Stranger Things Season 5 Finally Has a Release Date

It’s been 84 years—or, fine, just two—but it feels like we’ve been waiting an entire Upside Down-era for new Stranger Things content. And now, at long last, Netflix has thrown us a Demogorgon-sized bone: the final season of Stranger Things officially lands this fall, and it’s coming in three carefully spaced drops.

On Sunday, Netflix finally revealed the release dates for the fifth and final season of its blockbuster sci-fi series. It will arrive in three parts: four episodes on November 26, three on Christmas Day, and a final goodbye on New Year’s Eve. It’s a slow burn to the finish line, the kind of structure that signals the show isn’t just winding down—it’s planning to land with weight.

After years, the Duffer Brothers’ sci-fi juggernaut that started in a sleepy town in Indiana with a missing kid and some flickering Christmas lights is finally closing shop.

We’ve been here since 2016. Back when Eleven was a girl with a shaved head and a vocabulary of ten words. When Will Byers’ disappearance was still a mystery, not a mythology. Stranger Things has grown up, both in story and in scale. What began as an affectionate nod to Spielbergian suburbia has become something else entirely—a darker, heavier narrative about adolescence, trauma, government overreach, and the monsters (both supernatural and human) that kids carry into adulthood.

Netflix’s new teaser confirms the tone: grim, epic, nostalgic. Will shouting “run”. Joyce wielding a shovel. Dustin and Steve together once again. Eleven with a bloodied nose. Hopper looming behind her. It’s visual shorthand for what this season will be: a return to form, but darker. The sentimentality is still there. So is the nostalgia.

What’s the setup?

Season 5 picks up in the fall of 1987. Hawkins is scarred, literally—the Upside Down has torn through the town, and the government has responded with martial quarantine. Vecna has vanished. Eleven is back in hiding. The party is scattered, but the mission is singular: find him, kill him, stop whatever comes next. We’re told this final season will confront “a darkness more powerful and more deadly than anything they’ve faced before.” That’s no small promise, considering we’ve already seen telepathic death, pocket dimensions, and a girl fall from the sky.

The episode titles for the fifth and final instalment of the Netflix supernatural series are: The Crawl, The Vanishing of…, The Turnbow Trap, Sorcerer, Shock Jock, Escape from Camazotz, The Bridge and The Rightside Up.

The cast, fittingly, is all in. Millie Bobby Brown returns as Eleven, this time older, wearier, and more powerful than ever. Finn Wolfhard’s Mike, Gaten Matarazzo’s Dustin, Caleb McLaughlin’s Lucas, Noah Schnapp’s Will—all back, all grown. Sadie Sink’s Max is seen in early stills unconscious in a hospital bed, a holdover from the Season 4 finale where Vecna shattered her body and nearly killed her. David Harbour and Winona Ryder—arguably the show’s emotional anchors—are also back, as are Maya Hawke, Joe Keery, Natalia Dyer, Charlie Heaton, and Jamie Campbell Bower, who plays the now-infamous Vecna. There’s also a new addition: Terminator star Linda Hamilton, in a role Netflix is keeping under wraps.

The Duffers, ever tight-lipped, have hinted that the season will finally peel back the layers of the Upside Down—mythology that’s been slow-dripped across four seasons. Apparently, there’s a 25-page document they wrote before the pilot that lays out the full origin of the alternate dimension. Some of that’s been doled out already. But the rest, they say, is coming now. As Ross Duffer put it, “We’ve punted a couple of those [answers] to have some big reveals in Season 5.”

Either way, we’re in the endgame now. The show that turned Dungeons & Dragons and Kate Bush into mainstream obsessions is bowing out in style—and heartbreak. Whether you’re in it for the monsters, the music, or the ‘80s nostalgia, Stranger Things 5 is shaping up to be one of the most anticipated TV events in recent memory.

Let’s hope they stick the landing.