The return of Stranger Things is just around to release, with the first half of the beloved series’ fourth season set to arrive on Netflix on May 27.

With the series-changing conclusion of season 3, with Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) losing her powers and moving away from Hawkins with the Byers all while Hopper (David Harbour) is taken prisoner by the Russians, there are a lot of moving pieces across three different locations and multiple points in time that has had fans theorizing ever since the finale back in 2019.

Advertisement

Just ahead of the season 4 arrival to the streaming service, the world premiere of the first episode of the upcoming season was held on Saturday with members of the media in attendance.

While the reviews aren’t set to release until May 23, those who were in attendance are allowed to give their first reactions to the episode on social media, with most of the reactions coming out of the event praising the episodes, setting up what could be the best season of the series let.

What is going to happen in season 4?

We should make sure you’ve watched the entire season 3 finale because there was an extra mid-credits scene that sets up the next season. We see the Russians are up to no good again despite Starcourt Mall now gone. Unfortunately, one of their prisoners is taken to be eaten by the new Demogorgon that they’ve created.

Plus, they mention that they have an American prisoner locked up, which has since been revealed to be Hopper.

This also means that the fight for Hawkins still isn’t over yet and that the group will likely reunite to get the Russians and their crazy experiments out of town for good.

How will season 4 be different from the rest?

The Stranger Things showrunners, Matt and Ross Duffer, opened up about the expanded storylines for this upcoming season during Deadline’s Contenders Television panel on April 10.

“We kind of jokingly call it our Game of Thrones season because it’s so spread out, so I think that’s what’s unique or most unique about the season,” Matt Duffer said.

“Joyce and [the] Byers family have left at the end of Season 3,” he continued. “They are in California – we’ve always wanted to have that like ‘E.T’.-Esque suburb aesthetic, which we finally got to do this year in the desert; and then we have Hopper in Russia, and then of course we have a group remaining in Hawkins. So we have these three storylines, are all connected and kind of interwoven together, but it’s just very different tones.”

The brothers also promised that season 4 will answer a lot of questions, including the background on all of the supernatural and mythological ongoings in Hawkins: “Back when we did Season 1, Netflix just kept going ‘Can you explain all this mythology to us?” Ross Duffer shared. “So we wrote this giant 20-page document, which talked about everything in terms of what was going on and what exactly the Upside Down was. And then each season we’re just sort of peeling back the layers of that onion, so to speak. But this season, we really wanted to really get into it and [revealing] some of those answers. But to do that properly, we needed time, so it just became bigger and bigger.”