'Stranger Things 4' finally wraps shooting, after pandemic turned schedule upside down

After the COVID-19 pandemic forced its filming to be postponed by over half a year, Stranger Things 4 has officially wrapped production. This was confirmed by principal cast member Noah Schnapp (Will Byers) during a recent appearance on the oh so isabella YouTube channel. "We just finished like last week," the actor said. "We're done. We've been filming forever and they're finally done. They're putting together another teaser."

If we had to guess, we'd say that teaser will debut next Saturday (Sep. 25) at Netflix's virtual Tudum fan event. In addition, the streaming giant may also give fans a fixed premiere date to look forward to beyond the vague assurance that the next batch of episodes will drop sometime next year. Stranger Things is, in a lot of ways, the company's crown jewel, so it'd be crazy for Netflix not to pull out all the stops for Season 4 during the digital convention.

A small collection of footage from the new season — which debuted in early August — shows Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) detained by government agents, while the rest of the gang explores what could be some sort of haunted house. Speaking to Collider this summer, executive producer Shawn Levy explained that production was taking so long due to a combination of COVID-related precautions on set and a more ambitious narrative scope.

"You kind of know we've got some action in Hawkins, we’ve got some action apparently in Russia, and we have an entire storyline set elsewhere that will soon come to light," the Free Guy director teased. "So this is the first season where we have this sprawling geography, multiple location shoots, and we're doing it all against a backdrop of a world that has made filming slower longer in delay. So that's why it's taking so long."

All of our Hawkins prayers will be answered in 2022.