After a two-year hiatus, Stranger Things is coming back to Netflix with its long-awaited fourth season.
In a new trailer, released Tuesday (12 April), the clip shows Jim Hopper in a Russian internment camp, Joyce and the Bryce family in California having been relocated after the Battle of Starcourt, and Eleven still without her powers.
At the end of the trailer, a horrifying, humanoid creature is introduced hanging in the Upside Down and is revealed to be the one narrating the trailer, saying at the end: “It’s time. You have lost.”
Below is everything we know about the new season.
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1 /20Hidden gems: The best Netflix originals you might have missed
Hidden gems: The best Netflix originals you might have missed
Money Heist (TV series, one season, 2017–)
Known as La Casa de Papel (House of Paper) in its native Spanish, Money Heist is Netflix’s most streamed non-English language show. The bank heist is a tired dramatic trope these days, but don’t let that, or the show’s bland English-language title, put you off – creator Álex Pina has made something special. The heist here, led by a mysterious man known only as The Professor, involves breaking into the Royal Mint of Spain and printing off €2.4 billion. There are even more twists in the show’s 15 episodes than there are hostages.
Netflix
Hidden gems: The best Netflix originals you might have missed
American Vandal (TV series, two seasons, 2017–2018)
Part satire of true crime documentaries such as Making a Murderer, part carefully observed portrayal of teenage life, American Vandal was criminally underappreciated during its two season run. It’s been cancelled now, but that doesn’t mean you can’t catch up with it, and then write Netflix a strongly worded email.
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Hidden gems: The best Netflix originals you might have missed
One Day at a Time (TV series, two seasons, 2017–)
In stark contrast to the off-beat, low-key comedy that currently rules TV – the kind that provokes a wry smirk rather than a hearty laugh – One Day at a Time is a big, bright sitcom filmed in front of an interminably enthusiastic studio audience. You wouldn’t have thought that the story of a Cuban-American army veteran / nurse / single mother – who suffers from PTSD and depression – would fit into this format, but it does so beautifully, tackling issues of sexuality, racism and sexism in the process.
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Hidden gems: The best Netflix originals you might have missed
Private Life (Film, 2018)
Based on writer / director Tamara Jenkins’s own fertility struggles, Private Life stars Kathryn Hahn and Paul Giamatti (both giving brilliant performances) as a spiky, loving middle-aged couple desperate to have a baby. They even rope their enthusiastic but irresponsible niece Sadie (Kayli Carter) into the mix, much to the horror of Sadie’s mother (Molly Shannon, turning a potentially repellent character into one worthy of empathy). It’s subtle, restrained and beautifully realised.
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Hidden gems: The best Netflix originals you might have missed
Big Mouth (TV series, two seasons, 2017–)
Crude, rude, and rife with surprise emissions and bodily functions, animated sitcom Big Mouth is also a sensitive, nuanced deep dive into the various horrors of teenagehood. When 12-year-old Andrew Glouberman (John Mulaney) is visited by the hormone monster (Nick Kroll, who voices many of the show’s best characters), he finds his life irreversibly – and seemingly disastrously – changed. Unlike many other puberty-centred comedies, Big Mouth makes as much time for its confused female protagonists as its male ones; Maya Rudolph is a delight as the female hormone monster, and look out for Kristen Wiig’s wonderful turn as a talking vagina.
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Hidden gems: The best Netflix originals you might have missed
Easy (TV series, two seasons, 2016–)
Joe Swanberg’s style of defiantly undramatic mumblecore isn’t for everyone, but if you enjoyed his earlier films, Drinking Buddies and Happy Christmas, you’ll find plenty to admire in this anthology comedy-drama series. Big-name stars such as Orlando Bloom and Aubrey Plaza crop up, but Jane Adams – who you might remember from Todd Solondz’s chronically depressing 1998 film Happiness – is the show’s heart, and Marc Maron is its jaded soul.
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Hidden gems: The best Netflix originals you might have missed
Love (TV series, three seasons, 2016–2018)
Community’s Gillian Jacobs is brilliant as the prickly, magnetic recovering addict Mickey, who forms an unlikely – and arguably deeply unwise – relationship with her nerdy neighbour Gus (Paul Rust). Despite Gus’s pathological need to be the nice guy, we’re never quite sure who or what we’re rooting for – which is what makes Love such complex, compelling viewing.
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Hidden gems: The best Netflix originals you might have missed
Patton Oswalt: Annihilation (stand-up special, 2017)
In 2016, comedian Patton Oswalt’s wife, the true crime writer Michelle McNamara, died suddenly in her sleep. That subject matter doesn’t exactly scream “stand-up special”, but out of his devastating loss, Oswalt managed to craft something funny and profound. Over the course of an hour, he processes his grief onstage, managing to find humour in the struggle to raise his grieving six-year-old daughter alone.
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Hidden gems: The best Netflix originals you might have missed
Santa Clarita Diet (TV series, two seasons, 2017–)
Granted, this horror-comedy – which stars Drew Barrymore as a neurotic real estate agent who suddenly develops a taste for human flesh – is really silly, and really, really disgusting. But it’s also strangely charming, and funny. Timothy Olyphant is excellent as Sheila’s frazzled husband Joel, and the pair’s idiosyncratic but respectful relationship with their smart teenage daughter Abby (Liv Hewson) isn’t quite like anything else on TV right now.
Netflix
Hidden gems: The best Netflix originals you might have missed
Dark Tourist (TV series, one season, 2018–)
New Zealand journalist David Farrier is an unlikely TV presenter in the same way that Louis Theroux is – in just about every scenario in which he finds himself, he’s a little bit awkward. But as with Theroux, Farrier’s weakness is actually his strength, allowing him to endear himself to the many unusual people he meets on his journey through the world’s most questionable tourist destinations. Farrier’s stops include the site of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, the road where JFK was assassinated, and the Milwaukee suburbs where serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer murdered his victims.
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Hidden gems: The best Netflix originals you might have missed
Sacred Games (TV series, one season, 2018–)
Based on Vikram Chandra’s epic 2006 novel, Netflix’s first Indian original series is a slowly unfolding gem. The first season of Sacred Games – which follows a troubled police officer (Saif Ali Khan) who has 25 days to save his city thanks to a tip-off from a presumed dead gangster – only covered one quarter of Chandra’s 1,000-page novel. As the show itself declared when it announced the forthcoming second season, “the worst is yet to come”.
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Hidden gems: The best Netflix originals you might have missed
Dumplin’ (Film, 2018)
When the trailer for Dumplin’ first landed, it seemed all the ingredients were in place for a film that was at worst tone-deaf, and at best vaguely patronising. Thank heavens, then, that the trailer did Dumplin’ such a disservice. Starring Danielle Macdonald (who broke out in the excellent 2017 film Patti Cake$) as Willowdean, a self-described “fat girl” who enters a local pageant to annoy her former beauty queen mother (Jennifer Aniston), Dumplin’ is as funny, warm and sensitive as its protagonist – and with a killer Dolly Parton-laden soundtrack to boot.
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Hidden gems: The best Netflix originals you might have missed
Dark (TV series, one season, 2017–)
This sci-fi thriller – which features disappearing children, a mysterious local power plant, and scenes set in the Eighties – has, for obvious reasons, drawn comparisons to Stranger Things. But Dark is even more beguiling and (true to its name) less family-friendly than Stranger Things.
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Hidden gems: The best Netflix originals you might have missed
The Death and Life of Marsha P Johnson (Film, 2017)
Though it’s been somewhat tarnished by claims that director David France appropriated the work and research of trans film-maker Reina Gossett, this documentary is nonetheless a loving, respectful tribute to gay rights activist Marsha P Johnson. One of the key figures in the Stonewall uprising (though her involvement was almost entirely eradicated in 2015’s critically hated Stonewall), Johnson modelled for Andy Warhol, performed onstage with drag group Hot Peaches, helped found the Gay Liberation Front, and then died under suspicious circumstances in 1992.
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Hidden gems: The best Netflix originals you might have missed
On My Block (TV series, one season, 2018–)
This coming-of-age series might not have found as many eyeballs as it deserved last year, but those it did find were glued to the screen. In fact, it was the most-binged show of 2018 – meaning that it had the highest watch-time-per-viewing session of any Netflix original. Created by Awkward’s Lauren Iungerich, On My Block follows a group of Los Angeles teens as they navigate both the drama of high school and the danger of inner-city life.
John O Flexor/Netflix
Hidden gems: The best Netflix originals you might have missed
Set It Up (Film, 2018)
Two beleaguered assistants (Zoey Deutch and Glen Powell) conspire to get their over-demanding bosses (Taye Diggs and Lucy Liu) together in order to get their lives back in this winning romantic comedy. Set It Up is responsible not only for coining the term “over-dicking” (it’s much more innocent than it sounds), but for rejuvenating a tired genre.
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Hidden gems: The best Netflix originals you might have missed
Cargo (Film, 2017)
Martin Freeman stars as the father struggling to protect his young daughter from a zombie epidemic spreading across Australia. So far, so overdone. But this drama thriller, directed by Ben Howling and Yolanda Ramke and based on their 2013 short of the same name, throws a handful of unpredictable spanners in the works.
Netflix
Hidden gems: The best Netflix originals you might have missed
3% (TV series, two season, 2016–)
Like a cross between The Hunger Games and CW series The 100, this Brazilian dystopian thriller, set in an unspecified future, revolves largely around an impoverished community known as the Inland. Every year, each 20-year-old takes part in a series of tests; the highest scoring 3% will be chosen to live in paradise in the Offshore. It is an intriguing and addictive commentary on class and privilege.
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Hidden gems: The best Netflix originals you might have missed
Godless (TV series, one season, 2017–)
With shades of John Ford’s The Searchers, this languorous western was critically acclaimed but swiftly forgotten after it landed on Netflix in 2016. Set in 1884, it’s about Frank Griffin (Jeff Daniels) and his notoriously ruthless gang of outlaws’ pursuit of their injured former ally Roy Goode (Jack O’Connell), who is hiding out in a small town populated solely by women after a mining accident killed off all its men. A gun-toting Michelle Dockery, clearly relishing the change of scenery after years of Downton Abbey, and a taciturn Jack O’Connell, are on brilliant form.
Netflix
Hidden gems: The best Netflix originals you might have missed
Atypical (TV series, two seasons, 2017–)
This coming-of-age series about a teenage boy with autism was sweet and well-intentioned from the start, but its first season was criticised for a handful of inaccuracies, and for its lack of autistic actors. Rather than drowning in a sea of defensiveness – as too many shows tend to do – it listened, and brought in autistic actors and writers for its excellent second season.
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When will season four be released?
The new season will be split into two parts: Volume 1 is out on 27 May; Volume 2 starts streaming on Netflix on 1 July.
Who will return?
The returning cast includes Millie Bobby Brown (Eleven), David Harbour (Jim Hopper), Finn Wolfhard (Mike Wheeler), Winona Ryder (Joyce Byers), Gaten Matarazzo (Dustin Henderson), Noah Schnapp (Will Byers), Caleb McLaughlin (Lucas Sinclair), Sadie Sink (Max Mayfield), Joe Keery (Steve Harrington), Natalia Dyer (Nancy Wheeler), Charlie Heaton (Jonathan Byers), Maya Hawke (Robin Buckley), Priah Ferguson (Erica Sinclair), Cara Buono (Karen Wheeler), Brett Gelman (Murray), and Matthew Modine (Dr Brenner)
Note the absence of Dacre Montgomery, whose character Billy died in the third season.
Who are the new cast members?
Jamie Campbell Bower (Peter Ballard), Josephine Quinn (Eddie Munson), Eduardo Franco (Argyle), Sherman Augustus (Lt Colonel Sullivan), Mason Dye (Jason Carver), Nikola Djuricko (Yuri), Tom Wlaschiha (Dmitri), Myles Truitt (Patrick), Regina Ting Chen (Ms Kelly), Grace Van Dien (Chrissy), Logan Riley Bruner (Fred Benson), Logan Allen (Jake), Elodie Grace Orkin (Angela), John Reynolds (Officer Callahan), Rob Morgan (Chief Powell), Amybeth McNulty (Vickie) and Robert Englund (Victor Creel).
What will season four be about?
The season’s official logline reads: “It’s been six months since the Battle of Starcourt, which brought terror and destruction to Hawkins. Struggling with the aftermath, our group of friends are separated for the first time — and navigating the complexities of high school hasn’t made things any easier.
“In this most vulnerable time, a new and horrifying supernatural threat surfaces, presenting a gruesome mystery that, if solved, might finally put an end to the horrors of the Upside Down.”
Stranger Things season four will be split into two parts on Netflix: Volume 1 is out on 27 May and Volume 2 starts streaming on 1 July.
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/stranger-things-season-4-release-date-b2081143.html When is Stranger Things 4 released on Netflix this month?
