The Duffer Brothers confirmed they already have the ending for Stranger Things planned out. While filming for the fourth season of the show has been halted due to concerns over coronavirus, they are still ahead of schedule and should wrap up once they're allowed to return to the studio.
With the explosive ending of Stranger Things season 3, the Byers family was headed out of Hawkins, and the events of the finale left Chief Hopper in a Russian prison camp, according to the first teaser for season 4. While there has been no confirmation on a season 5, the show's producer has acknowledged that both Netflix and the actors' agents would love to see the show continue. Still, regardless of when the show ends, there is a plan in place to bring it to a satisfying conclusion.
Per Deadline, Matt and Ross Duffer, the show's creators, mentioned the season 3 finale was a move towards their larger planned ending to the series. The Duffer Bros. admit they initially did not know if the show would go beyond the first season, but they had mapped out the show's larger mythology when initially planning the series. Matt explained, "We've known the ending of the show for quite a while. The honest truth is we didn't know if we'd go beyond season one, so we like the idea of season one that it could function basically as its own standalone piece, like almost as a limited series. But it had the potential to go beyond that. And if it were to go beyond that, we had an idea of where it would go. Yeah, and we have an ending in mind. We don't want to just keep churning it out."
Netflix obviously wants to keep the show going for as long as it's profitable, but the streaming giant has also been an ally to creators, allowing them to tell the story they want to tell. Hopefully, that trend continues, and the Duffer Bros are allowed to wrap up the series before it grows stale. Stranger Things, while maintaining an avid fanbase, has started to fall into something of a storytelling rut. The previous three seasons of the show were fundamentally the same story, even if the smaller details were changed. The show handles character development well, but the repetitiveness of the narrative in which, the kids discover a monster, the kids battle a monster, and Eleven defeats the monster, becomes more apparent with each new season.
Stranger Things might be ending soon, but at least the creators have had the time to plan a satisfying conclusion. The big question now is how much information from their mythology overview will be revealed in the final few seasons? If they're able to tell the complete story, but a few smaller aspects of their larger mythology remains unexplored, perhaps that could open the door to a potential spin-off series. With season 4 still in production, it doesn't look like Netflix, and the Duffer Bros are ready to announce anything regarding the series' final season or future spin-offs.
Source: Deadline