Stranger Things season 4 is setting up the show's ending, according to David Harbour

David Harbour in Stranger Things — (Image credit: Netflix)

David Harbour has revealed that Stranger Things season 4 is setting up the ending of the entire series.

"I mean, it's bigger, that's the first thing," the Jim Hopper actor told Collider of the fourth installment. "In scope, in scale, even in the idea that we're not in Hawkins anymore. We, locale-wise, we're bigger. We're introducing new stuff, but we're also tightening and wrapping up in a certain direction to make it have a clear, clean specific, and definite ending at some point, which I can't really talk about."

Stranger Things fans needn't worry, though – the Duffer brothers have already confirmed that season 4 won't be the last entry in the series, so that definite ending is a little way off.

Hopper was thought dead after the events of season 3, but a teaser for season 4 revealed that he is very much alive – though trapped in a Russian prison. It's unclear at the moment just how he survived.

"It's my favorite season, in the sense that he's at his purest, he's at his most vulnerable, in a sense," Harbour added. "He's been, as we've seen, he's in this Russian prison, so we get to reinvent him in a sense. He gets to have a rebirth from what he had become, and we'd always sort of planned this almost resurrection of you have Gandalf dies, Gandalf the Grey re-emerge[s], and I'm really interested in this resurgence of him."

He continued: "We get to explore a lot of threads in his life that have merely been hinted at that we get to see a lot more of. And there's some real surprises that you know nothing about that will start to come out in this and play big as the series goes on."

While plot details for season 4 have been kept tightly under wraps so far, set pictures have hinted at a potentially spoilery emergency for Eleven, and Gaten Matarazzo, who plays Dustin in the show, has called season 4 "the scariest" yet.

Four new cast members will also be joining the series. Anne with an E's Amybeth McNulty joins the cast as "cool, fast-talking band nerd" Vicki, while Miles Truitt will portray basketball star Patrick, and Regina Ting Chen will play guidance counsellor Ms Kelly. Meanwhile, Grace Van Dien will be Chrissie, the lead cheerleader with a "dark secret."

Stranger Things season 4 doesn't yet have a release date, though we can most likely expect it at some point next year. In the meantime, find your next binge watch with our guide to the best Netflix shows to stream now.

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