Maya Hawke says 'Stranger Things' Season 5 will have very long episodes: 'Basically, eight movies'
Make sure to have a lot of snacks ready, Stranger Things fans, because the show's final season will have very lengthy episodes, Maya Hawke said.
In a guest appearance on Penn Badgley's Podcrushed podcast, Hawke gave an update on what audiences can expect from Season 5, highlighting that the writers have been putting a lot of effort into ensuring the quality of the finale.
"Our showrunners, Matt and Ross, take a lot of responsibility. They have an amazing team of writers, but they’re very involved," she said.
"They write a lot and they are very intense and serious about the quality of the continued writing, and it takes a long time to write each season, and it takes a long time to shoot them," she added.
While the upcoming continuation of the hit science fiction horror series from Netflix will only have eight episodes, Hawke said that they are "making, basically, eight movies."
"The episodes are very long," the actress said, noting that it will take about a year to shoot this final chapter of the show.
In comparison, the fourth season of Stranger Things had nine episodes ranging from 64 to 144 minutes.
Hawke, who plays Robin Buckley in the show, previously told Rolling Stone that she hopes her character would have a "hero's moment" in the finale.
"I’d love to die with honor, as any actor would. But I love the way that the Duffer Brothers love their actors. The reason that they write so beautifully for me and for everyone else is because they fall in love with their actors and their characters, and they don’t want to kill them. I think that’s a beautiful quality that they have, and I wouldn’t wish it away," she said.
Stranger Things is currently set to release its fifth season sometime in 2025.
The series first premiered on Netflix in 2016 and quickly rose to fame because of its story, which centers around a human experimentation facility opening a gateway between an alternate dimension called the Upside Down and the normal world. This then starts to affect the unwitting residents of Hawkins in calamitous ways.