Warning: The following contains spoilers for the seventh episode of Stranger Things Season 4.
After rolling out more than three and a half seasons of Stranger Things, the Netflix series’ creators Matt and Ross Duffer — AKA the Duffer Brothers — know better than to speculate about how Season 4B will be received. “I’ve stopped trying to predict how people are going to react,” Matt tells TVLine, “because you never know.”
What he and his sibling can be sure of, however, is that they’ve jam-packed those last two supersized episodes (which drop Friday, July 1). Part 2 “has a little bit of everything,” says Matt. “It’s extremely emotional while also having the most action and spectacle we’ve ever had.”
Chiming in, Ross asks how Part 2 was described by Eddie’s portrayer. Ah, yes, says Matt, remembering. “Joe Quinn is very eloquent. He’s such a smart kid. He called it a mad symphony of chaos. I’ll borrow that. That’s what it is, especially the final episode.”
As viewers are well aware, Season 4 split up our heroes into three locales: good ol’ Hawkins… California (where Eleven had moved with the Byerses)… and Russia (where Hopper was being held prisoner by the KGB). As Part 1 concluded, the group was even more splintered: Eleven was in the Nevada desert, reluctantly working with her “Papa” to regain her powers, Jonathan, Mike, Will and Argyle were traveling there from Salt Lake City (where they’d consulted with hacker extraordinaire Suzie), Joyce, Hopper and Murray were trying to escape ”the motherland,” and Nancy had been entranced and trapped in the Upside Down by Vecna.
“We’ve been cross-cutting between these different worlds all season,” notes Ross, “but the cross-cutting just gets really rapid-fire in the finale as we’re bouncing from one world to the next.”
“But,” interjects Matt, “it’s not wall-to-wall action. That’s what I like about being able to do something long-form. The finale does very much feel like a blockbuster spectacle, but there’s also a lot of time spent dealing with our characters. Hopefully, it’s satisfying for people.”