The Stranger Things writers' room has officially announced that Season 5 will consist of eight episodes.

The Stranger Things writers' Twitter account, @strangerwriters, posted a photo of a whiteboard with eight columns, each labeled as an episode. The photo is captioned "Grid stage."

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Season 1 and 3 of Stranger Things also had eight episodes, and this isn't the only thing about the new season that will bear similarities to the earlier ones. Stranger Things co-creator Matt Duffer explained that Season 5's episodes will have more conventional runtimes, like Season 1. "I don't think the run times will be as extreme in Season 5," he said, alluding to Season 4, where one episode had a run time of 2 hours and 30 minutes. "We're trying to return to the simplicity of the structure in season one," he explained, "with bigger scale and scope. Except for the finale, which I'm expecting will be pretty massive."

Stranger Things Will Return to What Made It a Hit

The Duffer Brothers are also sticking to the simplicity of Stranger Things' first season by (probably) not adding any new characters. "We're doing our best to resist [adding new characters] for Season 5," Duffer explained. "We're trying not to do that so we can focus on the OG characters. I guess."

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While the official release date for Season 5 of Stranger Things is still a mystery, the writers' room announced that they were back in session in early August. And according to actor David Harbour, who plays Jim Hopper on Stranger Things, the new episodes will likely come out in mid-2024. "based on [the show's] track record." In July, Harbour hypothesized, "I think we'll [shoot] next year," adding "They're finishing writing it this year, and they need to prep and stuff, so hopefully it'll be this year."

The highly anticipated season of Stranger Things will likely see high viewership numbers when it is released, as Season 4 broke Nielsen streaming records. The week after it was released, the season saw 7.2 billion minutes viewed. This made it the first show to cross the weekly 6 billion minute mark, ahead of Tiger King and Ozark, which only managed to surpass 5 billion.

Season 5 of Stranger Things doesn't have an official release date just yet, but Seasons 1 through 4 are currently available to stream on Netflix.

Source: Twitter