While we do know that Stranger Things Season 4 is likely to be the darkest and scariest yet from the Netflix series, a new interview with actor Gaten Matarazzo by Collider is indicating that it may still be a while before anyone has any clue about its long-anticipated release date. Things had understandably gotten pretty quiet last year on the production front due to COVID-19, but co-creators the Duffer Brothers had explained how working remotely enabled the writing to get done first.

Matarazzo says the Duffer Brothers always intend to have a season completely written before it goes into production, and "This year, because of COVID, there's no excuse for them not to have the [season] written completely." Matarazzo added that the cast was able to go in for a table read in February 2020, and the expectation then was to go right into filming with only six episodes completed. As of this writing, that means they've gotten more than a year to polish, tighten, strengthen, and write their best version of Season 4.

As far as the release date everyone has impatiently been waiting for since Season 3 finished up in July of 2019, Matarazzo says, "There's very few dates that are reliable… [due to the pandemic] we still don't know day-to-day if we're gonna be filming next week." Matarazzo further explained that because of how staggered and unpredictable shoots have become, "there's really no way to figure out when we're gonna be wrapping."