Warning: The below article contains full spoilers for Stranger Things Season 3. And while there are no actual spoilers for Season 4 below, obviously, if you want to go into the new episodes completely blind, we suggest not reading further.
The long wait for Stranger Things Season 4 is almost over -- but in the meantime, on Tuesday, Netflix whetted fans' appetites with a trailer that included everything from the first significant look at the season's Big Bad, the kids navigating high school, Hopper fighting a Demogorgon, and a shirtless Steve battling monsters in the Upside Down. It's a lot.
Luckily, IGN got to sit down with the creators/writers/directors of the show, Matt and Ross Duffer (better known as the Duffer brothers) to break it all down. Check out their full commentary in the video above, and see highlights of the conversation below.
Stranger Things' "Game of Thrones Season"
The Duffer brothers previously teased that this season is their "Game of Thrones season," given the fact that all their characters are spread out after the Byers and Eleven moved to California at the end of Season 3 and Hopper is in Russia after, well, not actually dying. The rest of the crew, meanwhile, remains in Hawkins, Indiana. And amidst all that, the kids are now actually teenagers, navigating the ins and outs of high school.
In particular, the Duffers teased that it's going to be a Max-heavy season, as Sadie Sink's character deals with the fallout of her brother Billy's sacrificial death at the end of Season 3. The new trailer features a shot from the fourth episode of Season 4, titled "Dear Billy," where we see Max kneeling at Billy's grave.
"So much of the season is about Max," Matt says. "We open the season with her struggling with [her grief] and her trying to navigate that, and Max, on the other hand, is also someone who doesn't easily open up to people. So a lot of what she's dealing with, she's struggling with internally, she's shut a lot of people out, which makes it even that much more difficult."
Things aren't looking much better elsewhere in Hawkins. While Lucas has scored a spot on the basketball team, the Duffers teased that he, Mike, and Dustin run into trouble in their friendship as they navigate high school and dive into new activities. But Hawkins, as a whole, is still reeling from the mall fire at the end of Season 3, and as indicated by a shot of a body bag in the trailer, the deaths haven't stopped coming.
"So many bad things that have happened in this town that people are starting to question what's going on here," Ross says. "The government has attempted to sort of push things under the rug, but that mall fire and all of that, was too big, really, for anyone to ignore. So there's this growing sense of, there is something wrong with this town and some people even saying that it's cursed."
We also see Eleven, now living with the Byers in California and still without her powers, attempting to fit in in high school. Given that she doesn't quite understand social cues, and has been pretty sheltered up to this point, it's safe to say that it's not going smoothly. And Joyce has got a brand-new marketing job, but her life is thrown into turmoil when, as we see in the trailer, she gets a package that's seemingly from Russia, which starts an "epic journey" for her, as the brothers tease.
Speaking of Russia, Hopper is not doing well in his freezing prison. The Duffers say he's completely isolated and doesn't seem to have any way out. We get one quick glimpse of him fighting a Demogorgon in some kind of pit, which the brothers say "is just a sneak of what... is a pretty crazy sequence."
"It's something we've always wanted to do, which is sort of a gladiator-style sequence with a Demogorgon," Matt says. "And just the idea of seeing a Demogorgon in the snow is something that we were excited about and have been excited about for about four years now, which I think is why we wrote him into Russia or hinted that there was a Demogorgon in Russia at the end of Season 3."
Some New Additions
If putting the main cast through all of that wasn’t enough, the fourth season will also introduce a couple of new players, both of which were briefly teased in the trailer: Eddie, played by Joe Quinn, and Victor Creel, played by Robert Englund, best known for portraying Freddie Krueger in the Nightmare on Elm Street series.
Eddie is just seen briefly in one shot of the trailer, with his arms stretched out, but the Duffers teased that he’s “a metalhead/Dungeon Master nerd,” so we can imagine how he gets involved with our Dungeons & Dragons-loving heroes.
“Everyone who worked with him fell in love with him,” Matt says of Quinn. “Just absolutely incredible. I know everyone's always skeptical if we bring in a new character, but I don't think people are gonna be upset that we brought in this guy.”
As for Englund, the brothers unsurprisingly couldn’t reveal too much about the horror legend’s role other than the fact that it’s “pivotal,” but he is seen briefly in the trailer in a chilling shot. They did reveal, however, that Englund’s actually the one who approached them to join the series.
“The fact that he came to us in a season that’s so deeply inspired by the Nightmare series and by his performance especially in those movies, it felt like fate,” Matt says. “It felt like, ‘okay, this is meant to be.’ “
Going Back to the Upside Down
Fans who missed the Upside Down in Season 3 needn’t fret. We get more than a few shots of the Upside Down in the trailer alone – including the aforementioned shot of Steve fighting what the brothers call “demo bats” – and they tease that we’ll be seeing a lot more of this supernatural world in Season 4.
“We didn’t get to go into the Upside Down in last season at all due to the narrative,” Ross says. “And this season, we wanted to really go in there and spend some time there. So that’s something we’re super excited about this season. I mean, we spend more time in the Upside Down than any other season. It’s not even close.”
We also get glimpses at the Creel House – something that’s been teased heavily in promotional material prior to Season 4 – in both Hawkins and the Upside Down.
“We've wanted to do the haunted house thing, I think, for a while,” Matt says. “Every year we're trying to do something different. This was a more horror-leaning season. We had our kids, they’re obviously in high school, and it just felt very natural that they should be in a horror movie."
In regards to the other spooky imagery in the trailer, a mysterious grandfather clock (one that got a spotlight in Netflix’s tease of the trailer) was shown twice, making it very clear that this antique will play an ominous part in this season.
“It’s a really core part of the mystery that our Hawkins group is trying to solve,” Ross says. “So I don’t want to give away too much other than to say this clock plays a very, very important role moving forward.”
“And you don’t want to see the clock! If you see the clock, it’s not great,” Matt adds. Max, unfortunately, did see the clock, and as we see her levitating later in the trailer, it doesn’t seem like that was a good thing.
All About the New Big Bad
Perhaps the juiciest part of this very juicy trailer was not one, but two shots of our new big bad, who, as the brothers revealed, is named Vecna. One comes in at the very beginning, with a shot of him opening his eyes as his creepy voiceover reads, “your suffering is almost at an end,” which Matt calls “our Hellraiser line.” Ever since Season 2, the Duffers say, they wanted to do a character that was similar to the horror figures that terrified them growing up, from Freddie Kruger to Pinhead to Pennywise.
“Those were the monsters that really inspired us this season,” Ross says. “Something else we really wanted to do go back to Season 1 and actually do a monster that we could do mostly practically. What you’re seeing here is 90% practical [effects]. And Vecna, throughout the season, is 90% practical. We wanted a presence on the set that our actors could react to, whereas in Season 3, they were reacting to a beach ball. We wanted something there that we could actually film, and I just think that that makes this villain scarier and more real and tangible and we’re just really excited for people to see him this season.”
And remember when they said it was their Game of Thrones season? Well, they could mean that in more ways than one; Barrie Gower, who’s the artist behind the Night King’s terrifying look, was the prosthetics artist behind Vecna. Gower also worked on the radiation victims in HBO’s Chernobyl, which is where he first caught the Duffers’ eyes.
Fans won’t have to wait much longer to start getting answers to the mysteries the Duffers teased; Stranger Things Season 4 Part 1 hits Netflix on May 27, with Part 2 debuting on July 1.
from IGN All https://ift.tt/lZ56Pem
https://ift.tt/74HrI3z
Share your thoughts here.