Some disappointing news about ‘Stranger Things’ season 5 release date

Stranger Things Season 5 looks set to become Netflix’s most-watched English-language show of all time, and it may even be able to take the overall crown from Squid Game. But when will it actually arrive? There’s some news about the Stranger Things Season 5 release date that’s… less than encouraging.

It has just been announced Stranger Things season 5 has finished filmingaccording to its cast. Great news, of course, but when you look closely at how long post-production is taking on the show, it means that the release date is still extremely far away, and the gap between seasons 4 and 5 will be quite huge by the end.

• After a COVID delay, Stranger Things Season 4 concluded in August 2021.
• Stranger Things Season 4 aired in May 2022, eight months later. It also didn’t even finish post-production on the final two episodes at the time, which didn’t come out until July.
• So if filming is done now, eight months after that would be an August 2025 release date for Season 5. But given that this is the show’s biggest season ever and its grand finale, eight months for post-production feels generous. Let’s say ten months would be October 2025.

The end result is going to be over three years between seasons and closer to three and a half, most likely. Even for Netflix, which is used to big gaps between seasons, this is really stretching the limits of acceptance, and it’s hard to believe that this is a world where we used to get a new season of Game of Thrones every year.

But for Netflix’s biggest series, as annoying as it is, there aren’t exactly mountains of evidence that this matters to its biggest series. It’s easy to imagine that some series that will have the service’s biggest gaps, such as Wednesday and Stranger Things, are still going to deliver incredible numbers. You can almost argue for the delay helps in some ways as it builds anticipation. Still, as a viewer I hate it and so do many others, although yes in the end we will still see.

Only very, very few shows these days are able to pull off the 18-month to two-year gap between seasons, which stretches to 3+ when things are going really bad. The Bear releases a new season on the dot every year. Slow Horses does it almost every 8-9 months or so with back-to-back-to-back movies and instant renewals. But they are the exception now, not the rule. Too bad for those of us who wanted Stranger Things to come back two years ago.

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