Spoiler Warning: Major spoilers from the last season of Stranger Things are featured throughout this article (including the text immediately below), so please proceed at your own risk.
Are you still patiently awaiting Stranger Things Season 5? Because you’re not alone.
It feels like Stranger Things Season 4 ended so long ago. With the way things ended for Eleven, Hopper, Steve (who defied fan expectations and survived), and the rest of the gang during the conclusion of the record-breaking Netflix series’ latest offering, it should come as no surprise that Stranger Things Season 5 is somewhere down the road, waiting like Vecna in the shadows.
But thankfully, after a few years, we know at least a few things about Stranger Things Season 5, a.k.a. the fifth and final set of episodes, and the last ride for characters that many of us with a Netflix subscription. Here is what we know so far.
What Is The The Stranger Things Season 5 Premiere Date?
Stranger Things Season 5 will be released in 2025. A report by Dexerto in July 2024 in an Q2 Earnings Interview said that Netflix boss, Ted Sarandos, confirmed the show is releasing next year.
Both writing and filming was delayed due to the 2023 Writer’s Strike and the SAG-AFTRA strike, so it was basically impossible for anything to happen in Hollywood for a time – which means that Stranger Things won’t be appearing on any 2024 TV premiere schedule. However, that does mean 2025 can’t come soon enough for this epic last stand against Vecna.
The Stranger Things Season 5 Cast
While we may not have an official confirmation of the release date, we do know who will be back, and thankfully, it looks like a good amount of the cast. Thanks to a post from the Netflix Twitter page in January 2024, Stranger Things Season 5 was officially filming, and all of the main cast is featured in the picture.
🚨THIS IS A CODE RED🚨 STRANGER THINGS 5 production has officially begun!!! pic.twitter.com/TFN07WVbRDJanuary 8, 2024
For a refresher, this includes the following cast members and more:
Millie Bobby Brown as Eleven
Eleven is one of several main characters and is able to move things with her mind. She is played by Millie Bobby Brown. The actress has since appeared in the Enola Holmes film series on Netflix, and starred in Damsel on Netflix.
Finn Woldhard as Mike
Finn Wolfhard plays Mike, one of the core four boys in Stranger Things. Wolfhard has appeared in the IT films, Ghostbusters: Afterlife and appeared in Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire.
Wolfhard even spoke about the upcoming fifth season in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter in March 2024, where he said that the scale of the show has increased, but still remains “isolated” in a way where it’s not overdoing it:
This last season is sort of a crossroads, and so we’re getting back into a lot of the dynamics of season one, which is really fun. There’s some ‘leader Mike’ moments, and it’s a very grand season, obviously. Every season has gotten bigger and bigger and bigger, and this season is huge, but it’s also kind of isolated as well.
Noah Schnapp as Will
Noah Schnapp plays Will, another one of the friends, who they were all looking for in Season 1. He has also had roles in The Peanuts Movie, Bridge of Spies, The Tutor, Hubie Halloween and more.
Gaten Matarazzo as Dustin
Gaten Matarazzo plays Dustin in Stranger Things, another one of the main boys, and has also appeared in the Netflix show Prank Encounters, and Honor Society.
Caleb McLaughlin as Lucas
Lucas is played by Caleb McLaughlin, the last of the four main friends of the series, and has since appeared in other movies such as High Flying Bird, Concrete Cowboy, and Shooting Stars. He’s also in The Book of Clarence.
Natalia Dyer as Nancy
Natalia Dyer plays Nancy, Mike’s older sister and Jonathan’s girlfriend Dyer has appeared in films and shows such as Based on a True Story, Yes, God, Yes, and Velvet Buzzsaw, among others.
Charlie Heaton as Jonathan
Charlie Heaton plays Jonathan, Will’s older brother, and Nancy’s boyfriend. Heaton has appeared in The New Mutants, No Future, The Souvenir Part II and more.
David Harbour as Jim Hopper
Jim Hopper is the sheriff dad that we all want, and he is played by David Harbour. The actor has appeared in a variety of projects over the last few years, including Black Widow, Violent Night, Hellboy and more. He is set to come back to his role from Black Widow in the upcoming Thunderbolts.
Winona Ryder as Joyce Byers
Winona Ryder plays Joyce Byers, the mother of Will and Jonathan. The actress has been around for some time, and has appeared in big films such as Girl, Interrupted, The Crucible, Reality Bites and more. She will also be reprising her role as Lydia in the upcoming Beetlejuice sequel.
Sadie Sink as Max
Sadie Sink plays Max, one of the female friends of the core friend group, and falls into a coma at the end of the fourth season. Sink has appeared in the Fear Street film series, and also appeared in The Whale.
Joe Keery as Steve
Joe Keery plays Steve, everyone’s favorite babysitter, and former boyfriend to Nancy. He’s appeared in Free Guy, as well as Spree, and is in the fifth season of Fargo.
Maya Hawke as Robin
Maya Hawke plays Robin, Steve’s closest friend. She has appeared in Maestro, Inside Out 2 and more. Hawke even spoke to Rolling Stone in September 2022 that she’d like to have her “hero’s moment” in Season 5 and go out in a blaze of glory and GOD no, I will actually begin to sob my heart out.
While the Duffer Brothers openly said in an interview with IndieWire in August 2022, that they’re intending to focus on the characters we already know, instead of introducing new characters, there is one new one that we know of:
Jamie Campbell Brown as Vecna
Vecna was pretty much the biggest character ever of Season 4 of Stranger Things, and now in Season 5, we know he’ll be back. Campbell confirmed in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter in June 2022 that he “knew” what Season 5 would entail:
Let me put it this way: I know about season 5. Take from that what you will.
And then in another interview with The Hollywood Reporter in June 2024, he said that Season 5 is “out of control” and is “bonkers” in comparison to Season 4:
If you thought last season was nuts, this season is just out of control, wild, like, it’s bonkers. It really, really is. It’s bigger. It’s just completely insane. It’s completely insane.
I am ready to cry and scream the entire time.
Linda Hamilton
A formidable Hollywood alumnus is coming to the show -- Linda Hamilton.
Announced at June 2023's Netflix TUDUM event, it was confirmed that the Terminator veteran is joining the cast for Season 5 of the popular Netflix series. We're not sure what role she is going to be playing just yet, but honestly, having her here is just a treasure in and of itself, and I'm sure she's going to bring her A-game to Season 5 of the series in another badass role.
Linda Hamilton actually opened up about the role to Us Weekly in February 2024, and that starring in the show actually “ruined” it in a way because now that she’s in it, it takes her out of the experience:
I think in a way, it kind of ruined the show for me. I never watch [a project], once I’m in something," she continued. "It would just completely take me out of the reality of it to see myself in there. So I won’t be watching [Season 5].
She did say that she was always a fan beforehand, and that it’s been “really good” from what she’s worked on:
I do get to be there for table reads and watch it unfold and be part of it. I’m thrilled to be part of it. But I just never, ever saw that one coming. It is different when you’re a fan of the show to sort of go, 'Well, how do I fit?' But we’re working on it. It’s good. It’s really good.
Filming Was Halfway Done As Of July 2024
As mentioned above in the cast section from a Twitter post, filming offically began back in January 2024
Ever since then, there have been pretty consistent updates regarding the status of filming, and now, the official Stranger Things Twitter posted in July 2024 that they were halfway done with filming the season – and we even got to see the kids in high school, as well as a tease of some of the big moments to come:
Take it all in, nerds…we’ve hit the halfway mark of filming the final season and wanted to give you all a look at what we’ve been up to pic.twitter.com/RdQsZvoPYwJuly 15, 2024
I am SO SCARED. I mean, all of these filming updates and pictures and everything else just makes me so freaking excited. Can Season 5 come any sooner please?
What Stranger Things Season 5 Will Be About
So the major details about the plot of Stranger Things Season 5 haven’t been revealed, but we do know bits and pieces, thankfully – with one thing being that Season 5 is going to focus heavily on Will Byers once again.
Even before Stranger Things Season 4 concluded, the internet was full of theories about Will Byers actually being a villain, and even though it is hard to say if that will be true or not, the character will be a major part of the show’s final season. When speaking with Collider in July 2022, Matt Duffer revealed that the younger Byers brother will be a “big part and focus” of the show moving forward, which was heavily teased throughout the final two episodes of Season 4.
In December 2022, the actor who plays Will, Noah Schnapp, said to Forbes that Will's story is concluded perfectly from what he's seen, and he can't wait for fans to see it.
I think they did a great job with Will's character this season, and beautifully addressed everything they needed to. The way they closed the show is just perfect – the story started with Will, and it’ll end with Will.
This would make sense, as it’s been reported Season 5 will only take place in Hawkins, as reported by Matt Duffer in an appearance on the Happy Sad Confused Podcast in July 2022, where he confirmed the plan was for Season 5 be set back where we’re familiar:
That’s what we anticipate and hope to do, which is to just to keep it contained in Hawkins. It’s going to feel a lot larger in scale than Season 1. We want to go back to a lot of things we did in Season 1 and a lot of the original groupings and pairings we had in Season 1.
Duffer would go on to stress that even though the show would only take place in one location this time around, it will feel bigger in terms of stakes and scale of the story.
For the show to take place in Hawkins and follow Will again, it will be fitting for the last season. Back in February 2022, the official Stranger Things Twitter account posted a screenshot of a statement from the Duffer Brothers that basically said the series will come to an end after the fifth season, which is sad, but I can’t wait to see it go out with a bang.
David Harbour Says The Scripts For Season 5 Are “Terrific”
With Stranger Things Season 5 being such a highly anticipated installment of the franchise, many fans are hoping that the stories are going to be just as conclusive and well-told as we’ve expected from the show. Thankfully, David Harbour also confirmed on the Happy Sad Confused Podcast featured above that the scripts for Season 5 are “terrific:”
They’re terrific, as per usual. They continue to outdo themselves, these currently-on-strike writers called the Duffer Brothers.
This podcast was released before the Writer’s Strike came to an end, and the scripts at this point are completely finished since filming has begun, so I can’t wait to see what is so terrific about these scripts.
David Harbour also hinted during that same podcast that there might be a bit of a time jump too, saying that the “world is a different place” from the last time we saw these characters in the series:
You gotta imagine where it starts, after where Season 4 ended, you watch us on that hill looking at the ash and the smoke, fires. And we're gonna start somewhere after that, so you gotta imagine that the world is a different place. It's great, it'll take a while to shoot, which'll be tough, since we can't get started yet, but it is what it is.
Stranger Things Season 5 Episodes Won’t Be As Long As Season 4
Although each episode featured in Stranger Things Season 4 was over an hour long (and the finale clocked in a little under two-and-a-half hours), it doesn't sound like we should expect to see too many chapters running all that long when the show’s fifth season premieres at some point in the future.
During a July 2022 appearance on the Happy Sad Confused Podcast (via Deadline), co-creator Matt Duffer explained that the reason the Season 4 episodes were so long was because there was so much character set-up required, a level of exposition that really won’t be all that necessary in Season 5.
Even if the episodes won't be as long, the stars are sure that the last season is going to pack a punch. David Harbour spoke with Collider about the final season, and how he is sure the Duffer brothers are going to knock it out of the park.
I know those Duffer brothers are very specific, and I know they want to get that last season. I mean if you look at Season 4, I have a feeling that Season 5 may not be as long, but it certainly will be packed to the brim with good stuff that you love. I mean, they really are getting better at giving you that home run that the audiences love. And I think that Season 5 will do that so much.
Despite the episodes being shorter in Stranger Things Season 5, it sounds like the series finale will be in the same ballpark as the Season 4 finale in terms of length. During the same interview with the Happy Sad Confused podcast (also via Deadline), Matt Duffer stated that the finale will be as long as a feature film:
We’re more likely to do what we did here, which is to just have a two-and-a-half hour episode.
Even if the finale will be long, repeat director of Stranger Things Shawn Levy said it will be “bittersweet” in a way, which he said during an interview with Collider in April 2024 at CinemaCon:
Tears, ecstasy, bittersweet, delicious feelings.
Okay, now I’m even more excited.
The Show Plans To Keep The Binge-Watching Method Rather Than Weekly Releases
For those who might know now, Netflix has been experimenting with releasing some of their shows on a weekly basis.
However, Stranger Things has always released several episodes at once for fans to watch. While the fourth season was split up into two parts, both included multiple episodes to watch (or were incredibly long). Netflix intends to keep that model for the show for its final season.
According to a panel that was moderated by Variety (via ScreenRant) in June 2022 the head of Netflix’s scripted series, Peter Friedlander, confirmed that Season 5 of the series would stick to the typical-binge method, where we would be given several episodes at once. So thankfully, no week-long waits for just one episode.
Although we don’t have a set premiere date for when Stranger Things Season 5 will debut and take the world by storm, make sure to continue to check back for all the latest, and see if any of the questions we want answered are talked about, like what is the Demogorgon?
And, if you’re looking for something to watch in the meantime, there are plenty of promising 2024 Netflix shows to hold you over while you wait.
