The Stranger Things Finale Might Make It To Theaters
Add a Vecna popcorn bucket to your collection.
It’s been almost a decade since Stranger Things premiered on Netflix, but the series is finally winding down with a fifth and final season. And in response to the series’ ongoing popularity, the streamer is pulling out all the stops. Instead of dumping the entire season onto the platform at midnight PST like most other Netflix releases, Stranger Things Season 5 will premiere in three parts, all at 8:00 p.m. EST/5:00 p.m. PST. Episodes 1 through four will drop on November 26, Episodes 5, 6, and 7 arrive on Christmas Day, and the final, two-hour-long episode comes out on New Year’s Eve.
This final episode, according to a new report, won’t just be available on Netflix. Despite previous statements from executives, the finale may be treated more like a movie than a TV show, to the point of getting a rollout that even most of Netflix’s biggest movies don’t receive.
According to Puck, Netflix is considering giving the series finale of Stranger Things a theatrical release. That’s surprising, as we were previously told this wasn’t on the table. “A lot of people — a lot, a lot, a lot of people — have watched Stranger Things on Netflix,” Bela Bajaria, Netflix’s Chief Content Officer, told Variety earlier this month. “It has not suffered from lack of conversation or community or sharing or fandom. I think releasing it on Netflix is giving the fans what they want.”
Stranger Things Season 5 may not be contained to streaming.
But Puck claims that, in the wake of AMC’s collaboration with Netflix in releasing KPop Demon Hunters in theaters, a theatrical release of Stranger Things is now on the table. This wouldn’t affect the Netflix release, so you could still watch the final episode at home, but it would add an option for fans to watch the finale together on the big screen. This rumor is still unconfirmed, and it’s worth noting that Puck has gotten details about Stranger Things Season 5 wrong before — a previous report claimed that every episode would be feature-length, prompting a showrunner to set the record straight.
If it’s true, though, this would be unprecedented for a Netflix TV release. It’s already unusual for most Netflix movies. Some Netflix originals get theatrical releases these days, like Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein and Rian Johnson’s Wake Up Dead Man, but most simply go straight to streaming, even big-budget would-be blockbusters like the Millie Bobby Brown vehicle The Electric State.
So while Stranger Things may still be a TV show, putting the finale in theaters could give us a glimpse of just how far the fandom for it goes. If fans are willing to plan a trip to New York to see the prequel play Stranger Things: The First Shadow on Broadway, then a trip to the local AMC surely isn’t too much of an inconvenience.
