It's been 9 years since Stranger Things first came into our lives.
The release of a teaser for the final season of Stranger Things inspired jokes about how long the series has run vs. its episode count. The Netflix show will end at nine and a half years past its starting point, racking up just 42 episodes.
Jokes about how long we've had to wait for a final resolution to the tale are reaching meme status.
Nine years of Stranger Things
Stranger Things premiered on Netflix on July 15, 2016, just over nine years ago. When it started, the youngest starring cast member, Noah Schnapp (Will Byers) was only 11 years old. He's since grown into a young man at 20.
The contrast between how the stars looked back before many of us thought President Donald Trump would actually happen and how they appear now adds to the perception that this show has been running forever. Each season has just eight or nine episodes, and the gap years have grown over time.
Season 2 came out a little over a year after the first. The following season took a little longer, but then the gap between that and season 4 was almost three years.
Season 5 will premiere on Nov. 26, 2025, nearly three years and five months later. The story itself takes place over the course of just four years.
The final season will consist of eight episodes in dumps of four, then three on Christmas, and end in a New Year's Eve finale.
Netflix drops Season 5 teaser
However, the gap between the final two seasons has been so long that many former fans say they've lost interest in the plot.
A lot has happened since the summer of 2022, after all.
Netflix's teaser of the teaser trailer on Tuesday only seemed to remind people how they feel about the show taking so long to resolve.
On X, users are comparing it to How I Met Your Mother in terms of how the story should have lasted or to how many episodes shows like The X-Files had in a shorter amount of time.
"The X-Files ran for 9 years and had over 200 episodes," said @HailSouthern365. "In 9 years, there have been 34 episodes of Stranger Things. F*** this format."
"With 34 episodes in 9 calendar years, Stranger Things could have released a single episode quarterly," @skwamus pointed out.
User @derpo377 remembered the good old days, asking, "Has anyone mentioned that it took Stranger Things 9 years to make 5 seasons and that back in my day they used to make 22-episode seasons every year?"
Fewer episodes over longer periods is an industry trend
Of course, Stranger Things is not the only series affected by the trend of fewer episodes per season.
X user @iforgivedriew held up Euphoria as an example, noting that "everyone dogs on Stranger Things for taking 9 years to make 5 seasons, but nobody mentions Euphoria taking 7 years to make 3 seasons."
Some wish that the sci-fi series had kept it to one season.
"If u told me 9 years ago when i was first watching stranger things that at this time i still wouldn’t have a resolution to the show i would’ve laughed so hard because i really thought it would’ve just been a perfect limited series one and done," said @MazzMelanie.
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