Everything to Know About Stranger Things Season Five

Stranger Things fans have reason to celebrate. On, November 6, 2024, Netflix announced that the series’s highly anticipated fifth and final season will debut in fall 2025—not 2026, as had previously been rumored. The news was shared on “Stranger Things Day”—the day Will Byers (Noah Schnapp) was abducted into the Upside Down—alongside a short teaser revealing the season’s episode titles.

The episodes are listed as follows: “The Crawl,” “The Vanishing of _____,” “The Turnbow Trap,” “Sorcerer,” “Shock Jock,” “Escape From Camazot,” “The Bridge,” and “The Rightside Up.” Of course, there’s a bit of suspense behind the second episode (who exactly is vanishing?), but there are some clues as to how the rest of the season will pan out.

In July 2025, Netflix released a second teaser for the upcoming season. It kicks off with scenes of a troubled Hawkins: cracked streets, military checkpoints, and quarantined zones. Mike, Will, Lucas, Dustin, Joyce, Hopper, Eleven, and Max reunite to “find and kill Vecna,” even as his whereabouts remain a mystery. Ultimately, Vecna emerges into Hawkins, a signal that the final confrontation has begun.

What is the plot of Stranger Things season five?

The initial teaser confirmed that the fifth season will pick up “in the fall of 1987,” jumping well over a year from the spring of 1986 when season four concluded. Fans will remember that the penultimate season concluded with a feature film-length episode (almost two and a half hours long) that saw Vecna emerge as a major villain as he opened a gate to the Upside Down that altered Hawkins forever.

“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,” the official synopsis reads. “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.”

The cast and crew have largely remained tight-lipped about how the final season will pan out. However, during a November 2024 interview, David Harbour (Jim) teased an emotional ending to the series. “The end of this episode when we were reading it—just us reading it—about halfway through, people started crying,” he said. “Then about the last 20 minutes, it was just uncontrollably crying, waves of different people.”

Who is in the Stranger Things season five cast?

Principal cast members Millie Bobby Brown, Finn Wolfhard, Harbour, Winona Ryder, Natalia Dyer, Sadie Sink, and Charlie Heaton will return for the fifth and final season. New additions include Nell Fisher, Jake Connelly, Alex Breaux, and 1980s icon Linda Hamilton.

When will Stranger Things season five be released?

Stranger Things season five begins streaming via Netflix starting November 26.

Volume 1 will contain four episodes. Volume 2, scheduled to release on December 25, contains three episodes. The series finale will premiere on New Year’s Eve.