SPOILERS AHEAD, you’ve been warned.
The best thing about Stranger Things announcements are, and always have been, the fan theories. Even after three seasons, there are still a tonne of unanswered questions about the Upside Down, and we’re all way too invested in the characters to let them go easily.
And now the official Stranger Things Twitter account has posted a 30-second teaser trailer for season 4 in the wee hours of the morning. Shockingly, people are freaking out.
The biggest frenzy has been stirred up by the tagline, “We’re not in Hawkins anymore.” It’s a homage to the famous line from The Wizard Of Oz of course, but it also indicates continuity from last season. The Byers family (plus the re-orphaned Eleven) were moving out of their home in Indiana the last time we saw them, but most people seem to think that the new mystery location will have a big impact on the plot.
A common theory is that the new story will take place – at least in part – in Soviet Russia. Given that the Chernobyl disaster happened in 1986, it could factor into the show’s lore. Others have suggested, based on the Season 4 teaser showing a clock while Big Ben’s chimes play, that the Byers could be heading as far as London.
Stranger Things fans will stop at nothing for answers. That means playing the teaser frame by frame, backwards, audio boosted – the list goes on. The FBI should be recruiting these guys, honestly.
And the fandom has most certainly not abandoned their beloved cranky sheriff in all the teaser craze. Spoilers here, but I don’t think anyone moved past the ‘denial’ stage of grief when Hopper ‘died’ in the last season. With the light in his cabin turned on in the Stranger Things 4 teaser, everyone is desperate to believe it’s a sign he’s still living there, in the Upside Down.
If that seems like a stretch to you, don’t worry, cause there is a time travel theory. There’s always a time travel theory. What a wonderful deus ex machina that could save Hop, and get El’s powers back! Why else would they put a clock in the teaser?
Let’s not forget that even the release date itself is still up for debate. There’s been no news whatsoever from Netflix on that front – we might even be waiting years if the filming is only just starting. Not that that’s stopped Reddit user Friendly_Feedback from trying to crack the code.
Might we be hyping this up a little too much? Worse case scenario, Stranger Things 4 will end up being *gasp* overrated. Season 3 got an A on its report card from Rotten Tomatoes, but we can’t glaze over the fact that the series’ score is slowly declining.
Asking the fandom to tone it down is a lost cause anyway. Because let’s be honest, without dissecting every tweet, and over-analysing David Harbour’s profile picture, how else will we all survive the hiatus?