Stranger Things Season 5 Volume 2: Release Date, Trailers, and Everything To Know

[Warning: Spoilers ahead for Stranger Things Season 5 Volume 1. Read at your own risk!] 

Stranger Things Season 5 Volume 1 ended with a revelation about Will Byers (Noah Schnapp) that's going to turn the Upside Down upside down. We always knew "The Boy Who Came Back to Life" had a unique connection to Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower), but it wasn't until the final season's fourth episode that we knew what that bond enables him to do. Heading into the next three episodes and the finale, the possibilities are endless for the Party and their allies. Vecna may be dangerously close to reigning supreme in Hawkins, but Will's new discovery might just tip the scales. 

Here's everything we know about Stranger Things Season 5, from when Volumes 2 and 3 are being released to the trailers Netflix is dropping.

When is the rest of Stranger Things Season 5 coming out? 

There are four more episodes of Stranger Things remaining — three episodes will be released on Dec. 25, and the series finale will stream on Dec. 31. Each part will begin streaming at 5 p.m. PT instead of the usual midnight release.

On top of that, the very last episode will have a two-day run in movie theaters starting at the same time that it drops on Netflix. According to the streamer, the screenings will take place in more than 500 theaters across the U.S. and Canada beginning Dec. 31, 2025, at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT, with some encore screenings later in the evening and continuing through New Year's Day. 

The finale will have a run time of 125 minutes, and you can see a list of theaters playing it here. The tickets are technically free, but you may need to buy a concession voucher in order to attend — it's $11 at Regal theaters, and $20 at AMC ones. Because you're not actually buying a ticket, you cannot use a theater membership to pay for it.

Stranger Things Season 5 trailers and teasers

Netflix dropped the official trailer for Stranger Things Season 5 Volume 2 on Dec. 15. It opens with a bold statement from Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo): "Everything we've ever assumed about the Upside Down has been dead wrong." We don't know what exactly he means, but it's safe to assume there are going to be some shocking twists in the final four episodes of the season. The new trailer also shows Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) determined to take down Vecna once and for all. "Help me find him, kill him," she says to Eight (Linnea Berthelsen). You can watch the trailer below.

The trailer for Volume 1 previously teased an epic showdown, with Vecna and the creatures unleashed from the Upside Down on one side, and Eleven and her friends on the other. "He's planning to end our world," Nancy Wheeler (Natalia Dyer) says about Vecna. "And he's not gonna stop until we're drained of every last ounce of suffering."

How long are Stranger Things Season 5 episodes?

Ross Duffer, who co-created the series with his brother Matt Duffer, posted the length of Season 5's first four episodes on Instagram. The first episode, titled "The Crawl," runs for 68 minutes. Episode 2, "The Vanishing of Holly Wheeler," runs for 54 minutes. Episode 3, "The Turnbow Trap," has a duration of 66 minutes, while Episode 4, "Sorcerer," runs for 83 minutes. 

The finale, which is releasing in theaters alongside its streaming debut on Dec. 31, will be the longest by far at 125 minutes. 

Stranger Things Season 5 production

"We spent a full year filming this season," said co-creator Ross Duffer at Netflix's big 2025 hype presentation in January 2025, per Entertainment Weekly. "By the end, we had captured over 650 hours of footage. So, needless to say, this is our biggest and most ambitious season yet. It's like eight blockbuster movies. It's pretty insane."  

"It was super intense and emotional to film — for us and for our actors we've been with for so long," added Matt Duffer. "And we've been making it together for almost 10 years now. There was a lot of crying. There was so much crying. The show means so much to all of us, and everyone put their hearts and souls into it. And we hope — and believe — that passion is going to translate to the screen."

But even though Stranger Things is finally ending, it's not the the last we'll see of this universe. The Duffer Brothers already have some spin-offs in the works.

"There are more Stranger Things stories to tell and in the works," Matt Duffer said at the presentation. "It's a bit early at this point to talk about them, but we're deeply involved in every one. It's very important to us that anything with the Stranger Things name on it is of the highest quality and not repetitive, that it has a reason to exist and always blazes its own path. And also, it needs to basically just be awesome — or we need to think it's awesome. And there are a lot of what we think are awesome things in the pipeline."  

In September 2024, it was announced that Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption, The Walking Dead) had come out of retirement to direct "key" episodes of Stranger Things' final season. Variety reported that Darabont would be behind the camera for two installments of Season 5. He joins showrunners the Duffer Brothers and executive producer Shawn Levy as directors this season.

"What really dragged me out of retirement was that my wife and I really love this show," Darabont told The Daily Beast. "Our content now is so filled with horrible people doing horrible things for greedy reasons but Stranger Things has so much heart. That positivity is something I really responded to."

Production on Stranger Things Season 5 began in January 2024. Netflix shared a photo of the cast and creators in a press release.

Stranger Things Season 5 cast

Four prominent new cast members joined Stranger Things Season 5: Nell Fisher as Holly Wheeler, Alex Breaux as Lt. Akers, Jake Connelly as Derek Turnbow, and Linda Hamilton as Dr. Kay. 

Eduardo Franco, who played Argyle in Season 4, has said he is not appearing in Season 5. "I never got a phone call, so I think that's it," Franco said in a YouTube interview with Steve Varley in January 2024 (via the Los Angeles Times).

Stranger Things cast members:

• Millie Bobby Brown as Eleven
• Winona Ryder as Joyce Byers
• David Harbour as Jim Hopper
• Noah Schnapp as Will Byers
• Finn Wolfhard as Mike Wheeler 
• Gaten Matarazzo as Dustin Henderson
• Caleb McLaughlin as Lucas Sinclair
• Sadie Sink as Max Mayfield
• Joe Keery as Steve Harrington
• Natalia Dyer as Nancy Wheeler
• Maya Hawke as Robin Buckley
• Charlie Heaton as Jonathan Byers
• Priah Ferguson as Erica Sinclair
• Jamie Campbell Bower as Vecna
• Brett Gelman as Murray
• Cara Buono as Karen Wheeler
• Amybeth McNulty as Vickie
• Nell Fisher as Holly Wheeler
• Jake Connelly as Derek Turnbow
• Alex Breaux as Lt. Akers
• Linda Hamilton as Dr. Kay

Stranger Things Season 5 storyline

The official logline for Stranger Things Season 5 is, "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. 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."

Season 4 was set in the spring of 1986.

At an awards-season panel hosted by Netflix in November 2022, Matt and Ross Duffer said that while previous seasons echoed specific types of '80s pop culture, Season 5 will have some of everything that made the show what it is. "Five, the way we see it, is kind of a culmination of all the seasons, so it's sort of got a little bit from each," Ross Duffer said, according to Variety. "Whereas before each season was so distinctly… [Season] 3 is our big summer blockbuster season with big monsters, and [Season] 4 was the psychological horror. I think that what we're trying to do is go back to the beginning a little bit, in sort of the tone of [Season] 1." 

They also said that the final season is all about serving the characters who have been around since Season 1 and bringing closure to the mysteries the show has introduced over the years. "It's important to wrap up those arcs because a lot of these characters have been growing since Season 1," Ross Duffer told Variety. "So, it's a balancing act between giving them time to complete their character arcs and also tying up these loose ends and doing our final reveals."

The official Stranger Things Twitter account celebrated "Stranger Things Day" on Nov. 6, 2022, by sharing a picture of a Season 5 script, revealing the first episode name: "Chapter One: The Crawl." 

Stranger Things Season 4 explained

If you need a refresher on who Vecna is, how he was created, and what his twisted vision is for the world, TV Guide breaks it all down in this video.

9:14

Watch Now

For a breakdown of Season 4, Part 2, TV Guide's sister site GameSpot explained all of the big moments in the finale and what they mean for Hawkins, and the world, going into Season 5.

What to watch next

While you wait for the second part of Stranger Things Season 5, there are many epic sci-fi shows to check out. Here's a list of more shows like Stranger Things for you to binge. 

Stranger Things Seasons 1-4, and Season 5 Volume 1, are streaming on Netflix.