Shawn Levy Confirms What We Suspected All Along About The Future Of Stranger Things
"Stranger Things" Season 5 is on the way, and from what has been revealed by the Duffer brothers thus far, the kids are in for a fight with Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower). Season 4 gave the character his big reveal as not only the villain behind everything that has come from the Upside Down thus far but also One, the first child in the program run by Dr. Martin Brenner (Matthew Modine).
By the end of Season 4, the group is coming at the fight from three different locations this time as opposed to facing the threat together in Hawkins. Mike (Finn Wolfhard), Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown), Will (Noah Schnapp), and Jonathan (Charlie Heaton) are in Nevada, and Hopper (David Harbour), Joyce (Winona Ryder), and Murray (Brett Gelman) are deep in Russia.
The rest of the team, who are left on the front lines within the Upside Down in Hawkins, barely makes it with the help of Eleven's powers. Although they incinerate Vecna as much as they can, he does not die, and it leaves Max (Sadie Sink) in a coma and Eddie (Joseph Quinn) dead. Season 5 will be a grand finale of sorts, following one last fight with Vecna and focusing on the original characters from Season 1.
Although this will be the end of the series, the future is brighter than you might think — executive producer Shawn Levy has confirmed what we suspected all along about "Stranger Things."
Shawn Levy and the Duffer brothers are building a Stranger Things universe
In an interview with Variety on the red carpet of the 2022 Emmy Awards, "Stranger Things" executive producer Shawn Levy confirmed that he is in fact working on a larger "Stranger Things" cinematic universe after taking notes from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. "We are building out the STCU, and now that I'm spending time with [chief creative officer of Marvel Entertainment] Kevin Feige, I'm learning a lot about how to manage a universe. So I'm taking those skills and applying them to the STCU," he explained.
This shouldn't be particularly surprising to any fans who have been closely watching "Stranger Things" news recently; there have been talks of a spin-off show and a stage play set in the same universe after the end of Season 5. It will also be interesting to see if the future of "Stranger Things" content ever develops into feature-length films since the Season 4 finale episode is already 2 hours and 19 minutes long. That in itself is longer than most movies, and the Season 5 finale is already planned to be at least two hours long (via "Happy Sad Confused"). Either way, fans are just playing a waiting game now to see what direction the "Stranger Things" universe will head after the end of the highly praised series (via Rotten Tomatoes).