Spoiler Warning: Major spoilers from the last season of Stranger Things are featured throughout this article, so please proceed at your own risk.
Are you still patiently awaiting Stranger Things Season 5? Because you’re not alone while waiting for this addition to our 2025 TV premiere schedule.
It feels like Stranger Things Season 4 ended so long ago, and somehow we are still waiting at the beginning of 2025. But thankfully, we know a few things about the next season. Let’s get into it.
What Is The The Stranger Things Season 5 Premiere Date?
Stranger Things Season 5 will be released in 2025, as confirmed by Netflix.
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.
The Duffer Brothers, the creators of the show, have also continuously said that Season 5 will release this year. They confirmed it at SDAC TVfest in February 2025 (via Collider) that this year will see the return of the show:
We're focused on visual effects sequences right now. We started back in January, so it's going well. We're actually ahead of schedule which is rare for us, so that's great…it's coming this year.
The Stranger Things Season 5 Cast
While we may not have an official confirmation of the release date, just the timeframe, 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:
- Mille Bobby Brown as Eleven
- Finn Wolfhard as Mike
- Noah Schnapp as Will
- Gaten Matarazzo as Dustin
- Caleb McLaughlin as Lucas
- Natalia Dyer as Nancy
- Charlie Heaton as Jonathan
- David Harbour as Jim Hopped
- Winona Ryder as Joyce Byers
- Sadie Sink as Max
- Joe Keery as Steve
- Maya Jawke as Robin
We can also expect to see Jamie Campbell Bower return as Vecna, since he’s pretty much the antagonist of this whole thing, and we know it’ll be a big part.
In an 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.
Linda Hamilton
A formidable Hollywood alumnus is coming to the show -- Linda Hamilton.
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. She will be played by 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. I'm sure she's going to bring her A-game to Season 5 of the series in another badass role.
Filming Has Wrapped
As mentioned above in the cast section from a Twitter post, filming officially began back in January 2024
And now, as of updating this in March 2025, filming has wrapped. Netflix Tudum confirmed the news in December 2024 that filming on the highly anticipated show has come to a close. Ross Duffer even took to Instagram to celebrate the end:
With this in mind, that 2025 release feels even sooner.
When Can We Expect A Trailer For Season 5?
So obviously, there is no trailer yet for Stranger Things Season 5, even though it feels like we’ve been waiting decades for it. But I have a feeling it won’t be too long.
We can at least speculate. Stranger Things has a pretty consistent release path where they tend to release their seasons in the warmer months, from May to July – the only time they didn’t was for Season 2. And with a confirmed release timeframe of 2025, it would make sense for the show to come out at some point during that timeframe. With filming wrapped, and the crew on special effects, we could be getting one very soon.
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:
Will Byers Will Be A Big Focus Of Season 5
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.
Season 5 Will Only Take Place In Hawkins
Don’t expect to go anywhere new this time around. It’s been reported that 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.
We know that Hawkins is also going to be in “disarray”, thanks to an interview that Gaten Matarazzo did with The Direct, as it’ll be a new “vibe” this season:
I think it's a different vibe, for sure, because obviously, things are a lot different going into this season, comparatively to past ones. Whereas in the last season, in Season 4, we kind of see there are small victories around in the sense that, it seems like Vecna has been subdued... But also, there's a big, major loss where we see the rifts open in throughout Hawkins. We see, at the end of Season 4, Hawkins is in real disarray. And so we're starting this season in the aftermath of that.
There Will Be A Lot Of “Action Sequences” in Season 5
While details are still very limited, we know that Season 5 will be pedal to the metal right from the very beginning. In an interview with Us Magazine in October 2024, Finn Wolfhard teased that Season 5 would be filled with “action sequences” unlike most other seasons, and that it’s a very “intimate season, but at the same time, a huge season, just in the scale of it.”
Honestly, that kind of lines up with what everyone has been saying. Even Sadie Sink had a cryptic response to what her character would be doing in Season 5 in an interview with Variety in August 2024, saying they “loved” making her run:
They love having me run. That’s all I’ll say.
I just need to know more.
We Know The Episode Titles For Season 5
During Stranger Thing Day, Netflix revealed the titles for the upcoming season, which are down below:
- The Crawl
- The Vanishing of [Redacted]
- The Turnbow Trap
- Sorcerer
- Shock Jock
- Escape From Camazotz
- The Bridge
- The Rightside Up
Um, I’m sorry, who is vanishing? Is “Sorcerer” about Will because he was always the sorcerer in the D and D group? I’m so interested.
Stranger Things Season 5 Might Be TV-MA
This would be a pretty big change. According to What’s On Netflix, the streamer has apparently already changed its age rating for the series to TV-MA thanks to an anonymous tweet, where previously, it was TV-14 — which could signal a very gruesome end for some of these characters.
Granted, this is just a rumor and nothing has been confirmed yet, but it’s still something that makes you scratch your head and worry for a bit. Now I’m scared for all my kids.
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 so, if the episodes aren’t going to be long, they are going to feel packed and like “movies” – Maya Hawke said in an interview on Podcrushed in December 2024 that the eight episodes are “very intense and serious” and does comment that the episodes are long:
“We’re making, basically, eight movies. The episodes are very long. They are very intense and serious about the quality of the continued writing, and so it takes a long time to write each season and a long time to shoot them.”
It makes me wonder how long these episodes really are going to be. To be honest, that makes me confused because they said at the presentation for Next on Netflix in January 2025 (via TechRadar) that they shot over “650 hours of footage” for Season 5. How is that going to make shorter episodes? Goodness gracious.
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, check out our list of the best shows to binge on Netflix.
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