The Duffer brothers defend making the 'Stranger Things' season 4 finale over 2 hours long: 'If someone wants to pause it, they can'
- The Duffer brothers explained why the season-four finale of "Stranger Things" runs so long.
- The finale episode is two hours and 19 minutes long, the show's writers confirmed.
The Duffer brothers explained the over two-hour run time of the "Stranger Things" season-four finale, with Ross Duffer telling Variety that "if someone wants to pause it, they can."
In an interview with Variety, the "Stranger Things" showrunners spoke about the show's fourth season, which is set to conclude with the release of its final two episodes on July 1. The first part of the season, which premiered on May 27 with a seven-episode drop, is set to conclude with a two-hour and 19-minute finale, the official "Stranger Things" writers' room Twitter account said.
That run time has drawn some skeptical eyes, but the Duffer brothers told Variety that it felt necessary.
"We looked at the final episode 'cause it's so long. There really wasn't a good spot to break it," Ross Duffer told Variety. "So it's like, why — at the end of the day, you know, if someone wants to pause it, they can."
"Stranger Things" premiered on Netflix in 2016 and has since grown to be one of the streaming platform's most popular shows of all time. The show's fourth season, which premiered after an almost three-year hiatus, saw the show's characters split up between Indiana, Russia, and California as Vecna, a new threat from the Upside Down, begins to menace Hawkins.
The brothers said that while they and Netflix anticipated the season's final episodes running long, they didn't think that the other episodes of the season would be supersized as well. It wasn't until they hit the editing stage that they realized "oh, God, these are really long," Ross Duffer told Variety.
Still, the pacing of the series, and its multiple plotlines, demanded the length, both brothers said.
"You look at one of the episodes, like, you couldn't cut it out 15 minutes early," Matt Duffer said. "Structurally we have this year — I think it was four major storylines. And they each have three or four beats per episode. So they're all building toward a specific point."