Believe it or not, it’s already been over two years since the fourth season of Stranger Things premiered on Netflix. Now, the fantasy horror television series is coming back for one final outing, and by the looks of it, it’ll take the entire Hawkins gang of unlikely heroes and social misfits to fight off Vecna and the Upside Down one last time.
Since 2016, the Duffer Brothers have treated us to a brilliant rural fantasy story featuring child kidnappings, gooey parallel universes, and horrifying monsters. The first season came out in 2016 to critical acclaim, and the second outing followed closely on its heel in 2017. It took the crew two years to produce and release season 3 in 2019, and that gap was further lengthened with season 4, which came out in 2022.
Going by that track record, we were almost beginning to assume that season 5 would come no sooner than 2026 or even 2027, but it looks as though the producers and the cast have been hard at work creating this final chapter. Netflix announced that Stranger Things 5 will premiere sometime in 2025.
The company has also shared a teaser that reveals the title of each of the 8 remaining episodes. That’s right, folks; unlike Stranger Things 4, which featured 9 episodes and was nearly double the length of previous seasons, this next and final outing will go back to the usual 8-chapter format, and they are as follows:
- “Chapter One: The Crawl”
- “Chapter Two: The Vanishing of [REDACTED]”
- “Chapter Three: The Turnbow Trap”
- “Chapter Four: Sorcerer”
- “Chapter Five: Shock Jock”
- “Chapter Six: Escape from Camazotz”
- “Chapter Seven: The Bridge”
- “Chapter Eight: The Rightside Up”
While there are many questions to be answered in this last leg of the journey, the episode titles are making fans speculate about all sorts of revelations and developments to come. For one thing, it looks like another one of the characters is going to vanish into thin air (or probably the Upside Down) during episode 2, quite in keeping with the formula the show has already established. And for another, the title of the series finale, “The Rightside Up,” is quite peculiar, playing on the name of the otherworldly sphere where the Vecna and the Mind Flayer preside. Will we learn something new about the parallel world separating the rural, idyllic Hawkins from the hellish world beyond?
The Duffer Brothers missed the chance to call the final episode “Stranger Things.”
2025 could be two months away or fourteen months away, so it doesn’t exactly make the wait any more palatable to know that we might still be a ways away from reuniting with the Hawkins gang.
The energy in the fandom is enough to generate another tear in the fabric of reality and create a parallel dimension.
“This is history,” wrote one user. That’s it. That’s the message.
As Maya Hawke previously revealed, each episode is “very long” and basically a self-contained movie, so we’re in for quite a ride.
We’re not emotionally prepared for this, Strangers, (is that a thing? if not, it should totally be a thing), but we’d also be lying if we said we haven’t been anxiously awaiting this final season for several years now. So, let us all collectively sit back and hope that everyone makes it out of this final battle alive, if a bit bruised.