, has been turned in, and the team is already working on episode two. The Duffer brothers have already had a two-hour meeting with the Netflix higher-ups on how the season will play out, with Matt revealing the streamer’s executives were in tears (but the good kind).
“Just as important as the supernatural, we have so many characters now, most of whom are still living,” Ross said. “It’s important to wrap up those arcs because a lot of these characters have been growing since Season 1. So, it’s a balancing act between giving them time to complete their character arcs and also tying up these loose ends and doing our final reveals.”
“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,” said Levy. “Season 5 is already so clearly taking care of these stories of the characters because that’s always been the lifeblood of Stranger Things.”