Stranger Things season 5 trailer: One Last Trip to the Upside Down (Hold Onto Your Walkman).

It’s 1987. Hawkins, Indiana, looks like a post-apocalyptic version of E.T. met The Mist at a Dungeons & Dragons convention—and lost. The Rifts are open, the town’s under military lockdown, Eleven is in hiding again, and the most terrifying part of it all? It’s the final season. That’s right, Stranger Things is taking its last synth-laced, psychic-punching, monster-smashing bow with Stranger Things 5—arriving in glorious ‘80s-retro doom across three instalments this winter on Netflix.

A year after Vecna’s murderous music-hating rampage, our brave party of misfit heroes have one mission left: find the tentacle-faced baddie and finish what they started. Unfortunately, Vecna’s gone walkabout, the government’s gone full paranoia-mode, and the grief-stricken town is now one military checkpoint away from becoming Hawkinsgrad. Tensions are high, flashbacks are frequent, and nostalgia is weaponised like a Soviet mind-ray.

Returning to the Duffer Brothers’ sci-horror opus are the usual suspects: Millie Bobby Brown’s Eleven is once more dodging helicopters and fate; David Harbour’s Hopper is rumbling his way through fatherly guilt and firearms; and Winona Ryder’s Joyce, frankly, still deserves a holiday. The rest of the gang—Dustin, Mike, Lucas, Will, Max (in one piece or not, we’ll see)—are all in, as is Steve “Best Hair in the Upside Down” Harrington. Oh, and Linda Hamilton’s joined the cast, presumably to out-battle the monsters and the military-industrial complex. Your move, Vecna.

Set across eight episodes that the cast swear are “basically eight movies” (someone please explain pacing to the Duffers), the season unfolds in three parts: Volume 1 hits on November 26, Volume 2 on December 25 (because nothing says Christmas like existential dread), and the finale drops on New Year’s Eve, just in time to ruin your resolutions.

There’s plenty to chew on—chapter titles like The Crawl, Shock Jock, and Escape from Camazotz promise a deep dive into lore, loss, and whatever unsettling realm the writers cooked up over lockdown. Expect military clashes, interdimensional battles, tearful goodbyes, and probably another Kate Bush needle-drop to push you emotionally over the edge.

Here at SFcrowsnest, we’ve watched the Hawkins kids battle everything from Demogorgons to dodgy perms, and we’re not ready to let them go. But if this really is the end, we’re betting it’ll be stranger, sadder, and far more spectacular than anything we’re ready for. Roll for initiative, grab your Eggo waffles, and prepare for one last campaign in the Upside Down. It’s endgame time in Hawkins—and we’re going in.