Stranger Things fans blown away by ‘ridiculous’ episode runtimes in new season

Stranger Things fans have shared their astonishment after the episode runtimes for the forthcomning season were announced.

The hit Netflix sci-fi series is returning for a fourth season, which will be released in two batches. The first set of episodes are arriving on the streaming service next week.

Per Netflix’s website, the first volume, out 27 May, will contain the first seven episodes of the season, with two additional episodes released as Volume 2 on 1 July.

Several episodes of the new season are set to last over an hour, with the longest – episode 40 – running for nearly two and a half hours.

Such a lengthy runtime is pretty much unprecedented in the world of TV, and fans have given their thoughts on the matter on social media.

“I love Stranger Things but a 2 1/2 hour episode is not an episode, that is ridiculous!!” one person wrote.

“Don’t see the need for season 4 of Stranger Things having 2 volumes when the 2nd is only going to be 2 episodes. And the last 3 eps being 98, 85, & 150 minutes is ridiculous. Too long,” another commented.

“Back in my day, we had a word for this. It was called a movie!” joked ScreenCrush’s Matt Singer.

“The finale could be 15 min or 3 hours long but Stranger Things 4 they could never make me hate u,” another person wrote.

Stranger Things returns to Netflix on 27 May.