After almost a decade running, Stranger Things will come to a close this year. The first four episodes were released on November 26th and the finale is set to release on December 31st. The finale is set to run 110 minutes. It will be the final goodbye to Eleven and the crew as the fate of Hawkins is revealed to all.Â
So many things have happened in the time since the first season premiered. We have seen three presidential terms in the U.S, Queen Elizabeth had not yet turned 90; she has since passed, Megan Markle joined and left the British Royal Family, Instagram Stories were invented, and Game of Thrones ended. Succession started and finished. Thanos snapped away half of the population, and Tony Stark brought them back. We have had seven Taylor Swift albums, Sistergedon with James Charles and Tati Westbrook, Roe V. Wade was overturned, Vine died and was brought back, Musically became TikTok, Skinny Jeans came and went, all of The Summer I Turned Pretty has been released, Katy Perry went to space, BeyoncĂ© preformed at the Superbowl with Coldplay, Ellen DeGeneres was cancelled, Adele got divorced, there have been two Solar Eclipses, the rise of A.I, Chappell Roan has risen to fame, we learned what a Moon Beam Ice Cream is, the Chiefs asserted themselves as a new NFL powerhouse, Tom Holland had not yet gotten his own Spiderman movie, Zendaya was still starring in K.C Undercover, Nickelodeon canceled and brought back the Thundermans, I still believed that One Direction was on a 18 month hiatus, Keeping Up with the Kardashians ended, Kanye became Ye, Harry Styles released three albums, all three The Kissing Booth movies were released, the BRAT album rocked the music world, Riverdale started and ended its seven season span, the Jonas Brothers got back together and they released three albums, and for all my F1 fans Stranger Things started during the Brocade Era, and of course, the global pandemic. Just to name a few. Oh! And we still have no update on Rihanna’s new album!
The first season of the show broke records on Netflix, as they disclosed for the first time the viewership numbers for their shows, with Stranger Things reaching 14.07 million views in the first 35 days of release. This number would only go up; in season three, it was 64 million viewers in the same time frame. Quickly, Stranger Things became Netflix’s title show and launched the careers of its stars. Each season has also increased in budget, as Netflix estimated season one at $ 48 million. For season 5, the budget has been released at over $ 400 million. This increase has been attributed to higher salaries for cast and crew, as well as increased use of VFX. Â
This new season will wrap up what has been an almost decade-long show. A show that changed the landscape of streaming platforms for good. The next three episodes will be released on Christmas Day as the not-so-little kids gang up for their finale showdown in the Upside Down.