Maya Hawke's Stranger Things Season 5 Update Touches On One Of My Biggest Problems With The Streaming Era
We’re still five shrugging emojis away from Stranger Things Season 5 arriving on Netflix to close out the throwback horror saga, but the creative team has seemingly been running at full cylinders since production kicked off in January 2024 following strike-related delays. Obviously the cast and crew have been held to a minimum with teases, but star Maya Hawke shared a new update that speaks to the overall size of the final run of episodes, and while I should be more excited, it just taps into my biggest issue with many streaming dramas.
Of the many upcoming horror TV shows that are on the way, Stranger Things is almost definitely the most anticipated, with Season 4 having concluded back in July 2022 with a finale that clocked in around 140 minutes. And while appearing on the podcast Podcrushed with hosts Penn Badgley, Nava Kavelin, and Sophie Ansari, the Robin Buckley actress revealed that the new season also apparently won’t be embracing brevity, saying:
We’re making, basically, eight movies. The episodes are very long.
For many fans, that confirmation of extended episodes is probably a pretty exciting update, and I’d be lying if I said I was completely against it. As a horror fan, my number one province is always “More horror!” so I can’t exactly complain about spending as much time as possible in Hawkins and beyond. However, I’m really starting to feel burnt out by every other streaming drama churning out episodes of 60+ minutes without always earning that extended stretch of the audience’s attention span.
TV Episodes Aren't Movies
When I sit down for a TV show (or when I start doing laundry, depending on the -brow level of entertainment I’m digging into), I go into it with the appropriate expectations and understanding. And those details are different from the mindset one has when throwing on a new movie, which connotatively should be a lengthier and more complete experience than anything episodic. And yet several of Stranger Things Season 4 episodes — as well as eps of Fallout, Bridgerton, its spinoff, and more — could technically be considered an indie movie with runtimes spanning beyond 75 minutes.
Things become slightly less episodic when installments cover more ground (and budget) than whatever is in theaters at any given moment. It’s one thing if we’re talking Sherlock, whose feature-length episodes can more or less standalone, but for something so heavily serialized as Stranger Things, it’s a slog knowing that binge-watching three episodes could take up an entire afternoon. Even if it’s an afternoon spent with Joe Kerry’s Steve.
I Want More Normal-Length Episodes, Not A Handful Of Massive Eps
So this probably gets more into production economics and the bizarre way things get factored out in Hollywood, where "pay per episode" funds can be manipulated. But I'm forever befuddled how traditional TV seasons went from 22-24 episodes per to around 6-10, rather than more of a gradual shift downward.
Granted, some series' writers have trouble even justifying stretching stories out for eight episodes, so those definitely shouldn't get padded out even more. But for series like Stranger Things with a wide variety of plotlines to keep up with, I'm never sure why the instinct is always to force more details into a limited number of episodes rather than just expanding that total. It can't be due to any projections about fan expectations, since viewers would go apeshit if the Duffer brothers revealed Season 5 will be 16 episodes instead of 8.
Episodes Might Come Faster If They Were Shorter
Even though Netflix will likely never fall into the broadcast network habits of airing series while future episodes are still filming, I can't help but feel like the massive production lengths wouldn't feel quite so gigantic if the eps being filmed weren't so large themselves. Which would theoretically make the show more viable for evenly split seasons, as opposed to Season 4 releasing seven episodes initially followed by the final two.
Maya Hawke touched upon the writing process as well in her update, saying this about the Duffers and their team:
They have an amazing team of writers, but they’re very involved. They write a lot and they are very intense and serious about the quality of the continued writing, and so it takes a long time to write each season, and a long time to shoot them.
I'm not claiming it would 100% be easier to write out shorter eps, especially for the Duffers, who reportedly penned over 800 pages of scripts for the fourth season. But having predetermined guidelines like "time" has obviously factored into successful TV storytelling for as long as the medium has been around, so it's not surprising to hear that bypassing that option leads to extended writing and filming sessions.
Maya Hawke does sound like she's enjoying herself and is grateful to be filming the final episodes, so I guess I shouldn't gripe about how long their are if the end result is happiness and positivity and the all-out destruction of the Upside-Down and Vecna.
We don't know just yet when Stranger Things will be popping back onto Netflix with Season 5, but we know it's coming in 2025. In the meantime, check out some of Netflix's other great horror TV shows while also keeping current with everything else on the 2024 premiere schedule.
