Rumors about the length of “Stranger Things” season 5 have been greatly exaggerated.
Ross Duffer, who co-created the Netflix juggernaut with his brother Matt Duffer, revealed the length of the first four episodes of the series’ final season on his Instagram account on Monday. The Season 5 premiere, “The Crawl,” will last one hour and 8 minutes; Episode 2 (the title of which has not yet been fully revealed) will last 54 minutes; Episode 3, “The Turnbow Trap,” will last one hour and 6 minutes; and episode 4, “Sorcerer,” will last one hour and 23 minutes.
The post refutes viral social media posts that claimed each episode of Season 5 would be at least 90 minutes long, as well as an Oct. 6 Puck News report that said episodes “ran anywhere from 90 minutes to two hours.”
After airing almost entirely at an hour or less per episode since the series premiered in 2016, Season 4 of “Stranger Things” expanded considerably: All but one episode lasted more than 70 minutes, and the final three episodes were all feature-length, with the finale lasting two hours and 22 minutes.
Netflix is splitting the show’s fifth season into three separate releases: The first four episodes will premiere on Nov. 26, over the Thanksgiving holiday, with “Sorcerer” serving as the midseason finale. The next three episodes will air on Christmas and the finale, “The Rightside Up,” will air on New Year’s Eve. Featuring the Duffer Brothers, the episodes were directed by executive producer Shawn Levy and filmmaker Frank Darabont (“The Shawshank Redemption”). The full cast returns for the final season, including Winona Ryder, David Harbour, Millie Bobby Brown, Finn Wolfhard, Gaten Matarazzo, Caleb McLaughlin, Noah Schnapp, Sadie Sink, Natalia Dyer, Charlie Heaton, Joe Keery and Maya Hawke.
