'Stranger Things' Season 4 Starts in Eleven's Past (Watch)

You already know that Stranger Things Season 4 will be split into two volumes, with the first dropping on May 27 and then the second streaming on July 1. Now, Netflix has confirmed the episode count for each volume: The first seven episodes of the nine-episode season will hit first, followed by the final two chapters in July. And as an added bonus, the streamer has released the opening to the season a week early. You can watch those first eight minutes below.

Stranger Things Season 4 picks up a few months after the events of Season 3, with Joyce (Winona Ryder), Jonathan, (Charlie Heaton), Will (Noah Schnapp), and Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) living in California, while the kids back in Hawkins are adjusting to high school without some of their friends. However, the details of how life has changed remain to be seen when the show launches on May 27, as the opening sequence focuses on Papa (Matthew Modine) and his experiments in the National Laboratory as he works with a new subject to gain information on Eleven. 

But this sequence is actually in the past, as Eleven is still a young subject under Papa's care in it. Because in Season 4, to get answers about how to save Hawkins' future, they will have to understand its past.

The season also stars David Harbour, Finn Wolfhard, Caleb McLaughlin, Gaten Matarazzo, Sadie Sink, Natalia Dyer, Joe Keery, Maya Hawke, Priah Ferguson, Brett Gelman, and Cara Buono, with Jamie Campbell Bower, Joseph Quinn, Eduardo Franco, Sherman Augustus, Mason Dye, Nikola Djuricko, Tom Wlaschiha, Myles Truitt, Regina Ting Chen, Grace Van Dien, Logan Riley Bruner, Logan Allen, Elodie Grace Orkin), John Reynolds, Rob Morgan, Amybeth McNulty, Paul Reiser, and Robert Englund. 

Stranger Things was created by Matt and Ross Duffer who executive produce alongside Iain Paterson, Shawn Levy, Dan Cohen, and Curtis Gwinn. The Duffers also direct five episodes across both halves of the season (Episodes 401, 402, 407, 408, and 409), while Levy directs Episodes 403 and 404, and Nimród Antal directs Episodes 405 and 406.

Stranger Things has a Metascore of 75 and has already been renewed for a fifth and final season.