Honestly, it feels like a lifetime ago that we were all obsessing over running up hills and trying to figure out what a "Vecna" actually was. If you’re trying to pin down exactly when did stranger things 4 come out, the answer isn't just a single date. Because the Duffer Brothers love to keep us on our toes, they split the season into two massive chunks.
Volume 1 of Stranger Things 4 officially dropped on May 27, 2022.
Then, Netflix made us sweat for five weeks before releasing Volume 2 on July 1, 2022.
It was a weird time. We had just spent three years—literally 1,057 days—waiting for the show to return after that emotional gut-punch of a Season 3 finale at the Starcourt Mall. By the time the fourth season actually arrived, the "kids" were basically adults, and the show had shifted from a "kids on bikes" adventure into a full-blown psychological horror film.
The Long Road to Hawkins
The production of Season 4 was, basically, a mess. Not because of the writing, but because the world literally stopped.
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Filming originally started in February 2020. They barely got two weeks of footage in Lithuania (the prison stuff with Hopper) before the pandemic shut everything down in March. For months, the sets in Atlanta sat empty. But there was a silver lining. Since they couldn't film, the Duffer Brothers actually finished writing the entire season before they went back to set. That’s why the episodes felt so dense. Each one was basically a movie.
When they finally got back to work in late 2020, they were dealing with crazy safety protocols that slowed everything to a crawl. Plus, the scale was just... enormous. We weren't just in Hawkins anymore. We were in California, Russia, and the lab in Nevada.
Key Release Dates to Remember
- Announcement Teaser ("From Russia with love"): February 14, 2020.
- Volume 1 Release: May 27, 2022 (7 episodes).
- Volume 2 Release: July 1, 2022 (2 episodes).
- Season Finale Length: A staggering 2 hours and 30 minutes.
Why the Split Release Mattered
A lot of people were annoyed when Netflix announced they weren't dropping the whole thing at once. People love their binges. But looking back, it was a genius move.
By splitting the release, the conversation lasted all summer. We had five weeks to dissect every frame of "Dear Billy" and theorize about who would die in the finale. It turned Stranger Things 4 into an "event" rather than just another show you finish in a weekend and forget about.
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It also gave Kate Bush enough time to absolutely dominate the global charts. When "Running Up That Hill" played during Max's escape from the Upside Down, it didn't just trend; it broke the internet. By the time Volume 2 came out in July, that song was #1 in the world, nearly 40 years after it was first released.
The Record-Breaking Numbers
When the show finally did come out, the numbers were stupidly high.
Netflix reported that Volume 1 alone racked up about 287 million hours viewed in its opening weekend. That was a record for an English-language series at the time. Everyone was watching. If you weren't on Twitter talking about Eddie Munson playing Metallica on top of a trailer, you were basically out of the loop.
The sheer length of the episodes helped those numbers, sure. Most episodes were over 75 minutes. But people weren't just "playing" it in the background; they were locked in. The horror elements, heavily inspired by A Nightmare on Elm Street, brought in a more mature audience while keeping the original fans hooked.
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What Most People Forget
Even though we talk about 2022 as the big year, the hype started way earlier. There were these cryptic "Creel House" teasers and "004" laboratory clips that kept fans guessing for over a year.
Nuance is important here. Some fans felt the wait was too long. By the time the season aired, Millie Bobby Brown was 18, and Finn Wolfhard was nearly 20, yet they were playing 14 or 15-year-olds. It created a bit of a "visual gap," but the performances were so good that most of us just stopped caring after the first ten minutes.
The Timeline Inside the Show
While we waited three years in real life, only a few months had passed for the characters.
- Season 3 ended in July 1985.
- Season 4 picks up in March 1986 during Spring Break.
This tiny time jump made the physical growth of the actors even more obvious, which is why Season 5 (released in late 2025) finally leaned into a significant time skip to account for everyone looking like they’re in their mid-20s.
Actionable Insights for Fans
If you're planning a rewatch or just catching up before diving into the series finale, here is the best way to handle the Season 4 experience:
- Watch in Blocks: Treat Volume 1 as a miniseries. The first four episodes build the mystery, and Episode 4 ("Dear Billy") is arguably the best hour of television Netflix has ever produced.
- Pay Attention to the Music: The soundtrack isn't just fluff. Every song, from "Pass the Dutchie" to "Master of Puppets," correlates directly to the emotional state or survival of the characters.
- Check the Runtime: Don't start Volume 2 at 10:00 PM unless you plan on being up until 2:00 AM. Those last two episodes are literally the length of two feature films.
The legacy of Stranger Things 4 is basically that it proved the "blockbuster" TV model works. It wasn't just a season of television; it was a cultural shift that proved we’re willing to wait years for quality, as long as the payoff is there.