Warning: Spoilers for Stranger Things ahead.
Stranger Things fans are in limbo. By now, most of them have almost certainly watched the first seven episodes of season four on Netflix. (It’s the darkest season yet, and maybe the best.) While the final episode certainly seemed like a season-ending cliffhanger, it was just an appetizer. There are still two episodes left in season four, and show creators the Duffer brothers have said that the final episode will be more than two hours long.
But what do we know about what’s coming in the final two episodes of the fourth season? Let’s take a look.
Where Stranger Things season 4 left us
There are a lot of loose ends that the final two episodes of this season need to address.
Nancy
First off, Nancy! Someone save Nancy! Everyone’s favorite teenage reporter, Nancy Wheeler, tried to get out of the Upside Down as the seventh episode ended, but although Robin and Eddie got out, Nancy fell into what appears to be Vecna’s territory. She’s in some kind of a trance, and the faster her friends can get her out of Vecna’s world, the better. Steve, too, remains in the Upside Down, though he isn’t going through the same trauma-induced world that Nancy fell into.
Hopper
Hopper, at least, is in better shape. He’s still in Russia, but Murray and Joyce have arrived, and he and Enzo are no longer playing Spartacus with Upside Down monsters. They’ve got to get out of the Russian camp and back to the States as fast as possible — the kids are doing their best, but they need some adult assistance.
Eleven
Eleven’s history with 001 (aka Peter Ballard the orderly, aka Henry Creel the surviving murder son, aka Vecna) was finally laid out for all to see. Eleven will surely have another confrontation with Vecna, but it would also be interesting to see if Henry’s now-blind dad, Victor Creel (played by Robert “Freddy Krueger” Englund) will have any contact with his transformed son. And Eleven is going to have to go after Vecna/001 fast, because Lt. Col. Sullivan is still after her. He’s already shown he’s willing to torture to get what he wants.
Teaser photos from the final episodes
On June 14, Netflix tweeted out a batch of photos from the remaining two episodes. It might be easier to look at them via the Netflix blog, Tudum (named for that bonging Netflix sound heard when a new show starts up).
The photos don’t exactly spill a lot of plot secrets. But it does look as if Nancy gets safely reunited with her Hawkins crowd — not that we doubted it for a moment! She has to be saved; there’s a whole fifth season yet to come. Eddie looks happy, which is a relief, considering the Hawkins High jocks are still gunning for him under the mistaken belief he killed cheerleader Chrissy.
But perhaps the eeriest photo shows Max and Lucas in a very creepy room with broken wall slats behind them. The Creel house, maybe? We learned that it was the family’s son, Henry, who became Vecna after killing his family as a child. But we don’t quite know why Henry went bad — were his parents truly abusive, or was he a bad seed from the start?
Spoilers and plot twists that have leaked
No happy ending
Brace yourself for these final two episodes. The Duffers told Empire magazine (as quoted in iFilm) that season 4 won’t end on a positive note.
“Volume 2 really takes what we did in Volume 1 and ramps everything up,” the show creators told the magazine. “Usually, at the end of a season, we tie things up with a nice bow, before a little tease that says, ‘Hold on, something is unraveling.’ As we move into season 5, we don’t have to do that. There won’t be a reset from where we finish this season.”
Time jump inevitable, but not yet
What do they mean, they don’t have to do that? Well, it’s because season 5 isn’t going to start up. The Duffer brothers say that an unavoidable time jump is coming, but not until the show’s final season, season 5. That makes sense, because the young actors are growing up, and it’s getting tough to pretend some of these guys are in school any more. (Natalia Dyer, who plays Nancy and is supposedly a high school senior, is 27 in real life. Joe Keery, aka Steve Harrington, is 30.)
Movie-length finale
You’ve heard that those last two episodes are super-long, but just how long? Episode 8, the second-to-the-last of season 4, will run 85 minutes. Episode 9, the season finale, is a whopping two and a half hours.
Tension, dread and special effects
The Duffers aren’t planning a quiet two-and-a-half hour finale, either.
“The final episode has more FX shots than the entirety of Season 3,” Matt Duffer told Empire.
“There’s an hour-long chunk in the final episode that just doesn’t stop,” said Ross Duffer. “It’s the most complicated thing we’ve ever attempted to do. [It’s] all tension and dread, with a run-time that would be long even for a movie. Then — well, everything goes to hell…”
But how exactly does it go to hell? Fans will have to count the days until July 1 to find out.
