Stranger Things season 4 finale's runtime revealed – and it's slightly shorter than anticipated

The official runtime for the Stranger Things season 4 finale has been revealed – and it's not as long as we initially thought.

Previous reports indicated that episode 9 would clock in at a whopping 2 hours and 30 minutes, which divided fans across the board. According to the official Twitter account for the Stranger Things writers' room, however, the finale runtime is 2 hours and 19 minutes.

The update comes just ten days after the record-breaking release of season 4, which garnered over 286.79 million streaming hours in its premiere weekend on Netflix. The first six episodes, which hit the streamer on May 27, are around 1 hour and 15 minutes. Episode 7, which concludes Volume 1, clocks in at about 1 hour 38 minutes. The show will pick back up with episode 8, which has a runtime of about 1 hour and 25 minutes.

"The more we were writing, the more we realized we need more time in order for these reveals to land, in order for these storylines to work," Matt Duffer previously told TheWrap. "Partway through we knew we needed to ask Netflix for nine episodes instead of eight and as we started shooting we realized, Oh these are mega-long episodes."

Stephen King took to Twitter to question the show's decision to break the season into two parts and decided it was "kind of lame." The writers' room account replied to the horror author, letting him (and fans) know that episodes 8 and 9 aren't "done yet" but that "we're working as fast as we can!"

Season 4 Volume 2 is set to hit Netflix on July 1. Check out our Stranger Things season 4 release schedule for more information.