(L to R) Charlie Heaton as Jonathan Byers, Winona Ryder as Joyce Byers, Millie Bobby Brown as Eleven, Noah Schnapp as Will Byers, David Harbour as Jim Hopper, Natalia Dyer as Nancy Wheeler, and Finn Wolfhard as Mike Wheeler in STRANGER THINGS. Courtesy of Netflix
Hawkins, Indiana is about to be turned upside down … again.
Stranger Things season 5 is coming to Netflix in 2025, and the series gave fans a hint of what to expect in a teaser released on Wednesday, November 6 (also known as Stranger Things Day, or the day Will Byers went missing in season 1).
Most notably, the season will feature a one-year time jump, taking viewers to the fall of 1987 — the year of Fatal Attraction, “Livin’ on a Prayer” and Indiana Hoosier basketball.
That’s an 18-month jump from season 4, set in March 1986, which ended with the Upside Down opening into the fictional town of Hawkins. With the core cast, led by Noah Schnapp, Finn Wolfhard, Millie Bobby Brown, David Harbour and Sadie Sink growing up, it wasn’t practical for the show to pick up exactly where it left off.
“Ideally, we’d have shot [seasons 4 and 5] back to back, but there was just no feasible way to do that,” show cocreator Ross Duffer told TVLine in 2022.
(L to R) Noah Schnapp, Millie Bobby Brown, David Harbour, Winona Ryder, Cara Buono, Joe Keery, Amybeth McNulty, Charlie Heaton, Brett Gelman, Maya Hawke, Natalia Dyer, Jamie Campbell Bower, Priah Ferguson, Linda Hamilton, Gaten Matarazzo, Caleb McLaughlin, Ross Duffer, Matt Duffer, Finn Wolfhard, and Sadie Sink of STRANGER THINGS. Atsushi Nishijima/Netflix
While plot details remain scant, the teaser revealed episode titles for the series’ final installment. It will begin with “The Crawl,” followed by an episode whose title begins with “The Vanishing of,” with the victim’s name redacted. Fans were quick to note that the title matches the name of the series premiere, “The Vanishing of Will Byers.”
The series finale title,”The Rightside Up,” mirrors the name of the season 1 finale, “The Upside Down.”
The other five episodes are titled “The Turnbow Trap,” “Sorcerer,” “Shock Jock,” “Escape From Camazotz” and “The Bridge.”
Fans are now free to speculate about the meanings of those remaining titles. “The Turnbow Trap” appears to be a reference to Turnbow Land Development & Realty, a fictional company in the Stranger Things Universe, while “Shock Jock” likely references local Hawkins radio station WSQK.
“The Bridge” might be the most intriguing title, as it could represent a connection between worlds in the Stranger Things Universe.
The show’s cast has mostly remained quiet about what to expect, but Sink, 22, dropped a small clue over the summer.
Sink portrays Max, whom Eleven (Brown) brings back from the dead at the end of season 4, though she remains comatose through the finale. Her most iconic scene in the series to date comes when she is running away from the monster Vecna and toward the real world as her friends try to summon her back as Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill” plays in the background.
“They love having me run,” she told Variety in a cover story published on August 8. “That’s all I’ll say.”
