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Hot on the heels of the Duffer Brothers breaking the ice on Stranger Things season five runtimes, the creators/showrunners shed light on the emotional journey they had while preparing and filming the instalment for Netflix.

Nearly a month ahead of the three-part release, Matt and Ross Duffer spoke with Variety in an exclusive interview, revealing that the final episode will be “around two hours long.”

According to the brothers, following the success of the first season, they were so exhausted that they recall telling media spokespersons that Stranger Things would be “four and done.” But as soon as they were onto making the third, it dawned upon them that they needed five to finish what they started.

So, when the fifth and final instalment of Stranger Things picks up, all the main characters from the show will be back in Hawkins, “living under military quarantine.” It will kick-start with an 18-month time jump from the fourth season finale when Vecna dissolved the boundary of the real and shadow realm dimension by cracking open the Upside Down. While most episodes in the upcoming season will be around an hour, episode four will run for 83 minutes, and the finale will clock in at the longest.

However, constructing the series finale was no walk in the park. Kate Trefry, one of Stranger Things’ lead writers, recalls, “We went back over and over and over and over, dozens of times. They would start writing it, they’d come back. We’d blow it up and we’d just rinse and repeat.” To find inspiration, the Duffers went through the series finales of Six Feet Under, Friday Night Lights, and The Sopranos. They acknowledged the latter’s cut-to-black conclusion was “controversial,” but in time, it has become widely hailed.

“The best ones were very true to themselves. The shows that are trying to be super clever – I think that’s where it can go wrong really quickly,” Ross Duffer explained. But the good thing about the Stranger Things finale, according to Matt Duffer, is that they “roughly” knew what the concluding scene would be for years.

“It wasn’t something we had a strain to come up with,” he continued. Sure, there were bits and pieces that they had to debate and discuss for weeks. However, they already knew the crux of the ending. But now that it has come to an end for them, they seem satisfied with the ultimate result. “We’re really happy with the way it ended,” Matt Duffer said. But he acknowledges that it could indeed conjure mixed opinions, as is the case with most legacy shows.

“We do every last remaining thing we wanted to do with the Demogorgons and Mind Flayer and Vecna and the Upside Down and Hawkins and these characters,” he continues, saying, “This is a complete story. It’s done.” Although they didn’t go into lengthy discussions about their future at Paramount and whether Netflix had an equally lucrative counteroffer, they revealed what attracted them the most about the deal.

“The biggest draw to us was just to be able to do something theatrical, which is not something Netflix does,” Matt Duffer said. While KPop Demon Hunters’ sing-along theatrical release and the upcoming IMAX release of Greta Gerwig’s Narnia gave them a little hope about the Stranger Things finale going to the theatres, Bela Bajaria, the head of global TV at Netflix, had a different perspective.

“A lot of people – a lot, a lot, a lot of people – have watched Stranger Things on Netflix. It has not suffered from a lack of conversation, or community, or sharing, or fandom. I think releasing it on Netflix is giving the fans what they want,” she says.

The creators still have two new shows from Upside Down Pictures that are set to premiere in the first half of 2026: The Boroughs and Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen. So, it’s not exactly a goodbye yet. However, it soon would be for Stranger Things, which will end with a three-part finale for its fifth and final season, with the first part arriving on November 26th, part two on December 25th, and the finale on December 31st.