STRANGER THINGS. (L to R) Jamie Campbell Bower as Peter Ballard and Millie Bobby Brown as Eleven in … [+]

Courtesy of Netflix

Stranger Things season 5 seems poised to be Netflix’s highest-viewed English language show of all time, and it might even be able to take the overall crown from Squid Game. But when is it actually arriving? There’s some news about the Stranger Things season 5 release date that is…less than encouraging.

It’s just been announced that Stranger Things season 5 has wrapped filming, according to its cast. Good news, sure, but when you look into just how long post-production takes on the show, that means the release date is still extremely far off, and the gap between seasons 4 and 5 will be pretty enormous by the end.

After a COVID delay, Stranger Things season 4 wrapped in August of 2021.
Stranger Things season 4 aired in May of 2022, eight months later. It also did not even finish post-production on its final two episodes at that point, which were not out until July.
So if filming is wrapped now, eight months after that would be an August 2025 release date for season 5. But given that this is the show’s biggest season ever and its grand finale, eight months for post-production feels generous. Say, ten months would be October 2025.

Stranger Things

Netflix

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The end result is going to be over three years between seasons and closer to three and a half, most likely. Even for Netflix, used to big gaps between seasons, this is really stretching the bounds of acceptability, and it’s hard to believe that this is a world where we used to get a new season of Game of Thrones every year.

But for Netflix’s biggest series, as annoying as this is, there are not exactly mountains of evidence that this matters for its biggest series. It’s easy to imagine that some series that will have the service’s biggest gaps like Wednesday and Stranger Things, are still going to put up incredible numbers. You could almost argue the delay helps in some ways, as it builds anticipation. Still, as a viewer, I hate it, and so do many others, even if yes in the end we will still watch.

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Only very, very few shows these days are able to get out of the 18 month to two year gap between seasons, which stretches to 3+ when things go really badly. The Bear puts out a new season on the dot every year. Slow Horses practically does every 8-9 months or so with back-to-back-to-back filming and instant renewals. But they are the exception now, not the rule. Too bad for us who wished Stranger Things came back two years ago.