"Stranger Things," Season 5: what is known about the finale of the cult series

On Wednesday, November 26, the fifth season of the series "Stranger Things" will premiere on the Netflix platform. He will be the last in the Duffer brothers' sci-fi saga. Izvestia tells us what awaits the audience and which episodes should be reviewed on the eve of the grand denouement.

"Stranger Things" Season 5 — release date, how many episodes

The final season of Stranger Things will have eight episodes. The season itself will be divided into three parts: four episodes in the first, three in the second and a grand finale lasting 2 hours and 20 minutes.

Release dates for episodes of season 5 of Stranger Things:

• Part 1 — November 26th;
• Part 2 — December 25th;
• The final is on December 31.

Filming of the fifth season was supposed to begin as early as 2023, but due to large-scale strikes by the unions of screenwriters and actors, work on the show had to be postponed. As a result, the filming process started only in January 2024 and ended in December.

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The titles of all upcoming episodes are also known.:

• The Crawl;
• The Vanishing of Holly Wheeler;
• The Turnbow Trap;
• The Sorcerer ("The Sorcerer");
• Shock Jock ("Shock Jock");
• Escape From Camazotz ("Escape from Camazotz");
• The Bridge;
• The Rightside Up.

What were the previous seasons of "Stranger Things" about (contains spoilers)

The plot of the first season takes place in the 1980s in the small American town of Hawkins. One evening, 12-year-old Will Byers mysteriously disappears. His friends Mike Wheeler (Finn Wolfhard), Lucas Sinclair (Caleb McLaughlin) and Dustin Henderson (Gaten Matarazzo) begin their own investigation, during which they meet Eleven or Odie (Millie Bobby Brown), a girl with superpowers who escaped from a secret laboratory. Together, they manage to find out that Will's disappearance is connected to the Inside — a parallel dimension, a portal to which has opened due to the experiments of scientists. Thanks to Odie's help, the guys bring Will back and stop the Demogorgon monster from the Wrong Side.

In the second season, the characters are once again confronted with the horrors of the Inside Out — a creature named the Mind Torturer is trying to get into Hawkins. To stop the invasion of otherworldly creatures, Mike, Lucas, Dustin, Will and Eleven team up with Will's mother Joyce (Winona Ryder) and Sheriff Jim Hopper (David Harbour). New local high school student Maxine Mayfield (Sadie Sink), high school student Steve Harrington (Joe Keary) and his girlfriend, aspiring journalist Nancy Wheeler (Natalia Dyer), also join the team to save the world.

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In the third season, the characters learn that another secret laboratory is located under the new Starcourt shopping center. In it, Soviet spies also try to get closer to the secrets of the Underside. They are building a new gateway to a parallel world, releasing the Torturer of the Mind, locked inside out by the Eleventh. The portal manages to be destroyed, but Sheriff Hopper is killed in an explosion in the laboratory.

In the fourth season, the Eleventh, along with the Byers family, tries to start a new life in another city. However, it turns out that the threat from the Inside has not disappeared. Old friends have to team up again to save the residents of Hawkins from Vecna (Jamie Campbell), an otherworldly being who penetrates people's minds through their fears and regrets. At the same time, the surviving Hopper is trying to escape from a Soviet prison and return to Hawkins. But despite all the efforts of the heroes, the Underside breaks out and begins to engulf the city.

What will season 5 of Stranger Things be about?

The events of the fifth season of Stranger Things will begin a year after the Hawkins disaster. The underside continues to seep to the surface, and the military is active in the city. The eleventh has to go into hiding because the government has declared her a national threat. The heroes will have to come together again to defeat Vecna and finally destroy the Wrong Side.

According to series creators Matt and Ross Duffer, the fifth season promises to be even bigger and darker than the previous one.

"Our goal is to raise the stakes each time according to the age of the characters and the audience. At the same time, younger viewers are constantly coming to us. We hope their parents won't be mad at us too much," Ross Duffer said in an interview with The Times.

In turn, Matt Duffer noted that in the finale, viewers will face the most "brutal death of the entire show."

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New bright characters in the fifth season of "Very strange cases" should not be expected. Nevertheless, the cast will be replenished with new faces — Nell Fisher, Jake Connelly and Alex Bro. In addition, Linda Hamilton, known for her portrayal of Sarah Connor from Terminator, will appear in the series. It is known that she will play the role of Dr. Kay, but the details of her participation in the plot are still a secret.

Which episodes of "Very Strange Cases" to review before season 5

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, The Duffer brothers advised fans to review the first seasons of Stranger Things, as they are directly related to the finale. The creators of the show also named several key episodes, which mention important details for understanding what is happening. These include:

• "Will the Wise" — Season 2, episode 4;
• "The Spy" — Season 2, episode 4;
• "The Massacre at Hawkins Lab" — Season 4, episode 7;
• "Penetration" (The Piggyback) — Season 4, episode 9.

According to the scriptwriters, it was in the second season that they began to consistently develop the mythology from the Inside Out, so it is key to understanding the finale, whereas the episode "The Hawkin Laboratory Massacre" contains important information about the Mystery.

"It was to these seasons (the first and second — Ed.) that we turned most often, because we wanted everything to be cyclical and closed. In the early seasons, we created a lot of mysteries that we deliberately didn't answer," Ross Duffer is quoted as saying by The Hollywood Reporter.

Previously, the TV series "The Word of a Kid. Blood on Asphalt" became the best TV series at the Richmond International Film Festival 2025.

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