“Stranger Things” Season 4 Volume 2 Trailer Teases Feature-Length Final Episodes

June 21, 2022

Netflix has just revealed the full trailer for Stranger Things season 4, volume 2, which will deliver a two-part season finale to what has been a chilling, thrilling ride.

In the final episode of the first part of season 4, “The Massacre at Hawkins Lab,” it was revealed that Vecna, the new big bad haunting Hawkins, was actually once a patient of Dr. Martin Brenner (Matthew Modine), much like Eleven (Millie Bobbie Brown), and, in fact, was more or less created by Eleven when the two of them saw their burgeoning friendship devolve into battle. Played by Jamie Campbell Bower, this patient—number one, by the way—had been trying to secretly help Eleven survive Dr. Brenner’s nefarious plans. As season four, volume 1 progressed, we learned that the horror from Eleven’s past that had been hinted—namely, that she’d killed her fellow numbered patients in a gruesome act of vengeance—had actually been carried out by Bower’s patient number one. When Eleven and One battled, she tore open a hole between our reality and the Upside Down where she cast him out. It was there that shed his human skin and became Vecna, the monster that’s been stalking the teens of Hawkins, Indiana all season long.

The new trailer once again uses Kate Bush’s song “Running Up That Hill” as it highlights just how dire things are for our heroes. Take Nancy Wheeler (Natalie Dyer), who now appears to be on Vecna’s radar. Nancy is trapped, at least for the time being, in the Upside Down, with Vecna faulting her for Barb’s death in season one. This is how Vecna gets you, he teases out your guilt, and your fear, and connects directly into your mind. Can Nancy’s friends save her, or can she save herself, before Vecna makes that final, deadly connection?

Things appear at least a little more hopeful for Joyce Byers (Winona Ryder), whose rescue mission with Murray Bauman (Brett Gelman) to break Hopper (David Harbour) out of his Russian prison seems at least initially successful. Meanwhile, Max (Sadie Sink), Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo), Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin), and Erica (Priah Ferguson) have gotten a few of their friends out of the Upside Down, but the battle against Vecna is now entering what appears to be a deadly endgame.

Stranger Things season 4 has been darker and even more ambitious than previous seasons, which is saying a lot for this show. The series has retained its irrepressible spirit, perhaps best embodied by Dustin’s confidence in his own intellect and the general can-do attitude of its young characters, but the scenes inside the Hawkins National Laboratory, to say nothing of Vecna’s murders, have been decidedly darker than anything we’ve seen before. Volume 2 of season 4 is comprised of two feature-length episodes that might provide the kind of closure we’ve long been dreading—that one of the beloved characters we’ve watched grow before our eyes might meet a grim fate.

Check out the trailer below. Volume 2 arrives on July 1.