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The Duffer Brothers say the fifth and final season of Stranger Things will answer several longstanding questions like, “What the heck is the Upside Down anyway?” And it will only have taken nine years to do so!
One of the problems with taking so long to get to the end of a story like Stranger Things is that fans often have two reactions to the wait. One, they give up and don’t care anymore. Or, two, they create such high expectations that there is no way they won’t be disappointed. The Duffer Brothers are hoping for option number three: (most) everyone will be happy.
One way they are attempting to do that is by making each episode of the final season be like a mini-movie. “Chapter One: The Crawl” will be 1 hour and 8 minutes long; “Chapter Two: The Vanishing of…” goes for 54 minutes; “Chapter Three: The Turnbow Trap” will take 1 hour and 6 minutes; and “Chapter Four: Sorcerer” has a runtime of 1 hour and 23 minutes.
Another way the Duffer Brothers say they are trying to satisfy so many fans is by not leaving any questions unanswered when all is said and done.
“They have had their hearts broken by shows that they loved that failed fans in the end,” Stranger Things executive producer Shawn Levy told Variety. “They did not want, and do not want, and refuse to be one of those shows.”
Ross Duffer said he wants to make sure that anyone who watches Stranger Things for the first in the future “doesn’t feel like we dropped a storyline — it all connects.”
Matt then added, “We do every last remaining thing we wanted to do with the Demogorgons and Mind Flayer and Vecna and the Upside Down and Hawkins and these characters. This is a complete story. It’s done.”
So, yes, fans will finally find out what exactly the Upside Down is because, as Ross said in the interview, “Every season would be like, ‘Should we talk about it?’ And we’d go, ‘No, let’s wait.’ And then finally, we’re like, ‘Well, we have to now!’”