“Stranger Things” Season 5: Everything to Know

It’s almost time to head back to Hawkins.

The long-awaited fifth and final season of Stranger Things is approaching, with the countdown to the November 26 premiere on Netflix. The upcoming installment of the sci-fi action series will be its last, as creators Matt and Ross Duffer previously confirmed in a letter to fans in February 2022.

“Seven years ago we planned the whole story Stranger Things. At the time, we predicted the story would run for four to five seasons,” they wrote at the time. “It turned out to be too big to be told in four, but – as you’ll soon see for yourself – we’re now hurtling towards our final.”

To talk to Amount in January 2025 that the series ends, Finn Wolfhardwho plays Mike Wheeler, compared it to saying goodbye to his childhood.

“Everyone had a long journey and shared it together,” he said. “My whole childhood was there. It was like Toy Story 3 moment when you leave your toys behind. It was really special.”

Now that Stranger Things is running up the hill for its final season, the cast and creators have teased what’s to come, including episode titles and premiere dates.

Here’s everything we know about it Stranger Things season 5.

What actors are coming back for Stranger Things season 5?

In January 2024, Netflix announced as the show had started production for the final season, share a cast member photo and confirm who would be returning.

Recurring main cast members include Winona Ryder, David HarborFinn Wolfhard, Millie Bobby BrownGaten Matarazzo, Caleb McLaughlin, Natalia Dyer, Charlie Heaton, Noah Schnapp, Sadie Sink, Joe Keery and Maya Hawke.

The cast also included Brett Gelman, Priah Ferguson, Cara Buono, Amybeth McNulty and Jamie Campbell Bower, the latter joining the cast in season 4 as the villain of the series, Vecna.

Hawke told PEOPLE in June 2024 that filming the final season had been “crushing” for her, even though she was a relatively recent addition to the cast.

“I mean, it’s the end of a really long journey. Longer for some of my co-stars, even, than for me. It’s really sentimental,” she said. “We’re shooting for a long time, so it’s reviving (giving) the joy and finding it every day and making it new. It’s a really fun thing to do.”

Who joins the cast Stranger Things season 5?

In June 2023, Netflix announced that Linda Hamilton will join the cast of Stranger Things for the fifth and final season.

Like I said, it Duffer Brothers revealed in August 2022 that they were doing their best not adding new characters into the new season and pay attention to finishing the stories of the current players.

“We’re doing our best to resist (adding new characters) for Season 5,” Matt said IndieWire. “We’re trying not to do that so we can focus on the OG characters, I guess.”

Ross added, “We have a great cast of characters here and actors, and every moment we spend with a new character, we’re taking time away from one of the other actors.”

In addition to Hamilton, Nell Fisher, Jake Connelly and Alex Breaux have also done it added to the cast of the fifth season.

What’s coming Stranger Things season 5 about?

In the fifth season, the Hawkins heroes are on the hunt for Vecna, who “has disappeared – his whereabouts and plans are unknown.”

“Complicating their mission, the government has placed the city under military quarantine and intensified its hunt for Eleven, forcing her back into hiding,” the official said. plot synopsis. “As the anniversary of Will’s disappearance approaches, so does a heavy, familiar fear. The final battle looms—and with it, a darkness more powerful and more deadly than anything they’ve faced before. To end this nightmare, they need everyone—the entire party—to stand together, one last time.”

The Duffer brothers have teased their endgame for the show in previous interviews, and it sounds emotional. In a conversation with TheWrapRoss revealed that Netflix executives were getting emotional about their plans for Season 5.

“We have an outline for Season 5 and we pitched it to Netflix and they responded really well to it,” he said. “I mean, it was hard. That’s the end of the story. I saw managers cry like I’ve never seen cry before and it was wild.”

In May 2022, Harbor said Amount to he knows how the series ends and “it’s quite moving and quite beautiful.” Two years later, the actor described the series finale as “best episode they ever did” while displayed on Happy Sad Confused podcast in October 2024.

“The end of this episode, when we read it — just we read it — about halfway through, people started crying,” he said. “Then, for about the last 20 minutes, it was just uncontrollable crying, waves of different people.”

More recently, in January 2025, Matt said in a press release that the upcoming season will be “intense from start to finish“, but Ross added that it “will also feel familiar.”

“This season is the biggest ever in scale, but everyone is back together in Hawkins and interacting the same way they were in Season 1,” he said.

When will come Stranger Things season 5 be ready?

The show’s creators announced it earlier season 5 will feature a time jump to more accurately depict their young stars who have grown up before the viewers’ eyes during the course of the program.

“Ideally we would have shot (seasons 4 and 5) back to back, but there was just no feasible way to do that,” Ross said TVLine. “So these are all the discussions we’ll have with our writers when we launch the room.”

In November 2024, Netflix’s teaser for first season 5 revealed that the show will be set in the fall of 1987—a less significant time jump than fans expected, given that season 4 was set in the spring of 1986.

How many episodes will there be Stranger Things season 5 has?

In the Duffer brothers’ interview with TheWrap, they teased that Season 5 won’t be as long as Season 4, which clocks in at about 13 hours long.

“I don’t think it will be that long,” Matt said. “The last ones will be more like one Return of the Jedi in it … they go from the beginning. There will be less rise. And I think people will understand what I’m talking about when they see the end of this season. It’s like we just go.”

Matt’s initial predictions eventually proved true. In November 2024, Tumdu announced that Season 5 will consist of eight episodes. A teaser confirmed episode titles for Season 5, including:

• Episode 1: “The Crawl”
• Episode 2: “The Vanishing of …”
• Episode 3: “The Turnbow Trap”
• Episode 4: “Sorcerers”
• Episode 5: “Shock Jock”
• Episode 6: “Escape From Camazotz”
• Episode 7: “The Bridge”
• Episode 8: “The Rightside Up.”

In October 2025 Instagram post, Ross shared the run time of the first four episodes.

The season premiere will run for one hour and eight minutes, with episode 2 running at 54 minutes. Episode 3’s running time is one hour and 6 minutes, and the fourth episode is one hour and 23 minutes.

When did it Stranger Things season 5 movie?

In August 2022, Stranger Things author’s room X account teased that they were starting the script for season 5 when they posted “Day 1” along with a photo of a whiteboard with the words “Stranger Things 5.”

Although the recording was originally planned for starts summer 2023it was postponed due to the writers’ strike.

In January 2024, Netflix announced that production had officially begun and shared a black and white photo of the entire cast. Almost a year later, filming wrapped in December 2024, and several members of the cast shared their thoughts on social media.

Alongside photos of the actor over the years, Wolfhard wrote in one Instagram post, “We just wrapped up Stranger Things Season 5. I’m still in shock. We shot it for a year and I’m going to miss all my friends and our characters terribly.”

When will come Stranger Things season 5 premiere?

Season 5’s eight episodes will be released on Netflix in three volumes.

The first four episodes will be released on November 26, followed by three episodes on Christmas Day and the series finale on New Year’s Eve. Each volume premieres at 8pm ET.

According to Tumduthe final episode will also be shown in select theaters across the United States and Canada, while also premiering on Netflix. The shows run until the next day, January 1, 2026.

In honor of Stranger Things Day on November 6, the streamer was released the first five minutes of the season 5 premiere.

Will there be any Stranger Things spinoffs?

While season 5 is the end of Stranger Thingsit’s not the end of the franchise. Hawkins’ horrors came to life on stage with Stranger Things: The First Shadow. The play debuted in London’s West End in December 2024, before transferring to Broadway in April 2025.

In November 2025, Netflix announced a new animated spinoff, Stranger Things: Tales From ’85which will debut in 2026. The Duffer Brothers will produce the series, which will take place between seasons 2 and 3.

“Welcome back to Hawkins during the harsh winter of 1985, where the original characters must battle new monsters and unravel a paranormal mystery terrorizing their town,” reads the official description.

Matt added in one message reveals the spinoff, “The idea was kind of to evoke an ’80s cartoon feel.”

The Duffer Brothers before teased a potential spinoff idea 2022. “There’s a version of it that runs parallel (to Season 5), but they were never going to shoot it parallel,” Ross said Amount. “I think we’re actually going to start delving into that soon, as we’re winding down and finishing these visual effects, Matt and I are going to start going into it.”

Although they have kept quiet about the plot of the spinoff, Stranger Things star Wolfhard is already in on the secret after he correctly guessed what the new series would be. “Finn Wolfhard, he didn’t splutter, he just said, ‘I think this would be a cool spin-off,'” Ross recounted. “And we were like, ‘How the hell…'”

In October 2025, the Duffer Brothers gave an update on the series, teasing that there would be a “connective tissue” between Stranger Things and the spinoff.

“You start with new characters – it’s like a clean slate. You’re not tied down in any knots. There’s something refreshing about that,” Matt told Amount.