Stranger Things 4 Footage Confirms 2022 Release Date

While the sneak peek teaser confirms a 2022 release date, it does not let any plot details slip from the upcoming fourth season. Fans already know David Harbour’s Hopper will return as a prisoner in Russia after seemingly dying in the third season finale. A previous teaser for the new season also teased the return of Matthew Modine’s Dr. Martin Brenner, but he’s nowhere to be found in the new footage. “I mean, it’s bigger, that’s the first thing,” Harbour said of “Stranger Things 4” in a Collider interview earlier this year. “In scope, in scale, even in the idea that we’re not in Hawkins anymore. We, locale-wise, we’re bigger. We’re introducing new stuff, but we’re also tightening and wrapping up in a certain direction to make it have a clear, clean specific, and definite ending at some point, which I can’t really talk about.”

“Stranger Things” creators Matt and Ross Duffer already confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter last summer that the show’s fourth season would not be the end of the road. As Ross explained, “Season four won’t be the end. We know what the end is, and we know when it is. [The pandemic] has given us time to look ahead, figure out what is best for the show. Starting to fill that out gave us a better idea of how long we need to tell that story.” Harbour previously told Total Film magazine that his character’s resurrection arc in “Stranger Things 4” will be similar to Gandalf’s in the “Lord of the Rings” franchise. “I’ve had those discussions with [the Duffer brothers] from the very first season,” Harbour said. “We were always interested in that idea of the Gandalf resurrection — Gandalf the Grey who fights the Balrog and then becomes Gandalf the White. It’s the idea of the resurrection of the character. And mythologically, Hopper, in a sense, had to change. I mean, you couldn’t go on the way he was going on. He has to resurrect in some way.” Watch the “Stranger Things 4” sneak peek in the video below.