And the Hawkins gang is back! Netflix dropped the trailer for season 4 of Stranger Things on April 12 and it looks like war between the Upside Down and right side up is upon us.
First of all, there’s a lot to unpack here. Although some shots in the trailer are fun, nostalgic and undeniably 1980s-esque — like cheerleaders flipping and disco roller skating — there’s also an ominous feeling that something is so very wrong that is so very Stranger Things.
The trailer begins with a mysterious voice saying, “You’ve broken everything,” before pivoting to Max (played by Sadie Sink) sitting in front of her brother Billy’s grave and grappling with her grief. As Journey’s “Separate Ways,” filters through, so do the characters in their separate settings. It’s been six months since the Battle of Starcourt and Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) and Will (Noah Schnapp) have moved out of Hawkins to a suburban town in California, while the rest of the gang stays put in Indiana, and Hopper (David Harbour) is trapped in Russia, naturally.
Throughout the trailer, you get a taste that this season is to be darker than any season of the show yet. Monsters flying in the upside down, a battered Hopper, and an abandoned house that looks like a good setting for an epic final battle. A Dr. Owens (Paul Reiser) arrives in California to let Eleven know that a war is coming, and he doesn’t think that they can win it without her, while Eleven states firmly, “I don’t have my powers.” Go figure.
In an interview with Apple Music’s Matt Wilkinson Show, Finn Wolfhard, who plays Mike Wheeler, said that the upcoming season is to be the scariest yet. “We say it every year like, ‘This season’s scarier. This season’s scarier’. This season is like truly messed up, and it’s going to freak people out a lot.”
He added: “You know [creators] the Duffer brothers are doing things that people haven’t seen before in the show, which is really refreshing because if the show has been going on for as long as it has, you want people to still care.”
In the weekly show “Present Company with Krista Smith,” the Duffer brothers said Stranger Things Season 4 will give a ‘horror movie’ feeling. Ross Duffer noted, “When we pitched it to Netflix all those years ago, we pitched it as the kids are…The Goonies in E.T. That’s their storyline. And the adults are in Jaws and Close Encounters and then the teens are in Nightmare on Elm Street or Halloween. But, this year, we don’t have the kids. We can’t do The Goonies anymore,” said Ross.
“And so, suddenly, we’re leaning much harder into that horror movie territory that we love. It was fun to make that change.”
Stranger Things season 4 Volume 1 returns on May 27 and Volume 2 hits Netflix later this summer on July 1. Scroll through our gallery for a full trailer breakdown.
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