With the pandemic likely having delayed the release of Stranger Things Season 4 until sometime in 2022, fans of the franchise have had, and will have, plenty of time to speculate about what might be coming in the show’s fourth and even fifth seasons. One of best places to look for clues is the Duffer brothers’ original plan – the series bible called Montauk.
In the original material that they used to pitch their ideas, Montauk was only going to be a single season with a sequel potentially coming at some point. However, the huge success that the series found as Stranger Things led to its expansion into a multiple season project. Clearly, some things have changed from the show’s original plans, but Montauk is still a good place to look for signs of things to come.
After Season 1, the Duffer brothers said that they expected to end Stranger Things with its fourth season. However, more recently, they have said that Season 4 will not be the show’s conclusion. They know how they want the series to end, and it will take at least one more season to wrap things up. That ending just might be foreshadowed in the Montauk bible.
In the Duffer brothers’ original plan, their sequel was going to be set ten years after Will was rescued from the Upside Down in Season 1. In this scenario, most of the children in the cast have grown up and moved away, but they are all forced to return after “the re-emergence of horror” in their hometown. Unlike in the original plan, the creatures from the Upside Down never really left after Stranger Things Season 1, but it is possible that some parts of that “sequel” could still be a viable course for the show's future seasons.
First, Stranger Things could start using some larger time jumps. So far, the Duffer brothers have set approximately one year between each season of the show. Season 1 was set during late fall to early winter of 1983, Season 2 was set in 1984 around Halloween and Season 3 was in the summer of 1985. Due to pandemic-related delays, however, many people have speculated that Season 4 will have a more significant time jump than the show has used in the past. The writers must also factor in that their cast is growing up fast, so a larger time jump is also a good option from a practical perspective.
If a slightly larger time jump is in order for Season 4, a similar time jump could be in order for Season 5 as well. It is a conceivable way that the Duffer brothers could get to that ten-year span from the first season to the last, just like they originally planned.
The second way that the ideas from the Montauk bible could still be used is the need for a reunion. In fact, this process has, seemingly, already started. At the end of Season 3, Joyce Byers moved away from Hawkins with Will, Jonathan and Eleven, and as a Season 4 teaser has already confirmed, Hopper is somewhere in a Russian prison camp. Given the material in the bible, it’s quite possible that Season 4 could continue that process where more and more people move away to grow up and explore the world. Then, when everyone has left Hawkins and that the ten-year-mark rolls around, that is when Season 5 might take place. All of the kids, now grow up, would have to come back to finish what they started and finally defeat the evil in the Upside Down. With the audience having watched these characters, and actors, grow up on screen, it'd be a fitting end to the series.
Created by the Duffer Brothers, Stranger Things stars Winona Ryder, Millie Bobby Brown, David Harbour, Finn Wolfhard, Gaten Matarazzo, Caleb McLaughlin, Noah Schnapp, Natalia Dyer, Charlie Heaton, Joe Keery, Priah Ferguson, Cary Elwes, Jake Busey, Maya Thurman-Hawke and Levon Thurman-Hawke. Season 4 has yet to receive a release date.