'Stranger Things' 5: What We Know So Far About The Final Season

Elle

2 days ago

All good things must come to an end—even Stranger Things. The hit Netflix sci-fi thriller, which first arrived in the summer of 2016, will conclude with its fifth season, which has no release date yet. The show's creators, Matt and Ross Duffer, announced the news with a bittersweet letter to fans on February 17, 2022.
'Seven years ago, we planned out the complete story arc for Stranger Things,' they wrote. 'At the time, we predicted the story would last four to five seasons. It proved too large to tell in four, but—as you'll soon see for yourselves—we are now hurtling toward our finale. Season 4 will be the penultimate season; season 5 will be the last.'
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After Stranger Things' season 4 premiered in 2022 (with quite the jam-packed finale), the wait for the next and final chapter continues. Here's what we know so far.
Season 5 will premiere in November 2025, with four episodes coming out on November 26, followed by three episodes on Christmas, and the finale on New Year's Eve, ending a nearly three-year-long wait since season 4.
In May 2023, the Writer's Guild of America voted to strike for fairer wages and other issues facing TV and screenplay writers, such as the use of AI and the 'mini-rooms' that have become the norm, making it far more difficult for writers to earn a living. The Duffer brothers announced via the show's official Twitter account that they would be halting production in support of the WGA and the writers on the picket line, further delaying the release of season 5.
'Duffers here. Writing does not stop when filming begins,' they explained. 'While we're excited to start production with our amazing cast and crew, it is not possible during this strike. We hope a fair deal is reached soon so we can all get back to work. Until then -- over and out. #wgastrong.'
The SAG strike, which ran until November of 2023, also delayed production. Stranger Things reportedly resumed filming in January 2024.
Production began on Jan. 8, 2024, with writers sharing a photo of the cast gathered together with the Duffer Brothers.
Photos taken on Thursday, January 18, and posted by TMZ, show the cast filming in Atlanta, with David Harbour and Winona Ryder coming to set and the kids shooting emotional final scenes for the series. In one picture, Millie Bobby Brown and Finn Wolfhard can be seen having a conversation on top of a hill. Others take place on a radio station set.
They reached the halfway point of filming in July, which Netflix announced with a behind-the-scenes video from set. The footage teases a few things: Vecna is back, the kids are in high school, and there are some pretty massive set pieces. The actors also reflect on their journeys with Stranger Things. Millie Bobby Brown says, 'I started when I was 10. I'm not turning 20 years old. Feels very weird.'
On Dec. 20, 2024, Netflix announced that filming on the final season had wrapped, sharing some adorable behind-the-scenes pics of the cast and crew.
Most of the main cast is expected to return, including Harbour, Millie Bobby Brown (Eleven), Finn Wolfhard (Mike), Noah Schnapp (Will), Natalia Dyer (Nancy), Sadie Sink (Max), Caleb McLaughlin (Lucas), Gaten Matarazzo (Dustin), Joe Keery (Steve), Priah Ferguson (Erica), and Winona Ryder (Joyce). And at least one new cast member will join in season 5, as Netflix announced during its 2023 TUDUM event: Terminator actress Linda Hamilton.
While announcing the halfway point of filming, Netflix also shared three new additions to the Stranger Things 5 cast: Nell Fisher (Bookworm), Jake Connelly (Between the Silence), and Alex Breaux (Waco: The Aftermath).
For her part, Brown is ready to return—but only once more. She admitted to Seventeen that she's eager for season 5 to be her last.
'I'm definitely ready to wrap up,' she said. 'I feel like there's a lot of the story that's been told now. It's been in our lives for a very long time. But I'm very ready to say goodbye to this chapter of my life, and open new ones up.'
Brown added, 'I'm able to create stories myself that are important to me and focus on the bigger picture. But I'm really grateful [for the show].'
But she was a bit mournful when the end finally came. On Friday, December 20, she shared an emotional video in which she is thanking the cast and crew on Instagram, along with a bunch of pictures from her years on set.
'Isn't graduation supposed to bring relief? Like you're glad to leave behind the teachers and classmates. Not me,' she said in the black-and-white video. 'I am nowhere near ready to leave you guys. I love each and every one of you and I will forever carry the memories and bonds we created together as a family. I love you, thank you.'
Brown got teary during her speech and was met with applause and cheers.
How do you sum up this epic story, which transcends dimensions and stretches far beyond the borders of Hawkins, Indiana? The Duffers have a plan; we're just not privy to it yet. We do know one thing, though: Expect tears.
'We do have an outline for season 5 and we pitched it to Netflix and they really responded well to it,' Ross Duffer told The Wrap in May 2022. 'I mean, it was hard. It's the end of the story. I saw executives crying who I've never seen cry before and it was wild.'
Actor David Harbour, who plays Hopper, had previously confirmed to Variety that he'd learned the season 5 ending and thought it 'quite moving and quite beautiful.'
In the Duffer Brothers' February 2022 letter to fans, they added, 'There are still many more exciting stories to tell within the world of Stranger Things; new mysteries, new adventures, new unexpected heroes.' Might that mean a spin-off in the future? 'But first we hope that you stay with us as we finish this tale of a powerful girl named Eleven and her brave friends, of a broken police chief and a ferocious mom, of a small town called Hawkins and an alternate dimension called the Upside Down. As always, we are gracious for your patience and your support.'
The showrunning duo also confirmed there would be no 'reset' going into season 5. Matt Duffer told Empire, 'Usually at the end of a season, we tie things up with a nice bow, before a little tease that says, 'Hold on, something is unraveling.' As we move into season 5, we won't have to do that. There won't be a reset from where we finish this season [season 4].' And the Duffers kept their word: Season 4 ends with a cliffhanger, as the Hawkins crew prepares for one last battle with the Upside Down.
We can also expect Will Byers to come out. As actor Noah Schnapp confirmed to Variety, 'it's 100% clear that he is gay and he does love Mike,' later adding, 'There's so many different things they have to address. Obviously, we hope for a coming out scene, and I also want to see them address this connection to the Mind Flayer and how that fits into the world. And I've always been wondering, why was Will the first victim and the first one captured?'
Vecna isn't necessarily gone for good. Jamie Campbell Bower told NME, 'I don't think he's slunk off licking his wounds in misery. He's rebuilding, and he's out for blood.' He could stronger than ever in season 5.
As for Eleven, we don't know what's going to happen to her in the final season, but Millie Bobby Brown seems to know her character's fate, and it's making fans nervous.
In March 2024, the actress spoke with Capital FM about the series' conclusion. 'I haven't read the end,' she said. 'I know what happens to my character because I kind of forced myself into the writers room.'
'Basically, I messaged the directors, "Can I come over and have a meeting with you?" And then I came over, and there was a whiteboard,' she explained. 'I just saw my ending and thought, "Oooooh," and then I walked away very slowly.'
The internet was nervous about her reaction, believing that Elle may be in for a dark finale.
During Netflix's 2025 preview in January, Matt Duffer said that the final season is 'our most personal story. It was super intense and emotional to film—for us and for our actors. We've been making this show together for almost ten years. There was a lot of crying. There was SO much crying. The show means so much to all of us, and everyone put their hearts and souls into it. And we hope—and believe—that passion will translate to the screen.'
The Stranger Things writers hinted that there'll be eight episodes when they tweeted a photo of a whiteboard separated into eight columns, each numbered from episode 1-8.
They later tweeted the first page of the script for season 5, episode 1 on Nov. 6. It's titled 'Chapter 1: The Crawl.'
The episodes will probably be shorter than season 4's super-sized ones—except for the finale.
'The only reason we don't expect to be as long is, this season [season 4], if you look at it, it's almost a two-hour ramp up before our kids really get drawn into a supernatural mystery. You get to know them, you get to see them in their lives, they're struggling with adapting to high school and so forth, Steve's trying to find a date, all of that. None of that is obviously going to be occurring [in season 5],' Matt Duffer said on the Happy Sad Confused podcast in 2022, per Deadline. When it comes to the series finale, 'We're more likely to do what we did here, which is to just have a 2.5 hour episode,' he added.
During a preview for Netflix's slate in January 2025, Ross said that 'this is our biggest and most ambitious season yet. It's like eight blockbuster movies.'
Netflix teased the episode titles in the video below.
Probably not immediately after the events in season 4, if that's what you're expecting. Ross Duffer told TVLine in 2022, 'I'm sure we will do a time jump.' Which makes sense, given how quickly our lead actors are growing up. 'Ideally, we'd have shot [seasons 4 and 5] back to back,' Ross added, 'but there was just no feasible way to do that.'
Sure enough, the duo confirmed that there will be a one-year time jump between the events in seasons 4 and 5. Season 5 will be set in the fall of 1987.
Yes. We just don't know what it will be about yet. (Though Finn Wolfhard has apparently already figured it out.)
'There's a version of it developing in parallel [to season 5], but they would never shoot it parallel,' Ross Duffer told Variety. 'I think actually we're going to start delving into that soon as we're winding down and finishing these visual effects, Matt and I are going to start getting into it.'
Matt Duffer added, 'It's going to be different than what anyone is expecting, including Netflix.' Intriguing indeed.
During Netflix's 2025 preview, Matt Duffer teased potential spinoffs. 'There are more Stranger Things stories to tell and in the works,' he said. 'It's a bit early at this point to talk about them, but we're deeply involved in every one—it's very important to us that anything with the Stranger Things name on it is of the highest quality and not repetitive—that it has a reason to exist and always blazes its own path. And also, it needs to basically just be... awesome.'
In the meantime, the play Stranger Things: The First Shadow, a prequel about Henry Creel before he became Vecna, is playing on the West End and soon headed to Broadway.
Not yet, but so far, we have a slew of behind-the-scenes photos from production above. The writers gave their very first tease of the script. In November 2023, they shared a snippet from 'Season 5. Chapter 1. Scene 1.'
This story will be updated.
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Erica Gonzales is the Deputy Editor, Culture at ELLE.com, where she oversees coverage on TV, movies, music, books, and more. She was previously an editor at HarpersBAZAAR.com. There is a 75 percent chance she's listening to Lorde right now.