At this point it seems pretty obvious that Stranger Things will return in the latter half of 2025, which would make it over three years since season 4 aired. That’s old news at this point, and while the wait is interminable, Netflix may be doing something else that most fans hate about new releases of seasons of popular shows, splitting it up.
According to reporting from What’s On Netflix, their sources have indicated that season 5 of Stranger Things will be split up into two parts. Season 4 of course had a seven and two episode split, one of the first Netflix shows that started chopping up its seasons, but while that was supposedly due to VFX work needing more time, now Netflix has been doing it for what appears to be the sole reason of keeping people subscribed for two months instead of one.
The report says that Stranger Things may end up being split between an October and November release, one month apart, but we don’t know if that’s 4 and 4 or maybe 6 and 2 like last season. There are other debates about its exact release date, but most of those center on November. Netflix has declined to comment about any of this.
I’m not sure I 100% buy that this is happening. It seems likely to happen, but we have also seen some shows either avoid being split or returning to a binge model after splitting previously. One example would be The Lincoln Lawyer going from a split model back to all episodes airing day one in its last season. The return of huge Netflix shows like The Night Agent and Squid Game have not been split into halves. I do believe Netflix may be scaling back on this practice overall, as I wonder if the drop-off in viewership between halves may not be offsetting this idea that people will subscribe for an extra month. And Netflix really wants people to finish its shows as a very important metric for them.
Stranger Things and also Wednesday season 2 will be a big test of this. In that case, I would venture that Wednesday might not be split, but Stranger Things? They may do what the last season did in the form of airing “normal” episodes first, then delaying what is no doubt going to be a blockbuster movie-level finale for the entire series, making it sort of its own standalone event. So even if Netflix is moving back to a binge-only model, Stranger Things season 5 may be an exception. I do think the service overall, however, is trending back toward the way things used to be. I hope this doesn’t happen with Stranger Things, and it may not, but it does seem likely.
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