That March, Brett Gelman's promotion to series regular was also confirmed. Priah Ferguson's promotion to series regular for the fourth season was confirmed in February 2020. On February 14, 2020, Netflix confirmed David Harbour would return as Jim Hopper and that Tom Wlaschiha had been cast as a Russian malefactor. 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. 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. Casting īy November 1, 2019, casting had begun to add four new male characters to the fourth season's lineup, with three of the roles being teenagers and one of them being an adult. 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 Joyce Byers and relocating with her new family out of state, will all be explored sometime during the fourth season. 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. But I think that's the right thing to do and I think it'll be exciting. Again, like we said, it's going to feel very different than this season. We're pretty excited about where it's potentially going to go. It's just now about filling in those lines in the details. That's sort of where we are in season four. We didn't know the mall and stuff, but again, we know these big broad strokes. We knew that the Russians were going to come in. At the end of season two, we knew about Billy.
We don't know a lot, but we do know a lot of the big broad strokes. 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. Writing Ĭommenting on the previous season's ending, Ross Duffer divulged the process of connecting story arcs between seasons: 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. 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. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly that ran 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. "Chapter Seven: The Massacre at Hawkins Lab"Īs with seasons past, planning for the fourth season of Stranger Things began before the preceding season's release. "Chapter Three: The Monster and the Superhero"