With the release of the new season of Stranger Things happening this Friday, will the series continue?

Talk from directors and cast speak of a possible ending to the series after the 5th season with the total course of the story being planned to end.

The fourth season of ST, releasing on Friday, continues six months after the bloody Season 3 Finale at the Battle of Star Court Mall. 

The Days called it “a stunningly dark return for unparalleled horror.” in a 4-star review, which Alex O’Connell wrote. The new series of Netflix’s blockbuster Stranger Things seems to be recovering from what was interrupted in 2019, astonishing fans and impressing critics. American supernatural cult TV drama stars are Winona Ryder, Finn Wolfhard, and British actress Millie Bobby Brown.

The Independent offered the identical four-star score, saying the new season is “formulaic, but who’s complaining when the formula is that fabulous?” Amanda Whiting wrote; “Some shows evolve over their long runs; others clutch to what made them hits within the first place. Stranger Things flashy fourth season mostly does the latter, churning through Eighties pop-cultural references at a pace that makes me worry there will be nothing within the tank for its final, fifth chapter.”

However, some critics noted the length of the new series. It lasts about 13 hours over nine episodes, and also the finale lasts two and a half hours.

“The latest series of Netflix’s hit sci-fi horror homages to the 80s is admittedly long, almost overconfident, but also fascinating,” wrote Chris Bennion in a four-star review from The Telegraph.

The show first appeared in 2016 and by season four, Brown’s Eleven aka Jane Hopper has moved from Hawkins, Indiana, to California with Will Byers (played by Noah Schnapp ) and his mum Joyce (Ryder). Back in Hawkins, the fate of the town, it seems, rests on the mystery solving gang getting back together to prevent the most recent murderous monstrous charade.

Empire offered yet another set of 4 stars, with the magazine’s critic Sophie Butcher labeling it the “most grownup” and “most sinister Stranger Things season yet”. She suggested “we’re verging on storyline overload” which, despite the length, “leaves little time for true character development”. “It may have more characters than it knows what to do with, but the darkest season of Stranger Things still knows the way to send a tremor down your spine,” she said.

According to Caroline Franke from Variety, season four depicts the show as “its biggest, broadest and most emblematic of Netflix’s evolution”. The “increasingly ambitious” latest series of Netflix’s “first real behemoth of a popular culture hit”, she points out, arrives at a time when the streaming giant “hit its first real roadblock”, after a rough patch in subscriber numbers was reported last month. She also states that “Stranger Things is at its strongest when it goes back to Hawkins and what it does best”. The show blends perfectly to “where the fantastical and therefore the commonplace bleed into one another,” Amy Charles of BBC Culture also decided that the new series was “worth the wait”.

Stranger Things Season 4 Volume 1 will be available on Netflix starting Friday, May 27, followed by Volume 2 on July 1.