Get ready to dive back into the Upside Down. Stranger Things is set for its climactic return, with the final season officially dropping sometime in 2025. Netflix chose Stranger Things Day (November 6th, the fateful day Will Byers vanished in Hawkins) to drop a teaser, giving fans plenty to chew on until the next chapter unfolds.
Back to Hawkins, One Last Time
Fans feared the worst—that the Hollywood actor and writer strikes might push things even further into the future—but the good news is, the show will return next year. What’s more, it’ll come with a time jump. Series co-creator Ross Duffer hinted at this inevitability back in 2022, noting that the young cast has been aging faster than the characters they portray. As much as we love Stranger Things, there’s no de-aging technology that can keep up with adolescence.
The timeline now jumps to the fall of 1987, more than a year after the gang watched the Upside Down rip into Hawkins in the season 4 finale. The final moments saw Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown), Mike (Finn Wolfhard), Will (Noah Schnapp), Hopper (David Harbour), Joyce (Winona Ryder), Nancy (Natalia Dyer), and Jonathan (Charlie Heaton) staring down the reality-bending chaos from a field. Max (Sadie Sink), meanwhile, remains hospitalized, and she’s staying tight-lipped about her role next season—although Sink did tease, “They love having me run. That’s all I’ll say.”
Episode Titles Tease the Mayhem Ahead
Alongside the release date and time jump confirmation, Netflix offered a juicy reveal of the upcoming episode titles. The eight-episode run will kick off with “The Crawl,” followed by a partially redacted title, “The Vanishing of…” for episode 2. The remaining episodes are intriguingly named: “The Turnbow Trap,” “Sorcerer,” “Shock Jock,” “Escape From Camazotz,” “The Bridge,” and “The Rightside Up.”
An Emotional Farewell
The final season promises to be an emotional rollercoaster for both cast and fans. During a recent New York Comic Con live taping of the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Harbour shared just how intense the series finale table read was. “About halfway through, people started crying,” he admitted. “By the end, it was waves of uncontrollable tears from different people.” The end is already hitting hard, even before the cameras stop rolling.
The fifth season will also see the return of Caleb McLaughlin, Gaten Matarazzo, Joe Keery, Maya Hawke, Brett Gilman, Priah Ferguson, Jamie Campbell Bower, Cara Buono, and Amybeth McNulty. Newcomers include Linda Hamilton—because why not bring in a Terminator legend for the final showdown?
Vecna actor Jamie Campbell Bower hinted at the scale of the final showdown, saying, “If season 4 was big, season 5 definitely feels bigger.” Considering the massive events of season 4, that’s a pretty bold statement—so buckle up, because Hawkins is about to get even stranger.
Looks like we’ll all be ugly crying when 2025 rolls around—just like the cast.
