Netflix Drops Extended Teaser for Stranger Things’ Final Season

Netflix released a teaser trailer for Season 5 of Stranger Things earlier today, and it packs a lot of exciting (and extremely ominous) promise into its brief runtime. For starters, it seems like this final season is going to ramp up the chaos and go big on spectacle. For a show that sometimes struggles with pacing, that’s potentially a good thing. The brief trailer teases some cool, intense moments, including new weapons like flamethrowers, a bigger role for so-called demo-dogs (basically zombie bullhorn dogs), and, of course, terrifying cameos from Vecna and other Upside Down horrors.

The trailer immediately kicks into gear, only teasing the atmosphere and mood of the final season rather than diving right into the anticipated action. In addition to intense moments like the appearances by Vecna, familiar faces, and some of those teases at high-octane horror, there are some callbacks to the show’s past. In particular, there is a nod to Jurassic Park with some of the scenes of Lucas and others being hunted by demo-dogs. As Lucas’ voice calls out, they play dead in a kitchen while waiting to be rescued, very similar to the famous velociraptor kitchen sequence from the Steven Spielberg classic.

This is the part of the post where I note that the teaser is five minutes long and go on to try and unpack every moment of that teaser in painful detail. Instead, I will just say this: the final season of Stranger Things will have eight episodes, all of them feature-length. Yes, that means there will be eight Stranger Things movies this year.

The official synopsis gives a basic idea of the stakes in Season 5. The Upside Down has irreparably invaded Hawkins via those Rifts, and the old gang of Hawkins heroes are going to be out to avenge Will and the others and find and kill Vecna. Vecna, for his part, has mysteriously disappeared, but he is bound to return at some point (or he already has and we just don’t know it yet). With Hawkins under military quarantine by the U.S. government, and the hunt for Eleven heating up, the surviving kids, now with help from past allies like Dr. Brenner and the Byers family, will be forced into hiding.

Season 5 is set to take place during the fall of 1987, the third anniversary of the events of Season 1 (i.e., the third anniversary of Will’s initial disappearance). Both details in the teaser and the official synopsis for the season show that we are in for an emotional and explosive finale, as both the heroes and the villains of Stranger Things are at their most desperate and dangerous.

Returning Characters and Recurring Faces Get Added to the Season 5 Mix

Amybeth McNulty is returning as Vicki, and Gabriella Pizzolo is back as Dustin’s girlfriend, Suzie. Jamie Campbell Bower is returning as the most despicable Stranger Things villain, Vecna.

The showrunners have announced that there will be more focus on women this season, and that is already proving to be the case with the announcement of several women joining the Stranger Things Season 5 cast. Linda Hamilton will be playing Dr. Kay, with Nell Fisher playing Holly Wheeler, Jake Connelly as Derek Turnbow, and Alex Breaux as Lt. Akers.

Emotional Tidbits Amid the Mayhem

In the trailer, we also see Eddie Munson’s gravestone being defaced with the words “Burn in hell,” which is an excellent reminder that while he might have given the ultimate sacrifice to defeat Vecna at the end of Season 4, a lot of Hawkins still think he’s a criminal and possibly a killer. Eddie’s death (arguably the most heartbreaking since Bob’s death in Season 2) isn’t going to be forgotten. He’s got a few scenes in this trailer and potentially some emotional beats to work through with his former bandmates from Alpha gang, but it seems like there’s a lot of damage to repair in Hawkins after Season 4. That being said, the closure on Eddie Munson is going to be satisfying in a way.

The trailer’s final seconds remind us that while Eddie is (thankfully) out of the picture, he and his friends, family, and bandmates still need to be avenged. And, of course, Vecna is going to be back and darker than ever. The trailer shows us some of the horror elements we can expect from Season 5, as well as major nostalgia-evoking callbacks to other pop culture horror classics like Jurassic Park. All of this leads up to a teaser release date for Season 5, Volume 1: November 26, 2025.

Season 5 will have three parts (sometimes called “volumes” for ease of conversation) and will be released over the end of the year and the holidays. On Christmas Day, December 25, 2025, we will get Volume 2, and New Year’s Eve (December 31, 2025) will see the release of the final Volume. This seems like a highly intentional and motivated strategy to make sure that Stranger Things is the watercooler conversation for as long as possible.

Stranger Things Season 5 is coming to Netflix at the end of 2025, which means that this final season will wrap up everything that we have seen in the last several years of Hawkins. The deaths, the mysteries, the nostalgia, the hope for some of the characters to find a better life outside of Hawkins—everything. The only question now is whether or not all of our favorite characters from the Hawkins crew will be back by the end of the final episode. The teaser gives us a lot to chew on in terms of story hints and breadcrumbs, so Stranger Things fans have a lot to speculate about until the full series finally drops.