‘Stranger Things’ Season 5: Ross Duffer Reveals Episode Runtimes for Volume 1

Ross Duffer, the co-creator of Stranger Things, has finally given fans some clarity on how long the episodes of the show’s final season will be.

For months, rumors suggested that every episode of Season 5 would be as long as a movie. Duffer has now cleared that up by revealing the real runtimes for the first four episodes in a video posted to his Instagram.

According to Duffer, the first episode, The Crawl, will run for one hour and eight minutes. The second episode, The Vanishing of _____, will last 54 minutes. The third, The Turnbow Trap, clocks in at one hour and six minutes, and the fourth, Sorcerer, runs for one hour and twenty-three minutes.

• Episode 1 – 1 hour & 8 minutes
• Episode 2 – 54 minutes
• Episode 3 – 1 hour & 6 minutes
• Episode 4 – 1 hour & 23 minutes

He also gave fans a few teasers about what to expect. Duffer described The Crawl as his “favorite” and “most eventful first episode since Season 1.” He teased that episode two features “the craziest cold open we’ve ever done. One of the sequences we’re most proud of this season.”

As for The Turnbow Trap, Duffer called it “the most classic Stranger Things-y episode of the season,” and revealed that filmmaker Frank Darabont came out of retirement to direct it. Episode four, Sorcerer, he described as “MASSIVE — as big as any finale we’ve ever done, and the most logistically insane shoot of our lives.”

The fifth and final season of Stranger Things will include eight episodes in total. It’s set to arrive on Netflix in three parts, Volume 1 on November 26, Volume 2 on December 25, and the final episode on December 31. The show will once again be produced by the Duffer Brothers, along with Shawn Levy and Dan Cohen.

Most of the core cast will return, including Winona Ryder, David Harbour, Millie Bobby Brown, Finn Wolfhard, Gaten Matarazzo, Caleb McLaughlin, Noah Schnapp, Sadie Sink, Natalia Dyer, Charlie Heaton, Joe Keery, Maya Hawke, Priah Ferguson, Brett Gelman, and Jamie Campbell Bower. Amybeth McNulty, who appeared briefly in the last season, has been promoted to the main cast, and Terminator star Linda Hamilton joins as a newcomer.

The story picks up in the fall of 1987, a year after the events of Season 4. The group is back in Hawkins, determined to find and destroy Vecna after the rifts opened across town. Their mission becomes even more dangerous when the military arrives and starts hunting Eleven. With the anniversary of Will Byers’ disappearance approaching, the team faces one final, deadly fight that could decide the fate of Hawkins once and for all.

Stranger Things 5 marks the end of one of Netflix’s biggest series, and fans have been eagerly waiting to see how the story wraps up. The Duffers have promised that this final season will be their most ambitious yet, both in story and scale.

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