The wait for the fifth and final season of Stranger Things has been in its “excruciating” phase for a while now — it’s been more than three years since Season 4 was released. But thankfully, we now have an end date (or, technically, three) in sight: Netflix has unveiled when Stranger Things Season 5 is premiering.
Here’s everything we know so far about Stranger Things Season 5, from when it’s coming out to who’s going to be in the cast.
Latest Stranger Things Season 5 news
On Sept. 24, Netflix dropped a video reflecting on the show’s past four seasons. The featurette includes footage from Stranger Things Season 1 and highlights the actors’ growth over the years. “I got to watch these kids grow up,” Winona Ryder says. “Which was the biggest gift that this show has given me.” Watch the video below.
When is Stranger Things Season 5 coming out?
At Netflix’s Tudum 2025: The Live Event on May 31, the stars of Stranger Things announced that the fifth and final season will premiere in three parts: on Nov. 26, Christmas, and New Year’s Eve. Four episodes are dropping on Nov. 26, followed by three on Dec. 25, and the finale drops on Dec. 31. Watch the Stranger Things Season 5 date announcement video below.
In July, Netflix revealed that each part will begin streaming at 5 p.m. PT instead of the usual midnight release.
Stranger Things Season 5 trailer
Stranger Things is turning it up to 100. The first teaser trailer for the final season, released in mid-July, doesn’t give us much in the way of plot, but if we’re going based on vibes, we’ll need to take some deep breaths while watching. There’s a glimpse at a plan setting up something that Dustin calls a “burn,” while Steve cranks up some audio equipment outside a radio station. Meanwhile, demodogs, demogorgons, and a familiar face are closing in on the kids, and we get our first look at new cast member Linda Hamilton. Theorize away!
Stranger Things Season 5 production
“We spent a full year filming this season,” said co-creator Ross Duffer at Netflix’s big 2025 hype presentation in January 2025, per Entertainment Weekly. “By the end, we had captured over 650 hours of footage. So, needless to say, this is our biggest and most ambitious season yet. It’s like eight blockbuster movies. It’s pretty insane.”
“It was super intense and emotional to film — for us and for our actors we’ve been with for so long,” added Matt Duffer. “And we’ve been making it together for almost 10 years now. 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 is going to translate to the screen.”
But even though Stranger Things is finally ending, it’s not the the last we’ll see of this universe. The Duffer Brothers already have some spin-offs in the works.
“There are more Stranger Things stories to tell and in the works,” Matt Duffer said at the presentation. “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 — or we need to think it’s awesome. And there are a lot of what we think are awesome things in the pipeline.”
In September 2024, it was announced that Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption, The Walking Dead) had come out of retirement to direct “key” episodes of Stranger Things‘ final season. Variety reported that Darabont would be behind the camera for two installments of Season 5. He joins showrunners the Duffer Brothers and executive producer Shawn Levy as directors this season.
“What really dragged me out of retirement was that my wife and I really love this show,” Darabont told The Daily Beast. “Our content now is so filled with horrible people doing horrible things for greedy reasons but Stranger Things has so much heart. That positivity is something I really responded to.”
In July 2024, Netflix unveiled the first look at Stranger Things Season 5 in the form of a behind-the-scenes video. While nothing too revealing is shown, there’s plenty of narration from the cast to get you excited about what’s to come. “Season 4 was big; Season 5 definitely feels bigger,” says Jamie Campbell Bower.
Production on Stranger Things Season 5 began in January 2024. Netflix shared a photo of the cast and creators in a press release.
Production was delayed in 2023 because of the writers and actors strikes. In May 2023, series creators Matt and Ross Duffer tweeted, “Writing does not stop when filming begins. 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.”
Stranger Things Season 5 cast
The behind-the-scenes video confirmed that the main Hawkins crew will return for Season 5. That includes Jamie Campbell Bower as Vecna, which isn’t too big a surprise considering that we knew the entity was still alive at the end of Season 4. That video was released in tandem with the announcement that the series will add three new cast members in Season 5: Nell Fisher as Holly Wheeler, Alex Breaux as Lt. Akers, and Jake Connelly as Derek Turnbow. They join the previously announced Linda Hamilton as new additions to the cast.
There’s one key name who doesn’t seem to be returning for Season 5: Eduardo Franco, who played Argyle in Season 4, has said he will not appear in Season 5. “I never got a phone call, so I think that’s it,” Franco said in a YouTube interview with Steve Varley in January 2024 (via the Los Angeles Times).
Stranger Things cast members:
Stranger Things Season 5 storyline
At Tudum 2025: The Live Event, Netflix shared the official logline for Stranger Things Season 5: “The fall of 1987. Hawkins is scarred by the opening of the Rifts, and our heroes are united by a single goal: find and kill Vecna. But he has vanished — his whereabouts and plans unknown. Complicating their mission, the government has placed the town under military quarantine and intensified its hunt for Eleven, forcing her back into hiding. As the anniversary of Will’s disappearance approaches, so does a heavy, familiar dread. The final battle is looming — and with it, a darkness more powerful and more deadly than anything they’ve faced before. To end this nightmare, they’ll need everyone — the full party — standing together, one last time.”
At an awards-season panel hosted by Netflix in November 2022, Matt and Ross Duffer said that while previous seasons echoed specific types of ’80s pop culture, Season 5 will have some of everything that made the show what it is. “Five, the way we see it, is kind of a culmination of all the seasons, so it’s sort of got a little bit from each,” Ross Duffer said, according to Variety. “Whereas before each season was so distinctly… [Season] 3 is our big summer blockbuster season with big monsters, and [Season] 4 was the psychological horror. I think that what we’re trying to do is go back to the beginning a little bit, in sort of the tone of [Season] 1.”
They also said that the final season is all about serving the characters who have been around since Season 1 and bringing closure to the mysteries the show has introduced over the years. “It’s important to wrap up those arcs because a lot of these characters have been growing since Season 1,” Ross Duffer told Variety. “So, it’s a balancing act between giving them time to complete their character arcs and also tying up these loose ends and doing our final reveals.”
Writing for Season 2 began on Aug. 2, 2022. The official Stranger Things Twitter account celebrated “Stranger Things Day” on Nov. 6, 2022, by sharing a pic of a Season 5 script, revealing the first episode name: “Chapter One: The Crawl.”
Stranger Things Season 4 explained
If you need a refresher on who Vecna is, how he was created, and what his twisted vision is for the world, TV Guide breaks it all down in this video.
For a breakdown of Season 4, Part 2, TV Guide’s sister site GameSpot explained all of the big moments in the finale and what they mean for Hawkins, and the world, going into Season 5.
Stranger Things Season 4 recap
The world of Stranger Things officially turned Upside Down at the end of Season 4. Vecna is hurt but still very much in charge after using Max to open the fourth and final gate he needed to bring the Upside Down into Hawkins. The opening of the gate left Max in a coma after she was revived by Eleven, and it remains to be seen if she will ever wake up, or if she will even still be the Max we know and love if she does.
The entire crew, including Joyce, Hopper, Jonathan, Mike, Will, Dustin, Erica, Lucas, Eleven, Steve, Robin, and Nancy, has reunited in Indiana after spending the entire season across the country, and even across continents, from each other. They’re facing a huge battle to take back their town from the demon psychic Upside Down overlord. Hawkins has fallen, and it’s going to take every resource they have to save it.
What to watch next
With a multi-year wait between seasons of Stranger Things, there are a lot of epic sci-fi shows to check out in the meantime. Here’s a list of more shows like Stranger Things for you to binge while you wait for new episodes.
Stranger Things Seasons 1-4 are streaming on Netflix.
