The fifth and final season of the American science fiction horror drama television series Stranger Things, marketed as Stranger Things 5, was released on the streaming service Netflix. The season, which will consist of eight episodes, is being released in three parts. The first volume premiered on November 26, 2025, with the second slated for December 25 and the finale scheduled for December 31. The season was produced by the show's creators, the Duffer Brothers, along with Shawn Levy and Dan Cohen.

The season stars Winona Ryder, David Harbour, Finn Wolfhard, Millie Bobby Brown, Gaten Matarazzo, Caleb McLaughlin, Noah Schnapp, Sadie Sink, Natalia Dyer, Charlie Heaton, Joe Keery, Maya Hawke, Priah Ferguson, Brett Gelman, Cara Buono, Linda Hamilton, and Jamie Campbell Bower. Joe Chrest, Jake Connelly, Amybeth McNulty, Nell Fisher, Sherman Augustus, Alex Breaux, and Linnea Berthelsen appear in recurring roles.

Premise

After the events of the fourth season, in the fall of 1987, the group seeks to find and kill Vecna following the opening of rifts throughout Hawkins. Their mission becomes more complicated when the military arrives in town and begins hunting Eleven. As the anniversary of Will Byers' disappearance approaches, the group must unite for a final battle against a new deadly threat.

Cast and characters

Main

• Winona Ryder as Joyce Byers

  • Birdy as young Joyce

• David Harbour as Jim Hopper

• Millie Bobby Brown as Eleven / Jane Hopper

• Finn Wolfhard as Mike Wheeler

  • Max Rackenberg as young Mike

• Gaten Matarazzo as Dustin Henderson

• Caleb McLaughlin as Lucas Sinclair

• Noah Schnapp as Will Byers

  • Luke Kokotek as 12-year-old Will

  • Miles Marthaller as kindergarten-age Will

• Sadie Sink as Max Mayfield

• Natalia Dyer as Nancy Wheeler

• Charlie Heaton as Jonathan Byers

  • Graham Harvey as young Jonathan

• Joe Keery as Steve Harrington

• Maya Hawke as Robin Buckley

• Brett Gelman as Murray Bauman

• Priah Ferguson as Erica Sinclair

• Linda Hamilton as Dr. Kay

• Cara Buono as Karen Wheeler

• Jamie Campbell Bower as Vecna / Henry Creel / One / Mr. Whatsit

Also starring

• Sherman Augustus as Lt. Colonel Jack Sullivan

• Alex Breaux as Lt. Robert Akers

• Amybeth McNulty as Vickie Dunne

• Jake Connelly as Derek Turnbow

• Nell Fisher as Holly Wheeler

• Joe Chrest as Ted Wheeler

Recurring

• Emanuel Borria as Sergeant Luis Ramirez

• Calista Craig as Mary

• Hope Hynes Love as Miss Harris

• Eden Stephens as Debbie Miller

• Gianlucca Gazzo as Glenn

• Carson Minniear as Thomas

Guest

• Clayton Royal Johnson as Andy

• Hunter Romanillos as Chance

• Chantell D. Christopher as Doris

• Randy Havens as Scott Clarke

• Caroline Elle Abrams as Tina Turnbow

• Gray Hawks as Mr. Turnbow

• Kelly Collins Lintz as Mrs. Turnbow

• Linnea Berthelsen as Kali Prasad / Eight

• Birdie Borria as Rebecca

• Aiden Armstrong as Danny Harrington

• Kyle Riggs as Private Chapman

Episodes

"Chapter One: The Crawl"

While hiding in the Upside Down in 1983,[a] Will is caught by Vecna and infected by a tentacle. In 1987, 19 months after the Rifts incident,[b] a contingent of the US military, led by Dr. Kay and Lt. Akers, have placed Hawkins under quarantine and created a base camp within the Upside Down while still on the hunt for Eleven, who trains in hiding with Hopper and Joyce. Will, Lucas, and Mike lay low during the military occupation, though Dustin continues to honor Eddie, to the provocation of the school basketball team. Steve, Robin, Jonathan, and Nancy work at a local radio station, where they relay coded messages to the group about opportunities to sneak Hopper into the Upside Down, that they call "crawls", to find Vecna's hideout. Dustin is viciously beaten at Eddie's grave, causing him to miss the next "crawl", which goes awry when a Demogorgon attacks a military caravan, forcing Hopper to take shelter within the Upside Down. Will telepathically witnesses the attack and sees the Demogorgon head towards the Wheeler residence just as it tears open a gate in the bedroom of Mike and Nancy's younger sister Holly.

"Chapter Two: The Vanishing of Holly Wheeler"

The Demogorgon attacks and severely injures Mike and Nancy's parents, Karen and Ted, before disappearing with Holly to the Upside Down. Eleven follows the Demogorgon through a gate into the Upside Down and finds Hopper. The two then search for Holly until they encounter a giant wall surrounding the edge of Hawkins. Jonathan accuses Steve of competing for Nancy's attention before a bloodied Dustin finds them, while Lucas continues tending to a comatose Max in hopes she will wake up. As Karen and Ted remain hospitalized, Nancy and Mike theorize that "Mr. Whatsit", Holly's imaginary friend, may have been real and involved in Holly's disappearance. Robin proposes using Will's telepathic link to Vecna's hive mind to track Holly in the Upside Down. Karen informs Nancy and Mike that Mr. Whatsit's first name is Henry, who they realize is Vecna's human form. Will discovers that his earlier visions were actually from Vecna's point of view as he stalked Holly, realizing he can know Vecna's targets before they are taken.

"Chapter Three: The Turnbow Trap"

Vecna targets Holly's classmate and bully, Derek Turnbow, as his next victim. Hopper and Eleven fail to break through the massive wall and are ambushed by soldiers, but manage to overpower them. Hopper and Eleven interrogate Lt. Akers, concluding that Dr. Kay is holding Vecna at the base. Will, Nancy, and Mike inform the group that Vecna lured Holly by claiming he was her imaginary friend, prompting them to devise a plan to use Derek as bait to trap the Demogorgon, and implant a tracker in it to reach Holly before more children are taken. The group arms themselves using weapons smuggled in by Murray and enlists Erica to drug Derek and his family. The team splits up, transporting the unconscious family to an abandoned barn while converting Derek's house into a trap for the Demogorgon. The plan unravels when Derek wakes up and Will realizes the Demogorgon has located his group. Meanwhile, Holly finds herself in Henry's childhood home. In a nearby forest, she encounters Max.

"Chapter Four: Sorcerer"

Hopper and Eleven infiltrate the military base intending to kill Vecna. They defeat Dr. Kay and her soldiers, discovering that the captive inside is Kali, the only other surviving Hawkins Lab subject. Max explains to Holly that they are trapped inside Vecna's memories, nicknamed "Camazotz" by Holly, where Max has remained ever since her brief death. Will's group is attacked by a Demogorgon until Dustin, Steve, Nancy, and Jonathan chase it into the Upside Down. Meanwhile, the military detains children in Hawkins who could be potential victims. Will experiences a vision of Holly and three other children being restrained by tentacles, and empty spots for eight more. Will's group infiltrates the base to smuggle the children out of Hawkins. However, Demogorgons and Vecna burst from the Upside Down, slaughter most of the soldiers at the Hawkins base, and kidnap Vecna's targets, including Derek. Before retreating back into the Upside Down, Vecna tells Will that he intends to use the children, whom he calls "perfect vessels", to reshape the world. Will then unlocks psychic abilities to save Mike, Lucas, and Robin from being killed by the Demogorgons.

Afterthoughts

I signed up for a brand new Netflix subscription just to binge-watch this final season of Stranger Things over the next month. 

This season opens with a reminder that the four year anniversary of Will Byers abduction by Vecna in the Upside Down is quickly approaching since that occurred at the start of the series back in 1983 while the present day story is currently taking place in 1987. Right off the bat, that's my biggest goddamn disconnect with this show at this point. All of these so-called kids are clearly in their early to mid-20s (and older with their older siblings) while the actors playing their parents are in their 50s now since so much has transpired between filming seasons. There is no way I can believe that only four years have passed in total over the duration of this story. The only saving grace is that the costume department has improved for this season where most of the kids aren't trying to fit into clothing they wore when they were literally kids in the last two seasons. That being said, the hairstyles are still comically bad, with Lucas having the worst of the bunch. Whoever thought his hairline and line-up looked good needs to be slapped. At least Will finally abandoned the cereal bowl haircut this season though. It would have worked if he kept it to play even more into the Dragon Ball Z Gohan comparisons. 

This season has a weird regression in terms of the character relationships that was annoying me to no end watching these four episodes play out. 

Hopper and Eleven are back to bickering back and forth since he's slotted back into overprotective parent mode while Eleven is gung-ho about pushing her powers to the limit to end all of this, no matter the cost nor the risk. I thought Elle was being more careful about all of this once she thought Hopper was dead, only for both of them to fall back into these roles that feels like character regression instead of advancement just to pad screentime. 

Dustin and Steve are back to arguing, but not in their usual love-hate way of their friendship. Instead, it is flat out animosity and it just sucks. Steve is supposed to be Dustin's best friend and not a single one of the kids nor Steve want to help Dustin process his grief over losing Eddie last season. They call him crazy behind his back and mock the idea that he wants to keep Hellfire alive. It is even more jarring to me that no one questions his story about falling off his bike and missing the "crawl" when he was beaten up by the jocks from the school basketball team. I know that I wouldn’t want friends like these. 

Jonathan and Nancy's relationship has been deteriorating for about two seasons now and it's a sad state of affairs to see that Jonathan is reduced to trying to compete with Steve for her affection in some pathetic display of machismo/masculinity. It's even worse when Murray suggests that he proposes to her. I hate to say it but I feel that Jonathan needs to get killed off by the end of this. Nancy is already being haunted by the potential future that Vecna showed her and parts of it are already coming true. Her parents narrowly survived the Demogorgon attack at their home and her sister Holly was the first of many children taken through a gate into the Upside Down. I think killing off Jonathan would be another haunting reminder that Vecna's plans for the future are coming true. Call me heartless, but Jonathan's character is worthless at this point. He failed as any sort of emotional support nor tether to his brother Will and he isn't anywhere as resourceful as Robin, Steve, nor Nancy out of the teenage group. Killing him off at this point would be like ripping off the band-aid. He got his moment to be with Nancy like people wanted back in Season 1-2 and it clearly didn't work out. Killing him off would leave the door open for Nancy and a much more mature Steve to get back together. 

Episode 1 reminded me how much I hated the Wheeler parents. Out of everything that has happened in Hawkins to date, they are still neglectful and careless when it comes to their kids' whereabouts. Let's not forget that Karen was enamored with Max's stepbrother, Billy Hargrove, and barely fought the temptation to have an affair with him. Ted Wheeler is just as bad as he seems to care more about his golfing than his own family since it's obvious that Karen just married him for his social standing than for actual love. I love how the Demogorgon attacked him and Ted wasn't seen for the remainder of these 2-3 episodes, yet Karen is given her own Ellen Ripley moment of fighting this "alien" to protect her daughter. For as much this show tends to dial back almost any sort of major display of masculinity, I was surprised that they didn't let Karen flat out kill the thing if I'm perfectly honest. The fact that she was able to damage it enough to force it to flee and bleed out is insane in hindsight when military soldiers with specialized training who have been studying these goddamn creatures were being decimated in the finale of Episode 4. Talk about glazing your female characters... 

Speaking of glazing female characters, I have to give Nell Fisher her flowers for taking on the role as the new actress to play Holly Wheeler in this season. (Laughs) I totally forgot that Mike and Nancy even had a goddamn sister until this season started. That's how forgettable that character was. The change of actresses reminds me of how Boy Meets World changed actresses for Cory and Eric's little sister to the point where they had to make an open joke about her lack of screen time. That being said, Fisher is so expressive and great to watch with what they have given her to work with in this season. She is definitely going to be the child star to walk away from this final season a bigger star than she was coming into it. Netflix recently shared her audition tape on their website for those interested in that kind of stuff. 

This isn't the only moment either when Nancy's able to force the second one to flee while the group is protecting the Turnbow group, yet the soldiers emptying clips of machine gun and gatling gun fire at these things and can’t kill a single one of them. The stupidity of how the military and citizens that aren't the main cast of characters in Hawkins is outright puzzling in terms of how they are portrayed in the first part of this season. You're telling me that highly trained soldiers can't beat these things when an ordinary housewife and some kids are able to fatally wound one of these things with a broken wine bottle and some common weapons found around their homes? I don't understand how these soldiers, who have been allegedly studying the creatures in the Upside-Down (as proven by Dr. Kay's encounter with Eleven and Hopper) and know what their weaknesses are, can't kill the Demogorgons when facing them in Episode 4. They couldn't even deal with the single one that attacked their convo that Hopper was hiding in. How incompetent the military comes across as here is inexcusable, especially when they are framed as these new players who are supposed to be presented as much of a threat as Vecna. Instead, they come across as cannon fodder who are just there to be the majority of the victims to Vecna's attacks in this season. 

That level of inconsistency doesn't make a lick of damn sense to me and comes off as lazy, silly writing for this season. It was bad enough in terms of how drastically the tone shifts from the end of Season 4 to the start of Season 5. We went from hell opening up on this town and the horrors of the Upside-Down being unleashed to everything being just fine at the start of the season with the people of Hawkins still in denial of all of this shit? I can understand doing a time skip between seasons, but doing one from where Season 4 ended to now doesn't make a shred of narrative sense outside of explaining how come the kid actors look so much older in this final season. 

I would like to assume that the writers thought that they wanted to echo what happened in real life across the several years between seasons that everyone experienced the COVID-19 pandemic and the accompanying lockdowns. It is jarring that the people of Hawkins didn't show any resistance to this quarantine and military takeover. They just go along with all of this and don't question anything even after seeing hell unleashed on the town. Nope, the military came in and put metal plates over the rifts all over town. The season opens with kids playing all over the metal plates and sliding down them without a care in the world. It creates this massive disconnect whether you have kept up with this show four seasons deep or not. It makes your viewers feel like they missed something since the last time we saw these characters when we really haven’t. It feels like the Duffer Brothers didn’t know how to continue from how/where they ended Season 4 and wanted to do a soft retcon at the start of this season to make up for it instead.

How in the world are these kids going to avoid jail time for destroying the Turnbow family's home with an array of traps that would make any fans of Home Alone rejoice AND drugging them? Let's not forget that Robin and Will stole the drugs from the hospital too. If Robin's not in enough hot water with her lesbian girlfriend for standing her up/cancelling their dates in favor of their shenanigans in the Upside-Down, then what is going to happen if the hospital gets wind of the missing medicine/drugs and that costs her girlfriend to lose her job? There's a lot of stuff like this going on where no one isn't thinking about the consequences and it comes off as both careless AND even more lazy writing. 

Here's another question for you to think about. If Will is so tethered/connected to Vecna and his hive mind, then why isn't anyone considering that he feels their pain too? We saw several examples of this throughout this first part where they were dealing damage to the Demogorgon(s) and Will was feeling their pain while in close proximity. If pushed too far, Will AND everyone connected to the hive mind (including Holly and Max) could potentially die when Vecna and his minions are destroyed/killed. It's something that I am surprised that more people aren't considering. Vecna (and potentially the Mind Flayer or whoever/whatever is the "true" puppet master) could use this as their final hail Mary play to clear all of the chess pieces off of the board to force everyone to lose if he can't win. In a sense, this could be Vecna's "insurance policy" to ensure his victory this time around. Eleven wouldn't dare attempt to kill Vecna if all of these innocent lives are hanging in the balance.

CONCERNS:

• I guarantee that I will barf if this entire journey to kill Vecna and stop whatever his master plan is with the Upside-Down ends with everyone holding hands and beating him (or whoever is the big bad at the end) with the Carebear Stare and the power of friendship. The more I see here, the more I feel like we are heading in that direction.

• Robin is still my favorite character out of the entire cast. She takes on the role of a shock jock of sorts for Hawkins as she acts the provider to justify the massive info dump in the first episode to explain what has happened since the end of Season 4 where Hawkins was split open by Vecna, allowing the Upside Down to pour into the town unchecked.

  • That proves to be wrong after a few months have passed with the military sealing those rifts with steel plates and quarantining the entire town within their military occupation. 

    • They have established a base of operations for studying the Upside-Down.

  • She takes on the role as a mentor to Will. I found it highly ironic that they paired the best and worst written LGBTQ+ characters together and it works to rehab how badly Will had been written over the last two seasons. 

  • My only concern about Will’s LGBTQ+ journey in this season is how are they going to conclude it. Mike clearly isn’t going to return the same feelings to him, but I hope this ends in a manner where Mike (along with the rest of the boys) continue to accept Will for coming out. Will doesn’t have to die in a heroic sacrifice as I think there’s enough “kill our gays” tropes on television and film to give people something to complain about, especially when Netflix has done this before in terms of a bait and switch, i.e. Shiro and his husband who was killed offscreen in Voltron: Legendary Defender. If they pull that off again, there isn’t a shadow of a doubt in my mind that viewers will roast Netflix over the coals for that decision - and rightfully so. 

  • That being said, Will comes out of these four episodes as a fully well-rounded character, even though I have a lot of concerns over his newfound powers. 

  • The reveal and setup to Will’s display of powers was done well enough, even though they made it painfully obvious that this was coming from the teases throughout this season and the constant reminders that he was still connected to the hive-mind and Vecna himself. 

• Lowered stakes and too much plot armor for the main cast

  • Five seasons in and this show is still afraid to touch the main cast and put them into any considerable danger. 

  • This is the FINAL season, why are we so afraid to start killing off characters at this point? The Wheeler parents should have died during the Demogorgon attack to abduct Holly. That would have easily convinced viewers that all bets are off at this point.

• I think the last thing I should touch on is how I fear that the reveal concerning Henry Creel/Vecna's past is going to be restricted behind some information within the stage play that a select few of people were able to see in advance to this season. There's already some evidence of this from some YouTube videos going around online that explain why Max is able to hide within this "painful" memory of the prison that he has constructed within his mind. Max being able to survive here deserves its own deep-dive on its own when she was denied entry back to the waking/conscious world. Exactly how powerful is Vecna that he is able to maintain this level of control to imprison the minds of multiple children/people within the Upside-Down, control the Demogorgons and other creatures of that realm as extensions of his own body, AND freely use his powers inside and outside of that realm too? The longer this story goes on, the more I cannot fathom how Eleven is going to be able to beat him on his own when her powers are limited to mere telekinesis.

  • If the explanation concerning his past ends up being a Cliff Notes style summary in this season while the in-depth version is restricted to that stage play, then I fear that Netflix and the Duffer Brothers are both going to get roasted over the coals for assigning extra "homework" just to grasp the depth of this narrative.