- Netflix has confirmed Stranger Things season 5 will debut sometime in 2025
- The streaming giant has also revealed the final season's eight episode titles
- Stranger Things 5 will be set in late 1987, too
Netflix has officially announced that Stranger Things season 5 will air sometime in 2025 – and confirmed which year it'll be set in.
Revealing the news on Stranger Things Day – aka November 6, the in-universe date when Will Byers went missing in 1983 – Netflix revealed the hugely popular show will return sometime next year. The streaming titan also confirmed it'll take place in the fall of 1987 (that's autumn for non-US readers). Season 5, then, will occur around 18 months after Stranger Things season 4's ending.
The streaming giant didn't confirm when Stranger Things' fifth and final season would actually debut but, with filming not set to wrap until December, we already knew Stranger Things season 5 wouldn't release in 2024. Still, it's good to know we won't have to wait until 2026 to watch the show's fifth season.
These reveals weren't the only ones that greeted Stranger Things fans during this year's edition of the franchise's annual celebrations. Netflix also chose to unveil the episode titles for all of season 5's chapters, which you can check out below. Let the fan theorizing about what they're teasing, especially episode 2's title, commence!
- Episode 1 – The Crawl
- Episode 2 – The Vanishing Of [Redacted]
- Episode 3 – The Turnbow Trap
- Episode 4 – Sorcerer
- Episode 5 – Shock Jock
- Episode 6 – Escape From Camazotz
- Episode 7 – The Bridge
- Episode 8 – The Rightside Up
This isn't the first time that the world's best streaming service has dropped episodic hints about season 5. In November 2022, Netflix unveiled the title for the forthcoming season's opening episode, which led me to come up with four big theories about what season 5's first episode title could really mean. The addition of the other seven episodic names, though, may make me re-assess what I surmised from episode 1's title.
Today's reveals are the most notable morsels of information we've received in a while about one of the best Netflix shows' fifth installment. Indeed, with the wildly successful sci-fi horror drama franchise's main story wrapping up next year, Netflix is being extremely careful about pulling the curtain back on season 5.
That said, some interesting morsels of information have been teased by those involved in the series and the streamer itself. On July 16, Stranger Things 5's very first teaser revealed new characters, fan-favorite team-ups, and another time jump, which has been confirmed by the aforementioned late '80s reveal. Before that behind-the-scenes look at season 5 dropped, we only knew of one new cast addition, too, with Terminator star Linda Hamilton joining the Stranger Things 5 roster in June 2023. Netflix peak behind the curtain, though, also confirmed Nell Fisher, Alex Breaux, and Jake Connelly were also part of proceedings.
Meanwhile, two weeks earlier, Maya Hawke, who plays Robin, suggested that season 5 will consist of "basically, eight movies" – a statement that implies the forthcoming season's episodes will be very, very long. It sounds like Stranger Things season 5 will be the show's deadliest yet, too, although Eleven actor Millie Bobby Brown has admitted she doesn't really want her character to die after previously joking about such a possibility.
Excited as I and every other Stranger Things fan is about all of this news, we're still no closer to actually seeing some footage to really whip us all into a frenzy. That's in spite of hackers claiming they have pirated copies of season 5's first three episodes, which might have been their way of forcing Netflix to release a teaser trailer earlier than expected. If that was their objective, it didn't work – Netflix instead choosing to release another behind-the-scenes look at season 5 during Geeked Week 2024 that didn't tell us anything new. The long wait for a proper trailer, then, goes on.
