Happy Stranger Things Day. Netflix marked November 6 — the date Will Byers went missing in 1983 — by dropping the final Season 4 teaser, revealing Eleven and Will's new life in California. It's sunny. It's bright. Nobody is having a good time.
The wait for Stranger Things Season 4 has been long, pandemic-extended, and frankly difficult for anyone who has been invested in these kids since 2016. But Netflix marked Stranger Things Day — November 6, the in-universe anniversary of Will Byers' disappearance — with the fourth and final pre-season teaser, titled "Welcome to California," and it gave us our clearest look yet at where things stand heading into what the Duffer Brothers have promised will be the biggest, scariest season of the show to date. Coming in 2022. Still no exact date. But closer.
The teaser centres on Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown), now living with the Byers family in California following the events of Season 3. We hear her voice reading a letter to Mike, cheerful and reassuring on the surface — "I even like school now. I have made lots of friends" — while the visuals tell a completely different story. She is being ignored in hallways. She is alone at lunch. She is not fine. It is, for a thirty-second teaser, quietly devastating. The song playing underneath, "A Place In California" by Jeremiah Burnham, does a lot of heavy lifting.
"I even like school now. I have made lots of friends."
— Eleven's letter to Mike, while clearly having zero friends.
The teaser closes on a montage of what looks like classic Stranger Things chaos — explosions, a creepy doll, car chases, military arrests, underground installations — before cutting to black. Season 4 is coming. Hawkins, apparently, will not be the only battleground this time around.
Netflix also used Stranger Things Day to drop one of the most hyped reveals of the entire pre-season rollout: the official titles of all nine Season 4 episodes. Fans have been theorising about these since cryptic working titles first appeared online, and the real names are far more intriguing than anything that was guessed.
The titles alone contain multitudes. "Vecna's Curse" confirms the Season 4 villain's name in the first two episodes — suggesting they're not hiding the mystery for long. "Dear Billy" has already sent the fandom into speculation overdrive, given that Billy Hargrove died in Season 3. "The Massacre at Hawkins Lab" sounds like the flashback episode fans have been wanting since Season 2. And "Papa"? That's almost certainly Dr. Brenner (Matthew Modine), whose fate has been ambiguous since Season 1. Whoever he is in Season 4, he gets a whole episode named after his relationship to Eleven. Make of that what you will.
Netflix has been drip-feeding Season 4 footage since 2019, and each teaser has revealed a different piece of the puzzle. Teaser 001 — the original announcement — showed the Upside Down's vines strangling the Season 4 logo with the tagline "We're not in Hawkins anymore." Teaser 002, released February 2020, confirmed Hopper (David Harbour) is alive — imprisoned in Russia, trudging through snow. Teaser 003 from September 2021's Netflix TUDUM event introduced the Creel House, a foreboding Victorian home at the centre of a 1950s massacre, through which Robert Englund's Victor Creel will apparently have a very bad time. And now 004 brings us to California, where the Byers family is trying to start over — with limited success.
The full core ensemble is back for Season 4, joined by a substantial wave of new faces — including horror legend Robert Englund (Victor Creel), Joseph Quinn (Eddie Munson, the Hellfire Club's DM), and Eduardo Franco (Argyle, Californian pizza delivery prophet).
For the uninitiated: November 6 is Stranger Things Day because it marks the date in 1983 when Will Byers first disappeared into the Upside Down, setting off the events of the entire series. Netflix has been marking it annually with fan celebrations, exclusive content drops, and — this year — the first-ever official map of Hawkins, Indiana, drawn by artist Kyle Lambert and released alongside the teaser. It is, frankly, a masterclass in fandom cultivation, and it works every single time.
Season 4 of Stranger Things premieres on Netflix in 2022. Malaysian subscribers can catch all seasons of Stranger Things now on Netflix.