As a huge TV fan, I’m a little worried that big holiday events like the Thanksgiving parade, NFL games, and New Year’s Eve might lose viewers this year. Netflix is releasing the final season of *Stranger Things* in three parts, timed around the holidays, and it’s a big deal. Honestly, splitting it up seemed almost unavoidable – the season is massive! Maya Hawke even said they were basically filming eight movies worth of content. Plus, the rumors are that each part will be at least 90 minutes long, which, while exciting, felt a bit daunting to me. I wasn’t completely thrilled about the idea of super-long installments, and I’m a little concerned it’ll pull people away from those traditional holiday broadcasts.
Thankfully, at least for yours truly, co-creator Ross Duffer took to Instagram to not only address those runtime reports, but also to straight up debunk them. It wasn’t an entire top-to-bottom debunking, mind you, as he only pulled back the curtain on Volume 1’s four episodes. Still, it was enough to spark some relief for me and other time-restrained fans with Netflix subscriptions.
Here’s the breakdown for the first rollout:
- Chapter One: The Crawl – 68 minutes
- Chapter Two: The Vanishing Of… – 54 minutes
- Chapter Three: The Turnbow Trap – 66 minutes
- Chapter Four: Sorcerer – 83 minutes
- TOTAL VOLUME ONE RUNTIME: 4 hours, 31 minutes (271 minutes)
While the episode lengths are still quite long – maybe even excessive for most shows – I was just relieved after the Duffer Brothers shared the news. I’ve been a big *Stranger Things* fan since I saw early previews before Season 1 even came out, so I’m much more enthusiastic than some others who are losing excitement after waiting three years for the final season.
The creators of the show, the Duffer brothers, prefer not to do television seasons every year, and their explanation for this caused a lot of debate online. However, it does explain why they weren’t in a rush to release new episodes. While the recent writers’ strike definitely caused a delay, issues with the actors aging beyond their characters would have been a problem even without the strike.
Some people think the actors aged noticeably because it takes a long time to make each season, often due to episodes running longer than usual. However, the creators, the Duffer brothers, could simply make more episodes if they wanted to speed things up.
There’s no need to speculate anymore! We finally know the length of the first part of *Stranger Things*’ final season, and I’m sure many of us will be thankful this Thanksgiving that those exaggerated rumors turned out to be false.
Ross Duffer shared a post on Instagram that got a lot of positive reactions, and I’m choosing to focus on all the supportive comments.
A post shared by Ross Duffer (@rossduffer)
A photo posted by on
The creators, the Duffer brothers, have said that episodes four and eight are the longest of the season. This means the other episodes – five, six, and seven – will all be shorter than 83 minutes. Unless there are major, unexpected changes during final editing, none of the episodes in the final season will be over 90 minutes long, which is a good length for each installment.
The first four episodes of *Stranger Things* Season 5 will be available on Netflix starting November 27, 2025.
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2025-10-14 17:41