Netflix has shared a new trailer for the fifth and final season of Stranger Things. In the clip, each member of the cast can be seen rallying together to put an end to things, before dispersing across their homes, school, hospital, and elsewhere to make quick work in hopes of surviving. Watch it below.
Season 5 of Stranger Things takes place in the autumn of 1987 and is billed as the lead-up to one final battle. “Hawkins is scarred by the opening of the Rifts, and our heroes are united by a single goal: find and kill Vecna,” reads the synopsis. “The final battle is looming—and with it, a darkness more powerful and more deadly than anything they’ve faced before. To end this nightmare, they’ll need everyone—the full party—standing together, one last time.”
After three years of teasing, the fifth season of Stranger Thingswent into production at the start of 2024 and will finally be released soon in three volumes. The first four episodes hit Netflix on Wednesday, November 26; the next three episodes air on Christmas; and the series finale comes out on New Year’s Eve. Each volume will be available on Netflix at 8 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.
The first season of Stranger Things premiered on Netflix in July 2016. Several of its stars have since doubled their acting resume while also pursuing music careers. Joe Keery has climbed the Billboard Hot 100 with Djo while maintaining his band Post Animal. Meanwhile, Maya Hawke has dropped several albums, the most recent of which is 2024’s Chaos Angel. The show’s biggest breakout star, Finn Wolfhard, also found success with his band Calpurnia and as a solo artist, releasing his debut full-length Happy Birthday this year.
Finn Wolfhard as Mike Wheeler, Caleb McLaughlin as Lucas Sinclair, Natalia Dyer as Nancy Wheeler, Joe Keery as Steve Harrington, Charlie Heaton as Jonathan Byers, and Gaten Matarazzo as Dustin Henderson in Season 5 of “Stranger Things.”
Courtesy of Netflix
Skip the at-home watch parties. Netflix is bringing “Stranger Things” to the big screen.
Ahead of the final chapter of the record-breaking sci-fi series premiering later this year, the streaming service announced that fans will have a chance to catch the finale episode of “Stranger Things 5” in select theaters nationwide.
Gaten Matarazzo as Dustin Henderson, Finn Wolfhard as Mike Wheeler, Caleb McLaughlin as Lucas Sinclair, and Noah Schnapp as Will Byers in Season 5 of “Stranger Things.” Courtesy of Netflix
“We’re beyond excited that fans will have the chance to experience the final episode of Stranger Things in theaters — it’s something we’ve dreamed about for years, and we’re so grateful to Ted, Bela, and everyone at Netflix for making it happen,” Durham natives and co-creators Matt and Ross Duffer said in a media release.
‘Stranger Things’ series 5 release date
The fifth season is releasing in three separate parts: Volume 1 (episodes 1-4) will be released on Netflix Wednesday, Nov. 26, followed by Volume 2 (episodes 5-7) on Thursday, Dec. 25 and the season finale on Wednesday, Dec. 31.
Will the ‘Stranger Things’ finale stream on Netflix?
Yes, the finale will both stream on Netflix and be shown in more than 350 theaters in the U.S. and Canada on New Year’s Eve at 8 p.m. ET. Theatre showings will run through New Year’s Day.
A list of participating theaters hasn’t been announced or how fans can attend, but Netflix says that information will be shared later this year.
Courtesy of Netflix
This story was originally published October 23, 2025 at 9:18 AM.
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Finn Wolfhard as Mike Wheeler, Caleb McLaughlin as Lucas Sinclair, Natalia Dyer as Nancy Wheeler, Joe Keery as Steve Harrington, Charlie Heaton as Jonathan Byers, and Gaten Matarazzo as Dustin Henderson in Season 5 of “Stranger Things.”
Courtesy of Netflix
Skip the at-home watch parties. Netflix is bringing “Stranger Things” to the big screen.
Ahead of the final chapter of the record-breaking sci-fi series premiering later this year, the streaming service announced that fans will have a chance to catch the finale episode of “Stranger Things 5” in select theaters nationwide.
Gaten Matarazzo as Dustin Henderson, Finn Wolfhard as Mike Wheeler, Caleb McLaughlin as Lucas Sinclair, and Noah Schnapp as Will Byers in Season 5 of “Stranger Things.” Courtesy of Netflix
“We’re beyond excited that fans will have the chance to experience the final episode of Stranger Things in theaters — it’s something we’ve dreamed about for years, and we’re so grateful to Ted, Bela, and everyone at Netflix for making it happen,” Durham natives and co-creators Matt and Ross Duffer said in a media release.
‘Stranger Things’ series 5 release date
The fifth season is releasing in three separate parts: Volume 1 (episodes 1-4) will be released on Netflix Wednesday, Nov. 26, followed by Volume 2 (episodes 5-7) on Thursday, Dec. 25 and the season finale on Wednesday, Dec. 31.
Will the ‘Stranger Things’ finale stream on Netflix?
Yes, the finale will both stream on Netflix and be shown in more than 350 theaters in the U.S. and Canada on New Year’s Eve at 8 p.m. ET. Theatre showings will run through New Year’s Day.
A list of participating theaters hasn’t been announced or how fans can attend, but Netflix says that information will be shared later this year.
Finn Wolfhard as Mike Wheeler, Caleb McLaughlin as Lucas Sinclair, Natalia Dyer as Nancy Wheeler, Joe Keery as Steve Harrington, Charlie Heaton as Jonathan Byers, and Gaten Matarazzo as Dustin Henderson in Season 5 of “Stranger Things.” Courtesy of Netflix
This story was originally published October 23, 2025 at 10:18 AM.
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Tatiana Maslany and Tim Heidecker are teaming up for a new dystopian satire series. Matt Duffer says not to expect Eddie Munson back in Stranger Things‘ final season. Plus, Ryan Coogler discusses who he’s really rebooting The X-Files for. Spoilers get!
The Comedy Hour
Deadline reports Tatiana Maslany and Tim Heidecker are attached to star in The Comedy Hour, a “late-night-themed dystopian satire” from director Colby Day. Set “five minutes into the future when modern America is on the brink of collapse,” the story will see Heidecker as Jimmy, “a late-night talk show host forced to produce his show through famine, fire, and plague. When the network assigns him a robot to be his co-host and help boost ratings, everyone in America loves the robot more than him. Maslany will play Priya, a corporate climber and Jimmy’s long-time producer.”
Spider-Man: Brand New Day
During his recent appearance on the Phase Hero podcast, Charlie Cox suggested he’s not in Spider-Man: Brand New Day, after all.
I know they all think I’m in Spider-Man because I’m filming something in London, which I’m not, I’m not in Spider-Man.
It Follows 2
According to Maika Monroe, the script for It Follows 2 is “incredible” and “very different from the original,” and filming could begin next year.
I was sent the script and I thought it was incredible. It’s also very different from the original. I feel like the original, it’s like a little more heightened and dramatic, and this…I think it’s really quite grounded and just sort of follows the story of these two women who are mentally dealing with a lot. I thought it was a really interesting take on it.
Maika Monroe tells us that ‘IT FOLLOWS 2’ has an incredible script that will make fans very happy.
A “tech-obsessed music producer” forces a struggling singer-songwriter to help her create “the perfect AI music algorithm” in the trailer for Decibel, a sci-fi/horror film coming to Apple TV and Fandango this November 7.
Gobblefoot
Elsewhere, a “professor of New England folklore” attributes a string of mutilation murders to “a mythical creature, half turkey, half Bigfoot” in the trailer for Gobblefoot.
Stranger Things
Speaking to Empire, Matt Duffer also suggested Joseph Quinn does not return as the late Eddie Munson in season 5, despite recent comments from the actor.
I love that Joe Quinn is toying with people! But no, he’s dead. Joe is so busy, anyway, that everyone should know he’s not coming back. He’s shot like five movies since! When the hell has he got time to come and shoot Stranger Things? No, sadly, RIP. He’s fully under that ground.
The X-Files
Ryan Coogler would “neither confirm nor deny” casting Danielle Deadwyler in his upcoming X-Files reboot, but told Variety that he’s making the reboot for his mom.
Like my relationship with Rocky with my dad, The X-Files is one of those things with my mom. My mom means the world to me—she’s actually here tonight—so this is a big one for me. I want to do right by her and the fans. My mom has read some of the stuff I wrote for it. She’s fired up.
Crystal Lake
Filming has wrapped on Crystal Lake, according to showrunner Brad Caleb Kane on Instagram.
Ghosts
Spoiler TV has images from “Halloween 5: The Mummy,” this year’s Ghosts Halloween special airing October 30. Click through to see the rest.
If you ever wondered what it would be like to have Eleven’s powers, Sandbox VR now offers that chance. The nationwide chain of immersive VR experiences just added its latest Netflix collaboration, Stranger Things: Catalyst, inspired by the Duffer brothers’ hit retro ’80s series. Its entertainment partnership with the streamer also includes playable stories within the Squid Game and Rebel Moon franchises.
Just in time for Halloween and the release of Stranger Things season five, io9 was invited (media tickets were provided) to experience the new horror-tinged offering at a local Sandbox VR location. Having enjoyed the Squid Game VR, I was keen to try this one out, as it seemed like it would really bring you into the world of the Upside Down and have you face the scarier elements of the series. The Squid Game activation was just entering the dystopian tournament with mostly just games like “Red Light, Green Light,” rather than, say, a concrete narrative.
In Stranger Things: Catalyst, players become Dr. Brenner’s test subjects and experience a different perspective of a Rainbow Room type of break-in. You and your group start by practicing your powers through a wand to channel telekinetic abilities—think Nintendo’s Wii and Switch controllers, held in the hand to supplement the powers and seen through the headset VR setup. During the in-world power honing at Hawkins Lab, which is just practice, the training gets interrupted by an attack on Hawkins Lab, and you’re thrust into the fight against the forces of the Upside Down.
The premise serves as an excuse to engage in what’s more of a chaotic free-for-all than a fleshed-out story. Players work together to escape the lab while confronting the monstrous threats of the Upside Down, navigating through the trees of Mirkwood and ultimately battling the Mind Flayer in the distorted version of Hawkins. The powers are really fun; you can grab items to throw at the supernatural threats in the form of the Demobats, Demodogs, and even the Demogorgon, but also telekinetically push them away from you or your friends.
The big boss attacks are your standard co-op fare; you all focus on different weak points of, say, the tentacles coming out of the rift or the Mind Flayer’s spider legs and bring them down as a group. But that’s pretty much it; there’s not really a larger story you’re a part of that has anything to do with characters you’re familiar with. You don’t get to interact with Eleven or the Hawkins heroes—just dear old Papa Brenner. The immersion is pretty much a greatest hits of the ops you’d want to face from the Upside Down, except Vecna.
While overall, Stranger Things: Catalyst is enjoyable and filled with jump scares while you mind-blast (trying hard to not say “Force push”) through hordes of Vecna’s forces, be aware that it is a workout. The more people in your group, the more ops get added to the experience. Our group found that it was just too much coming at us all at once. During the team-ups you’re trying to grab things to attack your opponents, but also randomly possessed Upside Down hazmat agents while getting them off your teammates, which overwhelmingly would take up most of the experience. You don’t really get a sense of why this is happening because too much is happening.
Do I wish there were more of the characters we know and love? Yes, but these sorts of activations don’t really need it to be a good time. So if you’re looking for a cohesive side-quest narrative in the Stranger Things universe, this isn’t it. But for a group outing to a private Halloween season activation or just to get the Stranger Things binge crew off the couch, it’s well worth it.
There are a lot of thrills, chills, and laughs to be had. The Demogorgon might get you, but it’s when the ground beneath you gives out that your mind plays tricks on you. I found myself dropping to the floor to make sure it was still there. And yeah, you might die a lot, but at least you can revive an unlimited amount of times; respawns only take a few seconds to get back into the game. Once it ended, I thought, despite the sheer amount of times I would not have made it in the Upside Down, I’d definitely play this again with friends to be our own Scoops Troop and all be powered like Eleven.
For a list of Sandbox VR locations offering Stranger Things: Catalyst, visit here. The final season of Stranger Things begins November 26 on Netflix.
The final season of Stranger Things nears, and with that, our Hellfire Club catch-up session draws to a close. Here’s everything you need to remember from season four before the Duffer brothers’ series returns to Netflix on November 26.
If you’re new here, you can also refresh on Stranger Thingsseason one, season two, and season three in the previous sessions of our Hellfire Club catch-up series, where we break down all the important things we think could come into play for the show’s epic conclusion.
Season four did an excellent job at raising the stakes with the Hawkins crew being ripped apart across the world. Joyce (Winona Ryder) started off in California with Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown), Will (Noah Schnapp), Jonathan (Charlie Heaton), and Mike (Finn Wolfhard), who is on a school break visit. Before, of course, the arrival of a mysterious package from Russia, alerting Joyce that Hopper (David Harbour) might still be alive and skipping town with Murray (Brett Gelman) to rescue her man. The kids don’t notice immediately but wrangle up trouble when El fights the popular girl at school who picks on her, alerting the government of her whereabouts. Thankfully Doctor Owens (Paul Reiser) steps in.
Meanwhile, back in Hawkins, a series of grotesque deaths haunts the halls of Hawkins High. Eddie Munson (Joseph Quinn), the game master of the Hellfire Club that Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo), Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin), Erica (Priah Ferguson), and Mike are a part of, becomes the prime suspect thanks to the 80’s D&D Satanic Panic. But of course, the deaths have the marks of the Upside Down all over them, so the remaining Hawkins heroes help hide Eddie. Meanwhile, Max (Sadie Sink) begins to realize she might be next, as her mind gets plagued with dark visions that put her friends on high alert to protect her. Nancy (Natalia Dyer), Steve (Joe Keery), and Robin (Maya Hawke) lead the investigation with the kids and uncover Hawkins’ darkest secrets along the way, which reveal that the whole town may just be in mortal danger from a way bigger threat.
A lot happens in season four, including a lot of events in Russia, where Hopper gets his own movie essentially, but we’re not going to focus too much on that, as this season unveiled that the whole Soviet thing was a red herring for a danger much closer to home in Vecna/Henry Creel/One (Jamie Campbell Bower).
The story in Hawkins is established by two games, a basketball one where Lucas saves the team and wins the game in the last minute, and the Hellfire campaign against the D&D version of Vecna. In the tabletop world, Vecna almost gets the gang, but Erica swoops in to save the day. Like the game in season one, which hints at an early move causing an initial loss, maybe this will foreshadow things to come next season.
Hopper lives!
Joyce receives a mysterious package, which includes a Russian doll with clues that Hopper is alive and in a KGB prison. Agreeing to pay the ransom to get him out, she and Murray fly to Russia to extract their friend. It’s truly such an unhinged side mission that I still sort of question its necessity other than just being an instrument to get Joyce away from the kids. All that’s discovered here is that Joyce and Hopper are in love and the Russians have failed to really understand the Upside Down in their experiments.
Vecna gets an all-timer intro when he’s set up as a horror villain who stalks his prey’s darkest moments to gain control over their minds. His first victim is Chrissy the cheerleader (Grace Van Dien), who he drives crazy to the point she goes to Eddie for drugs. Unfortunately for our pal Eddie, it’s too late for her, and he witnesses her being lifted off the ground, bones broken like sticks and eyes popped in by an invisible force. When her body is found, all suspicions make Eddie the prime suspect because he runs the Hellfire Club, and so of course Dungeons & Dragons must be a cult. Dustin, Lucas, and Erica know there’s more to it, as it has the marking of the Upside Down’s forces at work.
The Story of Victor Creel
Nancy is on the case; she interviews Eddie’s uncle, who knows his nephew didn’t do it. He drops the deepest of lore that sets the journey toward the truth in motion and tells her about Victor Creel, a man who killed his wife and children in the same way Chrissy died. Ever the sleuth, Nancy teams up with Dustin and the rest, including Steve and Robin, to uncover who is really behind the killings. With Robin, she visits Victor (played by Freddy Kruger himself, Robert Englund), who tells her he’s innocent and his home was haunted by a specter who murdered his family. The only thing that saved him was hearing “Dream a Little Dream” on the radio and coming back to consciousness to find his kids dead too. Working off the hunch that this has something to do with the Upside Down, Nancy and the gang break into the Creel house for more clues.
Early on in the season we see Max listening to “Running Up That Hill” on her tapedeck before Chrissy’s death. It coincides with the therapy sessions we see her attending, provided by the school counselor. Max doesn’t know this at first, but the power of Kate Bush keeps the monster hunting her from within at bay. After another student who was seeing the counselor winds up dead, it gets pieced together that music is the key to keeping potential victims safe from Vecna’s intrusive thoughts gripping their minds. It comes in handy when Vecna almost gets Max at the cemetery, and Nancy tells them to put the song on for her before it’s too late—Max escaping Vecna is still one of the best scenes in the entire show, all scored to Bush’s incredible song and helped Sadie Sink shine in a star-making turn.
Eleven on the run
The deaths in Hawkins make Eleven the prime suspect in the government’s eyes, and they attempt to sweep in to take her out. Thankfully Owens manages to get to her after she’s apprehended and offers to help her get her powers back in order to take on whatever is truly behind the killings. The downside? Her papa, Dr. Brenner (Matthew Modine), is back to continue his work and retraumatize her into recalling not only her powers but also unearthing some suppressed memories of the Rainbow Room massacre. There she finds out that the orderly Henry, who monitored the rooms with the kids to update Brenner on their progress, attempted to help her break out while also asking her to help him remove a handicap placed on him too as another of Brenner’s prisoners.
When Eleven remembers that Henry is 001, we see through her eyes the real events of the Rainbow Room massacre. Henry is just as powerful as she and once he recognized that, he set her up to free him so they could both escape and he could have her by his side. Considering the rest of the experiments inferior, he kills all the other children to absorb their powers, as well as most of the lab workers (for their life force), and that pisses little Eleven off. The pain makes her reject him and fight back, ultimately blasting him through the veil of reality and into what would go on to become the Upside Down.
In the Upside Down, Henry, transformed into Vecna, plotted his revenge on Eleven as he used his mind to build the Mind Flayer from its dark forces and used it to control the Demogorgons as his scouts. Every time Eleven was pushed by Brenner to psychically probe the Upside Down, Brenner was lying to her: he wasn’t using Eleven to see if the Soviets had anything to do with the mysterious reality; he was really looking for Henry.
Every time she’d go in looking for him, the veil between both worlds would get thinner, and Henry would send the Demogorgons to go and hunt victims for him to drain of their life force and memories and to help build out the alternate dimension Hawkins. Every life he claimed through his minions, the Mind Flayer, and Max’s brother Billy (who helped lure countless people to Vecna) helped Henry gain the ability to project into the minds of others and prey on them himself. His victims, starting with Chrissy, were meant to finally open the gates to bring the Upside Down pouring into the real world. His aim? To destroy what Eleven loves in front of her, before absorbing her powers.
The season culminates with Max and the others enacting an audacious plan: Max wants to allow Vecna to possess her, tempting the villain with a distraction so the rest of the gang can try and kill him in the process, both physically and with Eleven combatting him psychically. Things don’t go so well for our heroes, however, as poor Eddie sacrifices himself in the Upside Down to distract Vecna’s hordes of Demobats, and Max herself perishes in the possession process, leading to Eleven having to resurrect her (albeit leaving her in a coma). Now left to regroup and face their setbacks, Hawkins prepares for an all-out battle with Vecna and his forces at the height of his powers… with everything at stake coming into season five.
Stranger Things season five is still over a month away and while fans are very curious to see how the storyline in Hawkins wraps up, there might be even more curiosity about the spin-off that creators Matt and Ross Duffer have been dropping hints about for a while.
The brothers may have recently moved their operations from Netflix to Paramount, but the spinoff, which they will create and have a hand in but won’t showrun, will remain at the streamer. And that’s… just about all we know about it, though we now have a better idea of what not to expect.
Season five, the Duffers emphasized to Variety, will wrap up the tale of Eleven and company with finality. The spin-off, therefore, won’t continue with any of the characters we’ve met in Stranger Things, nor will it follow any threads that were introduced in the world of that show. It won’t be, they insist, like another franchise that’s found great success with interconnected stories.
“It’s so different than something like Star Wars,” Matt Duffer told the trade. “It doesn’t really work like that.”
What is a spinoff if not that, you ask?
The Duffers see it as more of a brand expansion that leans into their “style of storytelling,” broadly including “kids, adventures, sci-fi/fantasy, rather than increasingly [expanding] what could become an increasingly convoluted mytholody.”
Which means, according to Ross Duffer, “They’re going to live in a bit of a different world. There’s going to be connective tissue, but you’re almost anthologizing in a way. Because we’re not Star Wars. We can’t be like, ‘Oh, now we’re on this planet.’”
This approach is more creatively freeing for the duo. “You’re starting with new characters—it’s like clean slate. You’re not tied up into any knots. There’s something refreshing about it … the hope is you’re not just doing something to just do it.”
While we wait to see what that same-but-also-different project looks like, Stranger Things season five is nearly upon us. The first batch of episodes arrives November 26 on Netflix.
You might be surprised by this unexpected crossover between Stranger Things and Frankenstein that you never realized you needed. One of Netflix’s hidden gems is a half-hour mockumentary released in 2019 that’s part PBS Masterpiece Theater and part Orson Welles vanity show parody starring David Harbour (Thunderbolts*).
Frankenstein’s Monster’s Monster, Frankenstein hits that nostalgia for watching public broadcasting with your grandma while sitting on plastic-wrapped couches and eating hard candy. Truly, while watching it, it felt like I got drop-kicked into that core childhood memory. David Harbour plays himself as David Harbour the third, who unearths his father David Harbour Jr.’s (who he also plays) Frankenstein-inspired project. Experiencing daddy issues, Harbour III grapples with an existential crisis brought on by his mad genius dad’s love for the theater over, perhaps, his own son. I cannot stress how unseriously serious everyone is in this, especially Harbour, who relishes the larger-than-life movie star that was his fake-real father.
Complete with a dramatic made-for-TV music score, the mockumentary (directed by Daniel Gray Longino and written by John Levenstein) follows David Harbour’s journey in unpacking his dad’s life work and love for the stage. The TV play within the special chronicles the Welles-esque capitulation into selling oneself out while grasping for one more artistic success.
The play we watch throughout the mockumentary has that PBS TV station filter lighting and the weirdest plot. Frankenstein, the doctor (Harbour), invites over an alluring potential investor, Miss Macbeth (Kate Berlant), to fund building another monster. His assistant Sal (Alex Ozero as ’80s heartthrob Joey Vallejo) poses as the doctor while the real doctor poses as the monster (or does he), which hen suddenly it cuts to an ad for a steak restaurant Harbour Jr. is endorsing while eating his feelings of jealousy toward Vallejo—a feud that may have led to Harbour Jr. cutting the brakes of his competition’s car.
Yeah, it’s definitely convoluted in that Adult Swim style of surreal humor but on Netflix, much like the Kristen Bell murder mystery farce The Woman in the House Across the Street From the Girl in the Window.
It’s so meta, and for that reason we think it’s a must-watch this season leading into the release of Guillermo Del Toro’s authentic Frankenstein feature for the streamer and Stranger Things season five. Harbour is definitely having fun as a lumbering star of the stage that a mere televised special cannot contain. There are even interstitials of him proclaiming, “That’s how I got into Juilliard!” on his mentor’s Inside the Actor’s Studio-style school of acting program.
The kicker? His mentor is played by Alfred Molina, who is relegated to being a sea captain of few words on Frankenstein’s Monster’s Monster, Frankenstein. It’s so unhinged to see the great actor just show up for kicks.
The random nature of the special within the show leaves you with so many more questions than answers. Take, for instance, Harbour attempting to rationalize an irrational man who is completely made up and then being that very man who played two other men. I threw my hands up in the air so many times because it was just so ridiculous. Was he playing Frankenstein, the doctor pretending to be Frankenstein the creature? Or was he Frankenstein, the creature pretending to be his creator to get the investment to make a mate? The galaxy brain that went into this is astounding.
After watching it, it became the most quoted thing around my house or when watching movies. The “Chekhov’s Gun” gun, called out upon introduction in the first act (“It has to go off in the last!”), became something I think of when I watch movies to review. But the most inside joke that lives on has to be “And that’s how I got into Juilliard!”
We chatted with Harbour about it in 2023, which was before the release of his portrayal of Frankenstein for James Gunn’s Creature Commandos for DC Studios; he regaled us with his best Harbour Jr. and discussed why he was drawn to Mary Shelley’s creation: “The most interesting thing to me about Frankenstein’s monster in general is that he was created to be this sort of erudite, intellectual, romantic, brilliant person, and he winds up being a monster. I mean, that complexity can make for some pretty ripe comedy and also pathos—that a guy who considers himself one thing is viewed by others as something very different.”
Contemplate his take on the monster, the man behind the monster, and his own father behind the man that David Harbour would go on to become before Hopper’s return on Stranger Things season 5 in the clip below for a taste.
The dam has broken on Stranger Things season five coverage, with the Duffer brothers, the cast, and even Netflix PR popping up all over the place to announce episode run times (long!), hint at Easter eggs (Barb’s back?), and tease resolutions to big mysteries (like, what is the Upside Down really?). But while fans are eagerly awaiting the final season, they also can’t help but worry. What if, like Game of Thrones before it, Stranger Things can’t stick the landing?
Finn Wolfhard, who plays Mike Wheeler and has given over slightly less than half of his life to the show at this point, had the same fear. In a new Time profile chronicling the end of Stranger Things, he admitted, “I think everyone was pretty worried, honestly. The way that Game of Thrones got torn to shreds in that final season, we’re all walking into this going, ‘We hope to not have that kind of thing happen.’”
Fortunately, those concerns were seemingly unfounded. “But then we read the scripts. We knew that it was something special.”
The pressure that comes with bringing a beloved series to an end—and not pissing people off—is a tremendous task; just look how furious viewers were with Squid Game‘s weak conclusion. You don’t get another chance to course-correct with a new storyline, and you risk damaging not just the show’s future potential for spin-offs (as Netflix and the Duffer brothers have discussed for Stranger Things) but also tarnishing its legacy.
Game of Thrones, of course, was able to keep its world going with House of the Dragon and A Knight of the SevenKingdoms. But there’ll always be an asterisk noting that big, fire-breathing letdown.
Will Stranger Things suffer the same fate? Finn Wolfhard says no! We’ll find out if the fans agree starting November 26, when season five’s first chunk of episodes hits Netflix.
Marvel TV’s big boss teases a Foggy appearance in Daredevil: Born Again season 2. Guillermo del Toro may bring The Buried Giant to stop-motion life at Netflix. Plus, get a few more looks at Predator Badlands. To me, my spoilers!
Five Nights at Freddy’s 2
Variety reports Megan Fox has joined Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 as the voice of Toy Chica. Additionally, MatPat will voice Toy Bonnie and Kellen Goff will voice Toy Freddy.
The Buried Giant
Bloody-Disgusting also has word that a stop-motion animated film based on Kazuo Ishiguro’s fantasy novel, The Buried Giant, is now in development at Netflix with Guillermo del Toro attached to direct. The story follows follows “an elderly Briton couple, Axl and Beatrice, living in a fictional post-Arthurian England in which no one is able to retain long-term memories.”
Predator: Badlands
Fangoria has four new posters for Predator: Badlands.
Composers Chuck Cirino, Bear McCreary and Slash have released a music video for the theme song to Steven Kostankski’s Deathstalker remake with singer Brendan McCreary, drummer Gene Hoglan, bassist Pete Griffin, and guitarist Omer Ben-Zvi.
Yellowjackets
In a new press release (via TV Line), Yellowjackets creators Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson revealed the series will conclude with its fourth season.
After three incredible seasons, and great consideration, we’re excited to announce that we will be bringing the story of Yellowjackets to its twisted conclusion in this fourth and final season. We’ve always known there would come a point when the story would tell us it wants to end, and it’s our belief that our job — our responsibility — is to listen. Telling this emotional, wild, and deeply human story has been a profoundly meaningful experience and a true honor for us, and we’re so very grateful to the brilliant cast, crew and writers who have bravely gone on the journey with us to bring it to life. Most of all, we want to thank the fans who have stuck with us through every moment, mystery and meal — the Hive is nothing without you! We can’t wait to share the final chapter with you and hope you find it…delicious.
The Creep Tapes
However, The Creep Tapes has been renewed for a third season at Shudder. [Fangoria]
Magic 8 Ball
Deadline also has word M. Night Shyamalan will direct a TV series for Mattel based on its “Magic 8 Ball” fortune-telling toy. Co-created with Bad Falcuk, the series aims to “reimagine the classic Magic 8 Ball as the centerpiece of a high-concept, character-driven supernatural drama that blends psychological intensity with cultural intrigue.”
Daredevil: Born Again
During a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, Daredevil: Born Again producer Brad Winderbaum confirmed Elden Henson does appear as Foggy Nelson in the second season of Daredevil: Born Again.
I actually haven’t seen the quote, but I can tell you he is in season 2. People don’t know what they’re allowed to say and what they’re not allowed to say, also. Do I play it coy? Do I be honest? It’s always a dance.
In the same interview, Winderbaum also revealed Matthew Lillard plays a character named Mr. Charles.
He plays a character named Mr. Charles. The story is about power. When Wilson Fisk takes over New York, not just as a mayor but as a king in a way, it puts him in a new class of power players on the international stage. Matthew Lillard’s character represents that. So he’s a bit of a new antagonist on the field, but he’s as influential in many ways as Fisk is. That power negotiation at a very high level of politics and international diplomacy is also fun to watch. He is dealing with Mr. Charles up here and Daredevil down here for different reasons. So he’s getting squeezed a little bit.
The Walking Dead: Dead City
According to Deadline, Raúl Castillo has joined the cast of The Walking Dead: Dead City as a character named Luis.
Prism
Deadline reports Millie Bobby Brown will star in Prism at Netflix, a new supernatural series produced by Rachel Brosnahan, Etan Frankel, Anthony Russo and Joe Russo, and Brown herself. Based on a short story by Nick Shafir, the series sees Brown as Cassie, “a woman with the unique ability to communicate with apparitions, who must uncover the cause of a newly discovered phenomenon that causes ‘visitors’ (ghosts) to appear all over the world before it’s too late.”
Stranger Things
According to Ross Duffer on Instagram, the fifth season premiere of Stranger Things is titled “The Crawl” and runs 68 minutes long. Episode 2 is titled “The Vanishing“ and runs 54 minutes, while Episode 3, “The Turnbow Trap”, is 66 minutes. Episode 4, “Sorcerer”, runs 83 minutes.
The Copenhagen Test
Finally, Simu Liu learns “his brain has been hacked” by a “shadowy agency” in the trailer for The Copenhagen Test.
With Stranger Things nearing its end, Millie Bobby Brown is preparing to take on a new role in a supernatural TV show. The actress is set to lead and executive-produce Prism, an upcoming Netflix series. It centers on a woman who can communicate with spirits amid a mysterious global phenomenon.
Millie Bobby Brown to star in Prism for Netflix
Netflix is developing a new supernatural drama series titled Prism, with Stranger Things star Millie Bobby Brown set to take on the lead role. Bobby Brown also serves as an executive producer alongside Rachel Brosnahan and the Russo brothers’ AGBO banner (via Deadline).
Brown will portray Cassie, a woman gifted with the ability to communicate with spirits. She becomes entangled in a global crisis when a strange phenomenon begins causing ghostly “visitors” to appear across the world. To prevent chaos, Cassie must uncover the origin of this strange phenomenon. As of now, Brosnahan’s role in the series remain unknown.
Prism will be overseen by Etan Frankel, who has been appointed showrunner. The show is based on Prism, a short story originally featured in Assemble Artifacts magazine and developed in-house by Assemble Media. The story’s author, Nick Shafir, is also on board as co-producer.
Behind the scenes, the production will be handled by Assemble Media. In addition to Brown through her PCMA banner, the executive producers also include Brosnahan and Russell Kahn via Scrap Paper Pictures.
Meanwhile, Anthony Russo, Joe Russo, Angela Russo-Otstot, Scott Nemes, and Alessandra Maman represent AGBO. Assemble Media’s Jack Heller and Caitlin de Lisser-Ellen are also part of the producing team.
Prism continues Brown’s growing creative partnership with Netflix, following her recent work with AGBO on The Electric State. Her upcoming slate includes Enola Holmes 3, scheduled for a 2026 release. She is also producing and leading the romantic comedy Just Picture It, which is currently in development.
Meanwhile, Brown’s long-running hit Stranger Things will conclude later this year, releasing its fifth and final season in three parts from November 26 to December 31.
Netflix has not yet announced a premiere date for Prism.
Talk about a blast from the past. Just look at how much the Stranger Things cast has aged since 1983.
Kidding, just kidding. No, but really, there’s some sort of time warp happening because Netflix had Finn Wolfhard, Caleb McLaughlin, and Gaten Matarazzo, along with Cara Buono (who plays Wolfhard’s mom, Karen Wheeler), react to the star-making first scene. I cannot fathom how this was only nine years ago, since the original Hawkins heroes were just babies, and now they’re full-on adults. Check out the clip below released in the lead-up to the series’ final season later this year.
It’s a delight to witness Wolfhard, McLaughlin, and Matarazzo look back on that fateful Dungeons & Dragons game the night Will Byers (Noah Schnapp) disappeared. Little Mike, Lucas, and Dustin are just so pure! So unaware of just how long they would be making the rest of this show for!
In the clip, the trio shared some fun commentary about whether or not they’ve become casual D&D players since season one, and the answers are not surprising for the Gen Z stars. McLaughlin point-blank shared he hadn’t, while Matarazzo defended the game.
“I feel like it’s such a good game for actors, really, though, because it’s just like—it’s improv. It’s just like you’re playing characters, and you’re playing pretend. It’s really fun,” he said, and we get the sense that he might be a frequent player. His character is into it the most, taking the reins from Eddie Munson (Joseph Quinn), the Hellfire Club’s dearly departed (and not forgotten) Dungeon Master.
Wolfhard added, “I played two small campaigns. Honestly, if you’re not the dungeon master, it’s pretty fun because all you have to do is—you just have to be committed to staying with the bit.”
It only took nine years for these boys to become adults… and occasionally D&D ambassadors, to boot. Stranger Things‘ final season will debut in two main parts on November 26 and December 25, with the final episode streaming standalone on December 31.
2025 will end with the end of Stranger Things, after which creators Matt and Ross Duffer will be at Paramount. While the pair are knee deep in putting the finishing touches on their Netflix hit, they talked up what’s to come once they’re exclusive to the Mission: Impossible and Transformers studio.
Movie-wise, the brothers intend to focus on original things, but they also told Variety they wouldn’t mind tackling a known property owned by Paramount. However, they stressed any IP they took on would have to be ones they “really responded to,” not just something that’s popular or would make a good headline. They didn’t offer more specifics in terms of criteria, but Matt brought up “botched” properties where “someone swung and missed, [and] then you have an opportunity to do it properly.”
When they’re not tackling movies, the Duffers hope to find and foster new talent, akin to what Shawn Levy did for them by backing Stranger Things. They don’t want to get as big as Bad Robot, though, so they’ll just focus on “identifying really talented people and then just helping them get their vision made and then mostly staying out of the way.”
As for the Duffers’ TV ventures, they intend repeat what they did with Stranger Things and make event shows in the eight-to-10 episode range. Shows with 20-episode or more seasons are “fatiguing,” said Matt, and neither brother grew up a fan of that model. But they want to continue making shows with shorter seasons and a “when it’s done” model, with Matt calling the traditional way “a diminishing return. I like the buildup.” Brother Matt also acknowleged that it’s strange the two even ended up in TV to begin with when they grew up on movies and aren’t really fans of television—but hey, look forward to the last run of Stranger Things episodes beginning November 26.
Netflix has shared a new video for Stranger Things Season 5, teasing what to expect from the highly anticipated final installment of the popular coming-of-age sci-fi show.
The fifth and final season will release on Netflix across three premiere dates. Volume 1 debuts on November 26, with four episodes. Meanwhile, Volume 2 will drop three episodes on Christmas, followed by the series finale premiere on New Year’s Eve. Each volume releases at 5 p.m. PT.
What happens in the Stranger Things Season 5 video?
The video features the cast and creative team as they reflect on the show’s incredible journey from the first season up to its impending conclusion. The main cast, including Millie Bobby Brown, Finn Wolfhard, Noah Schnapp, Gaten Matarazzo, and Caleb McLaughlin, also talked about their close bond and their experience growing up together. Meanwhile, Winona Ryder and David Harbour also shared how great it was to witness the young cast grow, with Ryder describing it as the “biggest gift” that the show has given her.
In addition, the featurette also provided fans with more footage from the final season, with the cast and creative team promising to deliver its biggest and most epic season ever. They also teased that each character will get to show everything they’ve got as they all fight together for their one last adventure.
Stranger Things Season 5 also stars Natalia Dyer, Joe Keery, Charlie Heaton, Sadie Sink, Maya Hawke, Priah Ferguson, Cara Buono, and Brett Gelman. It will also feature the return of Season 4 cast members Jamie Campbell Bower as Vecna/One/Henry Creel and Amybeth McNulty as Vickie. Joining them are new cast members, Terminator vet Linda Hamilton as Dr. Kay, Nell Fisher as Holly Wheeler, Jake Connelly as Derek Turnbow, and Alex Breaux as Lt. Akers.
“The fall of 1987. Hawkins is scarred by the opening of the Rifts, and our heroes are united by a single goal: find and kill Vecna. But he has vanished — his whereabouts and plans unknown. Complicating their mission, the government has placed the town under military quarantine and intensified its hunt for Eleven, forcing her back into hiding,” reads the Season 5 synopsis. “As the anniversary of Will’s disappearance approaches, so does a heavy, familiar dread. The final battle is looming — and with it, a darkness more powerful and more deadly than anything they’ve faced before. To end this nightmare, they’ll need everyone — the full party — standing together, one last time.”
The series is created and executive produced by Matt and Ross Duffer, who also serve as showrunners. It is executive-produced by Shawn Levy of 21 Laps Entertainment and Dan Cohen, with Levy also directing multiple episodes. Besides the upcoming final season, the streamer will also be releasing an animated spin-off series titled Stranger Things: Tales From ‘85.
Originally reported by Maggie Dela Paz at SuperHeroHype.
If you haven’t yet, you can also refresh your memory on seasons one and two!
The Battle of Starcourt is the all-time event in the series so far as a red threat rises in the sleepy town of Hawkins. The Duffer Brothers’ show really fires on all cylinders in season three, which, in our opinion, is the best season of the Netflix franchise so far. It’s a true television epic with engaging character dynamics and the Upside Down lore growing more mysteriously intriguing.
Here’s what you need to remember from the season where the kids started to come of age—and faced both teen horrors and real-life ones.
After El (Millie Bobby Brown) sealed the rift to the Upside Down in season two, the bit of the Mind Flayer that left Will (Noah Schnapp) survived. To get back to its full powers in the real world, it picks Billy (Dacre Montgomery) as a host and sets about trying to absorb new lives. The more people it claims, the bigger it grows, harnessing the sliver of energy emanating from the healing rift—which might not be able to fully close now thanks to some new suspicious activity.
There’s a new threat in town
After a blackout, Joyce (Winona Ryder) notices that suddenly all the town’s magnets no longer work. Sure, it’s a small thing but call it mother’s intuition and PTSD from everything that went down in Hawkins National Laboratory; it is enough for her to tell Hopper that something is amiss. Initially she thinks it’s HNL but Hopper (David Harbour) swears he ran them out of town.
Steve and the Scoops Troop
Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo) is still hanging around Steve (Joe Keery) while he works at the new Starcourt Mall Scoops Ahoy location. While there, Steve parents the rest of the gang from behind the counter with the help of free ice cream. When Dustin uses his radio to communicate with his long-distance camp sweetheart, he discovers a series of suspicious Russian calls and records them. He enlists Steve and his co-worker Robin (Maya Hawke) to translate, which leads to the discovery that the Russians have infiltrated their town.
When a series of rat infestations draw enough suspicion, Nancy (Natalia Dyer) and Jonathan (Charlie Heaton) investigate the mysterious disease that they’re carrying. The rats are drawn to eating chemicals, including fertilizer, and after eating enough of it, the critters burst into sentient goo, which also infects the living. As Nance and Jonathan follow an old lady, who becomes part of the Mind Flayer hive horde, they discover that more and more people are going missing after feasting on household chemicals.
Starcourt Mall secrets
Hopper beats the truth out of Mayor Kline (Cary Elwes), who confesses that he helped broker the sale of land to the Russians that Starcourt Mall was built on as well as land around the lake next to HNL. After investigating the abandoned lab, he and Joyce kidnap Dr. Alexei (Alec Utgoff) and take him to an off-the-grid Murray (Bret Gelman), who happens to know Russian, in order to find out just what the Russians want with Hawkins.
Meanwhile, Dustin, with the help of Steve, Robin, and Lucas’ little sister Erica (Priah Ferguson), breaks into the high-security base beneath the mall. They find that the Russians are powering an energy beam to rip the rift to the Upside Down open again but before they can escape, they’re caught.
The Mindflayer feasts on Hawkins
Billy lures more and more people to melt into the sentient goo that helps the Mind Flayer be reborn. It’s a hive mind that Will begins to sense through the part of him that still has a connection to it. He lets the gang know that “he” is back once enough people have been taken over.
This season’s personal drama between every character really heightens the tension of the imminent danger. The season starts out with El and Mike (Finn Wolfhard) being teens in love, much to the consternation of Hop, who is an overprotective dad. Joyce tries to help Hopper establish boundaries out of the love he has for his daughter but it kind of blows up before he can, and Hopper threatens Mike into cooling his relationship with El. In response, El knows something is up and breaks up with Mike but gets to find her agency through her friendship with Max (Sadie Sink).
Hopper’s anger issues give his character a weird vibe this season. For one thing, he’s really bent on getting Joyce to go to dinner with him soon after Bob’s death and gets really drunk when she stands him up. Then for the rest of the season, he is inexplicably jealous when she talks to any other guy. It’s mostly played for laughs since Joyce and Hopper are a very obvious endgame. Joyce redirects his frustrations by getting him to help with the Russians, namely by beating up the Russian Temu Terminator, who’s on their trail.
Jonathan and Nancy also get their own relationship drama to work through. When they’re both interning at the Hawkins Post, Jonathan gets a taste of male privilege as he immediately gets work as a photographer, while Nancy gets stuck on coffee duty. Likewise, Max and Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin) are also sort of going through it too as they help El and Mike by picking sides.
The Russians do a Red Dawn
All the pieces come together when it becomes clear that the Russians want to use their key to gain access to the Upside Down, while not knowing they’re aiding the Mind Flayer’s growth as it tries to wipe out the town. Joyce and Hopper join forces with Alexei to help stop it and when they team up with the kids, they get guided into the base below Starcourt.
Meanwhile, the Mind Flayer starts to target El to destroy her and absorb her powers. It remembers what she did and, through Billy, tells her it wants to destroy everything she loves and then kill her. She uses so much of her powers when it attacks them that it zaps her. The Mind Flayer cannot be destroyed as long as the rift isn’t fully sealed so her friends team up for a last stand at Starcourt, which involves fireworks and El tapping into her empathy to get Billy on their side. After seeing his memories, she reminds him of his love for his mother and not the darkness that made him vulnerable to the Mind Flayer, which seems to target the weak and fearful for power. Billy protects El as Joyce and Hopper stop the Russians’ key.
Hopper’s sacrifice
The Temu Terminator shows up as Joyce and Hopper try to stop the key. He and Hopper face off right by the beam, which goes haywire when it’s struck in the fistfight. Hopper looks at Joyce to let her know to let him sacrifice himself in order to save the town.
Three months later Joyce and the kids, including El, are preparing to move away and break up the Hawkins gang. Eleven finds Hopper’s letter he meant to read to her and Mike as a sendoff to the character. But it’s not much of one, as the end credits scene introduces us to another base in Russia where prisoners are being pitted against Demogorgons and “the American” isn’t chosen… yet.
We bid farewell to Eddie Munson (played by Joseph Quinn) in episode 9, as he died a hero to save his friends and protect his town. The Duffer Brothers confirmed this character’s death while appearing on the Happy Sad Confused podcast following the finale — yet, there’s two other character demises from Volume 2 that may not actually have a nail in their coffins.
Max’s fate is unclear
Max became a victim of Vecna’s curse in the two-part finale, and was technically dead for a full minute before Eleven restarted her heart with her powers. The last we see of Max, she’s hospitalised and in a coma. Eleven tries to communicate with her by searching for her mind, but there is, tragically, no response.
When asked about Max’s fate while speaking to Entertainment Weekly, Sink was quick to point out that Max has a pulse and is technically still alive and present in the show. “I’m not sure where we’re going and what Max’s state is. It’s definitely all up in the air right now,” said Sink. “I’m just as excited as everyone else to find out where Max is and how she’s doing.”
Vecna’s fate is also up in the air
Jamie Campbell Bower, who portrayed this season’s villain Vecna/Henry/One, also hinted at a S5 return to EW, noting the scene where Vecna should be dead, but suddenly disappears. On August 29, JCB opened up further to NME, teasing that Vecna will most likely be back for season five, and he’ll be back with a hell of a vengeance. “He’s pissed, he’s properly vexed,” said Campbell Bower. “I don’t think he’s slunk off licking his wounds in misery. He’s rebuilding, and he’s out for blood. It’s like, you’ve really f*cking pushed the buttons now, that classic Jason Voorhees [the iconic killer in Friday the 13th] thing — you’ve made a big mistake.”
Though Campbell Bower still hasn’t confirmed whether he’s signed on for multiple seasons, Will’s mention to Mike that he could still feel Vecna’s presence during the finale is almost confirmation enough. “I think Vecna and Will have a connection that’s yet to be explored,” continued JCB. “As a fan, I’d be interested to see more of that.”
Will new characters be introduced inStranger Thingsseason 5?
Terminator star Linda Hamilton confirmed back in 2023 that she’d be joining the cast – no word yet on who her character will be yet, though.
“I don’t know how to be a fangirl and an actress at the same time,” she said during her announcement for Netflix’s TUDUM. “I’m gonna work on that.”
While speaking to IndieWire in August 2022, the Duffer Brothers broke down their rationale behind bringing new characters on the show and praised the adaptability and performances of actors brought on the series after season 1, like Joseph Quinn, Sadie Sink, Maya Hawke, and Dacre Montgomery. Though they avoid introducing multiple new core characters in a given season, the Duffer Brothers admitted that new characters can bring fresh ideas, just like new plot devices or new creatures to battle.
“I just like shaking it up, so we shake it up by changing the plot or adding in a new monster,” said Matt. “We’re doing our best to resist [adding new characters] for Season 5. We’re trying not to do that so we can focus on the OG characters, I guess.” With such a finite amount of time left with the OG Hawkins gang, it makes sense that the Stranger Things writers want to make sure that fans aren’t left feeling shorted by the series finale. This means there might be a new face around town in Stranger Things 5, but don’t count on it too much.
When she first started shooting Stranger Things, Millie Bobby Brown was 10 years old playing Eleven. The 20-year-old actress is now married (into the House of Bon Jovi, no less), and the fifth and final season of the Netflix show still hasn’t dropped. The long wait isn’t because the Duffer brothers couldn’t figure out how to wrap up all the loose ends — in fact, the series creators told Variety in 2022 that fans shouldn’t expect to wait another three years since they already had an initial outline for the last installment of the show. But it was one of many projects across the industry that faced unexpected delays due to the double Hollywood strikes in 2023. Filming finally started on January 8, 2024.
Not yet. But on July 15, Netflix celebrated Stranger Things 5 hitting the halfway point of filming by giving us a glimpse of the cast in costume on set in a behind-the-scenes video. We’re assured that the wait will be “100%” worth it and that season five feels even bigger than season four. It’s not like they could say it’ll be a letdown that feels smaller, but we’ll take it.
The majority of the cast. If you need proof, check the black-and-white photo Netflix shared to mark the start of production in January. Millie Bobby Brown, Finn Wolfhard, Noah Schnapp, Gaten Matarazzo, Caleb McLaughlin, Sadie Sink, Maya Hawke, Jamie Campbell Bower, David Harbour, Winona Ryder, Joe Keery, Amybeth McNulty, Charlie Heaton, Brett Gelman, Natalia Dyer, and Priah Ferguson are all pictured.
Joseph Quinn is notably not in the shot, but he seemingly hasn’t ruled out the possibility of returning. “Nothing’s impossible,” he told The Hollwyood Reporter when asked in June 2024 about popping up in season five. “I don’t know,” he added, pointing out that he might have a “sly smile” on his face.
Photo: Atsushi Nishijima/Netflix
Four of ‘em so far, yup. Netflix announced in 2023 that Linda Hamilton would be the latest ‘80s icon to star in the ‘80s-set show. In July 2024, Netflix confirmed that Nell Fisher, Jake Connelly, and Alex Breaux are also playing new characters.
Matt Duffer told The Guardian in 2023 that season five will be like season one “on steroids.” As you might recall, by the end of season four, Vecna got the Upside Down to start bleeding into Hawkins. With the gang all back in town, Matt said that we can expect to see Eleven and the boys interacting more like they did when we first met them. Ross Duffer also suggested to Collider in 2022 that the final installment will be “coming full circle back to season one.” He added that he expects that to happen with several character arcs, including Will, whom Matt identified as “a big part and focus” of the final season. “We’re starting to see his coming of age, really,” Matt explained. “Which has been challenging for a number of reasons, some of which are supernatural. But you’re starting to see him come into his own.”
Meanwhile, if you’ve still got burning questions about the Upside Down, you’re in luck. The Duffers previously told Tudum that they wrote 25 pages about the mysterious dimension’s mythology during season one. The duo teased during Geeked Week in 2022 that questions answered by that lore document will translate to “big reveals” that are “really going to affect what season five is about.” (So perhaps it’s not surprising that Matt previously confirmed to Collider in 2022 that this season will primarily take place in Hawkins and the Upside Down.)
It’s not a full press tour yet, but we’ve been getting little details in interviews throughout the year. Finn Wolfhard told Us Weeklyon November 1 that season five will include “a lot of action sequences.” According to Wolfhard, the season will be “intimate,” but also “huge” in scale — a contrast he’s also teased in other interviews. He also echoed the Duffers’s full-circle comments by telling The Hollywood Reporter in March that the show is returning to “a lot of the dynamics of season one,” including some “leader Mike” moments.
During a Happy Sad Confused podcast live special in October, David Harbour said that as someone who can be “very critical” of Stranger Things, he thinks the season five finale is the best episode of the entire series. He added that cast members started crying halfway through the table read for it. “Then about the last 20 minutes, it was just uncontrollably crying, waves of different people. Noah Schnapp being my favorite,” he said.
In June, Jamie Campbell Bower reflected on iHeart’s I’ve Never Said This Before podcast that while he found season four’s plot easy to follow, he struggled to keep up with what was happening this time. “If you thought last season was nuts, this season is just out of control, wild, like, it’s bonkers. It really, really is,” he said, per The Hollywood Reporter. “It’s bigger. It’s just completely insane. It’s completely insane.”
Meanwhile, Joe Keery said in February on The Movie Dweeb podcast that “good, good things” will happen for Steve.
Eight, which Maya Hawke described to Podcrushed in July as “basically, eight movies.” If that wasn’t clear enough, she added, “The episodes are very long.” That seems to align with Matt Duffer’s July 2022 appearance on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, when he said he expected the season-five finale to have a runtime of at least two hours, per The Wrap.
For now, Stranger Things has shared the first couple lines of the script for the first episode, which already has a confirmed title: “The Crawl.”
As of publication time, no and no. If July was a true halfway point in filming, then it seems like shooting could wrap in January 2026. But there’s also post-production time to consider after that. As soon as we hear any official confirmation, we’ll come running up the hill to update this post.
In some ways, September feels more like a reset than January. After the hedonism of Summer, snapping back into routine feels welcome and motivating. And some part of my brain was trained by the rigors of back-to-school season to associate September with new starts.
From moodboarding to buying new planners, I feel so productive in the fall. Many of us get this renewed burst of confidence and inspiration, even as we mourn the end of summer — and our beloved summer Fridays). It will always be back-to-school season, even if the closest you’ve been to a classroom in years is binge-watching Abbott Elementary.
The nostalgia trip we all take — pining for the days when our biggest worry was whether we’d make it to homeroom before the bell — is enough to make me yearn for high school. I don’t miss the classes or the people, but I do miss that time when the only thing I had to pay for was school lunch — and I didn’t even have to use my own money. Things were simpler, even if they weren’t better. But on TV and in movies, you can indulge in reminiscing and go on pretending that everything was better when you were in school.
What better way to indulge in that nostalgia than with a solid back-to-school watchlist?
These school-inspired shows and films aren’t merely entertainment — they’re time machines, transporting us back to that era of questionable fashion choices, awkward first crushes, and the unshakeable belief that high school was going to be the best four years of our lives. (Spoiler alert: it wasn’t. Our high school crushes did NOT look like Zac Efron in High School Musical.)
From the hallowed halls of Gilmore Girls’ private school or Hawkins Middle School’s air of murder in Stranger Things, these stories capture student life in all its glory and angst — no matter how unrelatable the actual scenarios are. They remind us of the friends we made, the lessons we learned (occasionally in class, but mostly outside of it), and the unshakeable certainty that our lives were about to change forever.
Without further ado, here’s our definitive back-to-school watchlist, guaranteed to give you all the feels and maybe — just maybe — make you wish you could do it all over again. But only if you get to look like a 25-year-old playing a teenager, because let’s face it, that’s half the fun of these shows.
1. Gilmore Girls
I used to wish I lived in Stars Hollow — the town where everyone knows your name, your coffee order, and your SAT scores. Gilmore Girls has become synonymous with fall and with the back-to-school season for a reason. We all wish we could channel Rory: her good grades, her pick of hot guys, and her superficial drama. So of course this show is ideal for when you’re feeling nostalgic for a high school experience that you never actually had. At its heart, this show is about the relationship between Lorelai and Rory Gilmore, a mother-daughter duo, so close you’ll give your mom a call. Rory’s journey through the hallowed halls of Chilton Preparatory School and later Yale University makes this show a back-to-school essential. Watching her navigate the cutthroat world of an elite private school — complete with Paris Geller, the human embodiment of a Type A girlboss — is both hilarious and oddly comforting.
2. Matilda
If Matilda doesn’t inspire you to want to telekinetically hurl your principal out a window, you never went to middle school. But more than wishing harm on Miss Trunchbull, This Roald Dahl adaptation makes me wish I had a teacher like Miss Honey. I had a few English teachers that came close (it’s always the English teachers) but corporate ladders of the adult world is devoid of soul that pure. Matilda Wormwood is every bookworm’s hero, a pint-sized genius who finally gets the recognition she deserves. We’re all waiting for our powers to kick in once we read enough books, I’m sure.
3. Jennifer’s Body
This film is Megan Fox at her peak — no wonder it’s recently been referenced by stars like Madison Beer. A Tumblr mainstay, Jennifer’s Body is a cult classic that went unappreciated in its time but it goes triple platinum in my apartment each back-to-school season. It asks the important question: what do you do when the scariest thing about high school isn’t the pop quiz in third period, but your best friend’s sudden appetite for human flesh? This bisexual-coded film is the Black Swan of high school dramas. Megan Fox stars as Jennifer, the quintessential high school hottie who starts killing — and eating — boys. If I was her bestie, I would let her. The gore and the gloriously cheesy one-liners — “You’re killing people!” “No, I’m killing boys.” — make this a brilliant feminist revenge fantasy. No wonder I crave it every year.
4. Bottoms
When it comes to gory, kitschy modern classics, Bottoms is a new entry and it’s number one with a bullet.
Bottoms is a queer high school comedy that reveals what happens when you mix Fight Club with sapphic energy and sprinkle in some Gen Z absurdism. Starring Ayo Edebiri and Rachel Sennott, it follows two unpopular lesbian students who start a fight club to hook up with cheerleaders. It’s gloriously unhinged, unapologetically gay, and so killingly awkward in the best possible way.
Bottoms changed my brain chemistry, just like high school. It aptly captures the desperation of trying to fit in while also flipping off the entire concept of fitting in. Wrapped up in a packaging of violence, dark humor, and surprisingly tender moments, it’s a love letter to every queer kid who felt like an outsider. This film is the chaotic good energy we need in our back-to-school watchlist, reminding us that sometimes the best way to navigate the hellscape of high school is to create your own ridiculous rules.
5. The Breakfast Club
Speaking of creating your own rules and changing high school archetypes, The Breakfast Club is the OG film celebrating high school angst. The Breakfast Club is a John Hughes classic that never goes out of style. Five stereotypes walk into detention, and by the end, they’re dancing on tables and oversharing like they’re on their third glass of rosé. It’s a terrific reminder that high school was actually terrible, and we’re all just damaged goods trying to fit in.
As someone who was a floater in high school, this is pretty much what my average afternoon looked like. But without the cool 80s outfits. The film’s exploration of clique dynamics and the pressure to conform is still painfully relevant — even outside the halls of high school. Whether you identify with the brain, the athlete, the basket case, the princess, or the criminal (let’s be real, you’re probably a mix of all five by now), there’s something here for everyone. Plus, watching Judd Nelson’s John Bender stick it to the man will make you feel better about that passive-aggressive email you sent to HR last week. It’ll have you fist-pumping and cringing in equal measure – just like your actual high school experience.
6. Young Royals
One thing about me, I’m gonna bring up Young Royals. I thought my boarding school was full of angst and drama? It was nothing compared to Wilhelm and Simon’s experience at Hillerska, the Swedish boarding school for the elite in Young Royals. It’s gay Gossip Girl meets gay The Crown with a hefty dose of Swedish angst. Imagine if Prince Harry’s memoir was gay and he wrote it while listening to Robyn on repeat.
Young Royals follows a fictionalized Swedish Prince who is the “spare.” He grapples with royal responsibilities at a new school where he balances dealing with family expectations, class differences, and his growing feelings for a non-royal — and decidedly male — classmate. Tea. It’s a delicious cocktail of privilege, repression, and teen hormones that’ll make you grateful for your mundane high school experiences. But it also reminds you how much can change in September. Who knows, you might fall in love tomorrow. We can dream. The show’s final season aired this summer and it has one of the best finales I’ve ever seen. Go forth. Break your own heart.
7. Heartstopper
For a less angsty and more fluff-filled queer romance, turn on my personal comfort show: Heartstopper. It’s the wholesome gay content we didn’t know we needed in our cynical lives. Based on Alice Oseman’s graphic novels, this British coming-of-age story follows Charlie and Nick as they navigate friendship, love, and self-discovery. Its cast has grown iconic with the show’s immense popularity, making us root for Kit Conner and Joe Locke’s endeavors in real life as much as we root for Nick and Charlie on screen.
It’s so sweet but somehow manages to avoid being saccharine. It’s a refreshingly optimistic take on LGBTQ+ youth experiences that’ll make you want to go back in time and give your teenage self a hug. The show tackles issues like coming out, bullying, and mental health with a deft touch, all while serving up enough adorable moments alongside cringe-worthy universal experiences — like the age old “am I gay” quiz.
8. Sex Education
Less wholesome, but equally as iconic, Sex Education is a British gem about the awkwardness of puberty. It’s set in a high school that seems to exist in a timeless bubble of ’80s aesthetics and modern sensibilities. The show follows Otis — the son of a sex therapist — as he and his friends navigate the treacherous waters of teen sexuality. It’s frank, it’s funny, and it’ll make you wish you had access to this information when you were fumbling through your own sexual awakening. Apt for back-to-school season, it reminds us that no matter how old we get, when it comes to sex and relationships we’re all still awkward teenagers.
9. Election
Election is another cult classic starring a young Reese Witherspoon. This razor-sharp satire takes on the cutthroat world of high school politics and turns it into a mirrored funhouse mirror that reflects our current political landscape. Way more lighthearted than stress-watching the debate, I promise. Reese Witherspoon’s Tracy Flick is the overachiever we all love to hate — or secretly admire, depending on how many color-coded planners you own.
She’s gunning for student body president with the intensity she brought back in Legally Blonde. All while Matthew Broderick’s Mr. McAllister tries to sabotage her campaign in a misguided attempt to teach her a lesson (spoiler alert: it doesn’t go well). Election is a delicious back-to-school watch for when you’re feeling disillusioned with the system but still harboring a secret desire to change it from within. It’s a biting commentary on ambition, ethics, and the dangers of unchecked power — all wrapped up in a deceptively perky package.
10. 10 Things I Hate About You
My favorite movie of all time. I don’t need back-to-school season to make me want to watch this and transform myself into Kat Stratford — but it’s a good enough excuse. This modern retelling of The Taming of the Shrew is a time capsule filled with crop tops, combat boots, and enough feminist rage to flashback to high school when I’m painting signs for the Women’s March.
Kat Stratford — played by Julia Stiles at her eye-rolling best — is the sardonic, Sylvia Plath-reading heroine we all aspired to be but lacked the natural coolness. Meanwhile, Heath Ledger’s Patrick Verona is the bad boy with a heart of gold that launched a thousand sexual awakenings. The film’s take on high school politics feels both delightfully dated and eerily relevant — because let’s face it, adult life is just high school with more expensive wine. 10 Things is the perfect back-to-school watch when you need a reminder that it’s okay to be the “difficult” one, that grand romantic gestures involving marching bands are severely underrated, and that you should never-ever let someone tell you that you’re “incapable of loving anyone.”
11. Love and Basketball
Hear me out: half of Spike Lee’s 2000 film Love and Basketball may take place in adulthood, but it starts with the first day of school. This is the ultimate story about actually ending up with your childhood crush or high school boyfriend. Yes, it’s delusional but something’s gotta motivate me to attend my reunion in a few years. Love and Basketball follows Monica and Quincy from childhood neighbors to high school sweethearts to rival athletes, all set against the backdrop of competitive basketball.
The film perfectly captures the intensity of first love, the pressure of pursuing your dreams, and the realization that sometimes you can have it all — just not all at once. Love and Basketball is the ideal back-to-school watch for when you’re feeling sentimental about the days when your biggest worry was balancing your crush with your extracurriculars. It’s a poignant reminder that life doesn’t always follow a straight path, and sometimes you have to take a few shots before you score. And that women’s sports are just as valid as men’s sports. Play for her heart, Quincy! Play for her heart!
12. Abbott Elementary
Everyone’s favorite sitcom is the defining school-inspired drama of our era. Quinta Brunson’s masterpiece accurately portrays the chaos of elementary school while prompting us to wonder: what were our teachers up to during those years? While I don’t remember much, I’m sure I was just as much a menace as the kids in Abbott Elementary. Teachers deserve a raise, seriously. Full of hearty laughs and genuinely moving moments, this feel-good show makes me consider teaching somewhere. I won’t do it, but maybe…
13. Stranger Things
Hawkins Middle School may be full of monsters and murder, but what I would do to be part of the AV club with those nerds. Netflix’s paranormal smash hit is set in a small midwestern town and, while the last two seasons have been set in the summer, the show is at its best when our characters are balancing a fresh school year with battling the demogorgon. The wait for Season 5 is lasting as long as Senior Year felt. If those kids can get through middle school, you can make it through your next meeting. I believe in you.
Ladies and gentlemen … she got him. This weekend, Deuxmoi broke the news: Doja Cat and Joseph Quinn are dating.
This is like when your most delusional friend actually lands the thing they’ve been making insane scenarios about. Or when the most embarrassing person you know pops up in a functioning relationship. This is proof that if they can do it, anyone can. And the lore with the pop hitmaker and the Stranger Things star is so deep that I can’t help but wish this odd couple well.
If you aren’t chronically online with a brain that’s merely a Rolodex of pop culture facts (it’s getting to be a problem for me — my obsession with Deuxmoi’s Sunday Spotteds has eaten up years of my life at this point and don’t even get me started on my screen time), here’s the rundown on their lore — which started two years ago.
It might seem like a millennium has passed since the last season of the Netflix smash hitStranger Things dropped, but it’s only been two years. With the season’s release, Quinn shot to popularity as the lovable outcast Eddie. Doja Cat was one of many admirers, brazenly tweeting that she thought he was “fine as sh*t.”
The since-deleted tweet is the first record of their courtship. It’s her version of Gatsby throwing a party in hopes that Daisy will attend. She was shooting her shot. It feels crazy that Doja Cat — a viral superstar who inspired a song by none other than other British heartthrob Central Cee — pulls the same tactics as I do by posting strategic Instagram stories. Celebs really are just like us.
However, for a minute there, it looked like the two would never get to this point. In her quest to get her man, Doja didn’t stop at a tweet. She slid into the DMs … of Quinn’s 17-year-old costar, Noah Schnapp.
“Noah can you tell Joseph to hit me up,” Doja asked Schnapp. “Wait no. does he have a gf?” Of course, as a 17-year-old, Noah Schnapp immediately posted this message on TikTok. Despite the familiar tone of her message, it turns out the two didn’t know each other at all — so why was Doja asking him for favors? And asking a teenage boy to be your matchmaker, especially one who barely had any scenes with Quinn, is a strange move — the things we do for love.
This weird moment obviously went viral and resulted in a short feud between Schnapp and the “ Say So” star. Doja accused the teenager of “bullying” her, calling it “degrading,” “exploitative,” and “super embarrassing.” However, after a few TikToks and livestream rants, Schnapp claimed everything was “all good” between them.
We all thought that was the end of it — until recently, when Quinn and Doja Cat were seen strolling arm-in-arm around London. Talk about the long game.
It seems the songstress has been cozying around with the Hawkins heartthrob for weeks. I mean, who would have thought that the brooding, mysterious Eddie Munson from Stranger Things and the bold, boundary-pushing Doja Cat would make such an iconic pair? But you know what they say – opposites attract, and these two are proof that you can manifest anything.
Fans have even started referencing that original tweet to manifest their own dreams — from other celebrities to jobs and even “Mike Faist employment” by calling them “fine as sh*t.” If it worked for Doja, universe, just know I think a Challengers sequel would be fine as sh*t.
A London boy and a pop princess, coming together to create pop culture magic — we’ve seen this story before. Let’s hope this pairing lasts. But even if it doesn’t, the two have started a movement that the internet is calling “ London Boy Fall.”
From Tom Holland and Zendaya to Olivia Rodrigo and Louis Partridge — plus Gracie Abrams and Paul Mescal (yes, we know he’s Irish but the two have been cozying it up around London) — I’m looking up flights to London as we speak.
What’s next for the two stars, time can only tell. Quinn is about to set off on his press tour for Gladiator II (and filming Stranger Things 5, I hope), but the two of them are enjoying a London summer while ushering up London Boy Fall.
Set during the time and place everyone loves to romanticize—New York City in the 1980s—Abi Morgan’s Eric isn’t your typical kidnapping story. But then, nor is Morgan your typical screenwriter, having showcased a wide range of genres and styles over the years, something that is best elucidated by the fact that she is the writer of both The Iron Lady starring Meryl Streep and Shame starring Michael Fassbender. Eric probably falls more in the same column as the latter, even if not as overtly “seedy.” Still, it does explore a certain underworld (often literally) of New York, one that, in this case, involves a network of homeless people intertwined with the proverbial “hustle” aboveground.
The hustle in question is centered around a nightclub called The Lux, which just so happens to be right near the Andersons’ apartment. A place where Vincent (Benedict Cumberbatch) and Cassie (Gaby Hoffman, coming out of her intermittent retirement to remind us of her aphorism, “I really love my job, but I don’t want to do it that often”) live in the antithesis of wedded bliss. Their nine-year-old son, Edgar (Ivan Morris Howe), to his dismay, lives with them, too, and is daily subjected to their toxic fighting.
This constant exposure to the kinds of “adult fare” he shouldn’t be hearing is just one of the many reasons for Edgar’s obvious precociousness. In addition to his father quizzing him on who said quotes like, “Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” A chestnut penned by none other than Leo Tolstoy. And it also serves as the crux of the series’ message, which is why use of the Tolstoyism is established in the first episode. Even if, in many moments, there are other themes that shine through. Like, for example, the racism inherent in police handlings of missing children reports. Or a white boy being so taken with a Black man and his graffiti that he would rather descend into the depths of hell than spend another second in his cush abode. And it is cush. After all, rent was much more affordable for a two-income household in 1985, regardless of neighborhood. Even if it’s hard to tell what neighborhood the Andersons live in. For the entire aesthetic of Eric is intended to make the environs as vague as possible, a mere “sketch” of what New York is “supposed to” look like. On the one hand, there are Times Square-ish sensibilities to it, while on the other, there are Brooklyn-ish qualities as well.
The seemingly deliberate genericness of what constitutes “80s New York” is, in part, a result of filming the majority of the show in Budapest. As director Lucy Forbes said, “There was never going to be an option to shoot the whole thing in New York because it’s so expensive.” A statement that seems ripe with bittersweet irony considering how many films of the 80s were made guerilla-style and on the cheap (e.g., Susan Seidelman’s Smithereens).” She then added, “So it was about choosing the right place to go, and Budapest has lots of very good studio space that is cost effective and has an amazing crew.” Granted, not so amazing that they could turn back the clock and make New York look like New York again, but hey, you can’t have everything.
Instead, you have to search for little fragments of what used to make the city itself by going to other milieus, including none other than New Jersey. On seeking a bit of 80s New York in the Garden State, executive producer Lucy Dyke noted, “It’s hard because you’re searching for a 1980s New York that just doesn’t exist anymore. New York is such a completely different place now, so we went all over the world searching for that.” The aesthetic result is, accordingly, something that feels decidedly Eastern Europe meets Montreal (where, on a side note, Scream VI filmed for its “New York” premise). This in addition to sharing an overall aesthetic similarity to Stranger Things—also a Netflix series, and also set in the 80s. And, perhaps most similar of all, involving the disappearance of a preteen boy.
Except that in Edgar’s situation, the disappearance is voluntary. Because, after reaching a threshold for the discord he can tolerate between his parents, he decides to follow one of the many homeless people in the area down into the bowels of the subway (in this regard, there is a certain Beauty and the Beast [the 1987 TV series] vibe to Eric). That’s how desperate he is to escape the toxicity. Of course, his parents won’t realize that until the end of the series, when it hits them that their constant bickering was what drove him away, preferring to brave the mean streets of New York rather than continue to sit inside listening to his father spew bilious rhetoric. For example, telling Cassie, “Don’t smother the boy” when she simply gives her son a hug. He then continues to spout his toxic masculinity by complaining that maybe he wouldn’t be so “grumpy” if it hadn’t been “weeks” since he got “laid.”
To make matters worse, Vincent fuels his already choleric temperament with a steady stream of alcohol to help fortify his inherent belligerence. A rage that has long been deep-seated, largely thanks to the cold environment he grew up in, courtesy of his rich real estate “development” father, Robert Anderson (John Doman), who matches the same level of emotional coldness as Vincent’s mother, Anne (Phoebe Nicholls). With Robert representing the rash of Trumpian-type “developers” reigning over 80s New York (and determining its future of homogeneity), it’s no wonder Vincent wants to go in the totally opposite direction, career-wise. Hence, starting his own Sesame Street-esque kids’ show called Good Day Sunshine Although the show has been an “institution” on TV for the past ten years, Vincent’s partner and collaborator, Lennie Wilson (Dan Fogler), insists they need to make changes to the show in order to make up for the recent dip in viewership. The suggestion from the suits is to “broaden appeal,” to “bridge the gap” between preschoolers and elementary school kids. All of this is polite white speak for: let’s get a more ethnic puppet.
It is Edgar, however, who already has a bright idea for the show’s newest cast member. A blue and white furry creature (channeling Sully from Monsters, Inc.) that has a markedly curmudgeonly personality. His name? Why, Eric, of course. Alas, Vincent isn’t really paying attention to Edgar’s “pitch” until it’s too late. Taking for granted, as so many parents do, that their children will always keep trying to be heard by them. But there’s only so many times and ways a child can shout from the mountaintops to actually be listened to by their parents. And Edgar is done trying.
Thus, Detective Michael Ledroit (McKinley Belcher III) is given his entrée into the narrative. His own storyline designed to reflect that specific era in New York. To that end, it is here that Eric starts to verge slightly into AHS: NYC territory (mainly with its closeted-gay-cop-dealing-with-the-gradual-death-of-a-lover-who-has-AIDS element)—except actually watchable. Mainly because, more than a “nostalgia trip” (with shades of Twin Peaks in addition to Stranger Things), Eric, through all its bleakness, manages to stick to its core point: “Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” Least of all Vincent, who grows increasingly surly and unreachable as he drives the few people who were once close to him away in the aftermath of Edgar’s disappearance.
In both Vincent and Edgar’s—father and son’s—situations, one is a product of their environment. Eric posits, then, that the only way to really change is to remove yourself from the environment that’s turning you rotten on the inside. Even if the real problem lies within the environment itself (a.k.a. the person supposedly “in charge” that’s, er, puppeteering all that negativity).
