Stranger Things (season 4)

As with seasons past, planning for the fourth season of Stranger Things began before the preceding season's release. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly that occurred shortly after the third season's release, series' creators Matt and Ross Duffer revealed the series' creative team had already met on several occasions to discuss the show's future.[18] On September 30, 2019, Netflix announced it had signed the Duffer Brothers for a new multi-year television and film deal that was reportedly worth nine figures.[2][3][4][5] To coincide with the production deal announcement, Netflix also announced the renewal of Stranger Things for a fourth season by releasing a brief, minute-long teaser on YouTube.[2][4][5][19] The teaser, which shows a ticking grandfather clock in the Upside Down, ends with the tagline "We're not in Hawkins anymore", which led many news outlets to speculate the show's setting would be relocated to Russia.[2][4][5][19]

Commenting on the previous season's cliffhanger ending, Ross Duffer divulged the process of connecting story arcs between seasons:

We don't want to write ourselves in a corner so we try to have these early discussions with the writers just to make sure that we're setting ourselves up to go in the right direction. We don't know a lot, but we do know a lot of the big broad strokes. At the end of season two, we knew about Billy. We knew that the Russians were going to come in. We didn't know the mall and stuff, but again, we know these big broad strokes. That's sort of where we are in season four. We have the big broad strokes. It's just now about filling in those lines in the details. We're pretty excited about where it's potentially going to go. Again, like we said, it's going to feel very different than this season. But I think that's the right thing to do and I think it'll be exciting.[18]

Matt Duffer indicated one of the plot's "broad strokes" is the main center of action being moved out of Hawkins, Indiana, for the majority of the season, a series first.[18] He also indicated the several loose ends left by the ending of season three, such as Hopper's perceived death and Eleven being adopted by Will's mother and relocating with her new family out of state, will all be explored sometime during the fourth season.[18]

On November 6, 2019, in celebration of Stranger Things Day, the official social media accounts of the show's writing room revealed the title of the fourth season's first episode ("Chapter One: The Hellfire Club") and that it was written by the Duffer Brothers.[16][17] On June 18, 2020, the Duffer Brothers announced via Twitter that season four will consist of nine episodes.[20]

By November 1, 2019, casting had begun to add four new male characters to the fourth season's line-up, with three of the roles being teenagers and one of them being an adult.[21][22] The teenaged roles were characterized as ranging "from a metalhead to an entitled jock to a character that sounds an awful lot like the twin of Fast Times at Ridgemont High stoner Jeff Spicoli", while the adult character was tied to the Russian storyline introduced during the third season.[21]

On December 3, 2019, it was confirmed by the show's writers' room that Maya Hawke's character Robin would be returning for the fourth season.[7] On February 14, 2020, Netflix confirmed David Harbour would return as Jim Hopper and that Tom Wlaschiha had been cast as a Russian malefactor.[6][11] Priah Ferguson's promotion to series regular for the fourth season was confirmed in February 2020.[8] That March, Brett Gelman's promotion to series regular was also confirmed.[9] On October 27, 2020, it was reported that Maya Hawke's brother, Levon Thurman-Hawke, was cast in an undisclosed role.[23] On November 20, 2020, Jamie Campbell Bower, Eduardo Franco, and Joseph Quinn were cast as series regulars while Sherman Augustus, Mason Dye, Nikola Djuricko and Robert Englund joined the cast in recurring roles for the fourth season.[10]

Filming for the fourth season began in February 2020 in Vilnius, Lithuania, at the recently decommissioned Lukiškės Prison.[24][25] After production wrapped in Lithuania, filming resumed in the United States in and around the Atlanta metro area, the primary production location of previous seasons.[26][27] A significant portion of filming will also occur at Albuquerque Studios in New Mexico, which Netflix acquired in 2018.[28] In February 2020, it was announced in a joint statement from the Duffer Brothers and Netflix that production had officially begun on the fourth season.[6] However, after 2 weeks of filming and owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, all Netflix productions, including Stranger Things, were halted on March 16, 2020.[29] After several delays, filming finally resumed on September 28, 2020 in Georgia.[30]

On October 1, 2020, Natalia Dyer, Sadie Sink, and Gaten Matarazzo were all spotted filming scenes at the shared Hawkins Middle School and Hawkins High School set.[31] The three were also spotted filming scenes at the set for Dustin's house the following day.[32] On October 20, 2020, Matarazzo, Sink, Joe Keery, Maya Hawke and Levon Thurman-Hawke were spotted filming scenes at the Family Video Store/Hawkins Arcade set location. The set locations have varied from Atlanta to Lithuania. The various social media accounts for the show have also posted two photographs from different sets: A poster for a pep rally hanging in a hallway at Hawkins High, and a clapperboard in front of a grandfather clock in the Upside Down, a scene that was first depicted in the season's initial teaser trailer. On January 27, 2021, Jamie Campbell Bower and Matthew Modine were spotted filming scenes in Atlanta, Georgia.