Netflix tweeted Saturday that Stranger Things 4 will premiere in the summer of 2022. While not a precise release date, it’s at least something for fans of Netflix’s flagship supernatural series, who have waited through months of delays and a seemingly endless parade of mysterious teasers.
A new teaser dropped Saturday as well, showing Eleven in California, adjusting to her new life and school. She writes in a letter to Mike that everything is great (even though we see her classmates being mean to her), and says she can’t wait for spring break. But of course, our girl can’t have anything nice last for too long; after a fade to black, we get some eerie music under shots of a roller rink and Eleven looking afraid, along with helicopters, explosions, and Joyce recoiling from a creepy looking doll.
We also got a look at the titles for all nine of the season 4 episodes for the first time. They will be called:
The Hellfire Club, Vecna’s Curse, The Monster and The Superhero, Dear Billy, The Nina Project, The Dive, The Massacre At Hawkins Lab, Papa, and The Piggyback.
These do not sound like episodes where a lot of good times will be had by our heroine and her crew. And Papa is what Eleven called Dr. Martin Brenner (Matthew Modine), whose return was signaled in an earlier season 4 teaser where we heard his voice.
The new announcements come as part of Netflix’s celebration of “Stranger Things Day,” which is meant to “commemorate” the in-universe date of November 6th, 1983 — the day that Will Byers (Noah Schnapp) first disappeared into the dark Upside-Down dimension in the first season of Stranger Things. (If one was feeling less charitable, one could also attribute it to a cynical and slightly desperate attempt to try and create a cash-in fan holiday for one of its most popular genre shows like May 4th’s “Star Wars Day.”)
It’s been a longer than usual wait for the fourth season after Stranger Things 3 — which was released in July 2019 — due to a months-long delay in production caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, which shut down filming on Stranger Things 4 after just two weeks in early 2020.
Netflix hasn’t wasted any of that time, though, with a plethora of teasers for the fourth season that it’s been steadily releasing over the past several months, including one that teases the return of a fan-favorite character, one that delves into Eleven’s dark past, and one that sets up a new spooky location, the Creel House (which presumably will feature in the upcoming fourth season).
