It’s time to graduate from Hawkins High.

Our adventures in Hawkins will soon be coming to a close—but not immediately! Stranger Things was renewed for season 5, and while we’re not ready to say goodbye, it’s almost time to do so. But until we have to officially leave Hawkins, we can thank the Demogorgon that there’s still more to come.

“Seven years ago, we planned out the complete story arc for Stranger Things,” Matt and Ross Duffer wrote in an open letter to fans, per the Hollywood Reporter. “At the time, we predicted the story would last four to five seasons. It proved too large to tell in four, but—as you’ll see for yourselves—we are now hurtling toward our finale.”

Here’s everything we know—in case you need intel immediately.

Season 5 will be Stranger Things’ final season

It’s bittersweet but probably for the best as the young cast is much older now. I can’t wait to see what they do next. Heck, I can’t wait to see what the Duffer Brothers do next!

Even if it’s a Stranger Things spin-off, which Variety says might be happening. “We do have an idea for a spin-off that we’re super excited about…but we haven’t told anyone the idea yet, much less written it,” the Duffers revealed in May 2022. “We think everyone—including Netflix—will be surprised when they hear the concept because it’s very, very different.”

One person did figure it out, though! “Finn Wolfhard (Mike)—who is one crazy-smart kid—correctly guessed what it was going to be about. But aside from Finn, no one else knows!”

What’s going to happen in season 5?

TBD, but the Duffer Brothers have already revealed that a time jump might take place between the seasons to help complete the story.

“I’m sure we will do a time jump,” Ross told TV Line back in June 2022. “Ideally, we’d have shot [seasons 4 and 5] back-to-back, but there was just no feasible way to do that.”

After spending the entirety of season 4 jumping among different locations, the Duffers revealed on the Happy Sad Confused podcast in July 2022 that season 5 will take place only in Hawkins. They also hinted at going back to their season 1 roots, especially when it comes to our favorite characters.

“We wanna go back to a lot of the things we did in season 1,” Matt said, per Entertainment Weekly. “A lot of the original groupings and pairings that we had in season 1—there’s something nice about coming full circle.”

The Duffers also revealed to Collider that things will be moving fairly quickly, even if they do have long run times like in season 4.

“We have the opening scene for 5 mapped out. I don’t know if it’ll stay like that, but it’s pretty wild. It’s going to be intense from beginning to end with not so much ramp-up,” Matt said.

And now that filming has officially reached the half-way point, Netflix decided to drop a special behind-the-scenes video that shows us some of what we can expect including some brand new characters and slimy Upside Down vines. Warning: you will absolutely get emotional cause it’s never been more real that it’s all coming to an end.

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Behind The Scenes | Stranger Things 5 | On Set of The Final Season | Netflix
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Who is joining season 5?

At the 2023 Tudum event, Arnold Schwarzenegger announced that his former Terminator series costar Linda Hamilton would be joining the show, and she had a special video message to all the fans.

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Who she’s playing is still a big mystery, but considering the stakes, it will definitely be big!

And then there’s someone else who we actually have no clue about just yet! In an update on December 13, 2023, Ross Duffer posted the cast list while revealing that season 5 would officially begin filming after the holidays. But there’s a mysterious name that’s crossed out…

Instagram / @RossDuffer

Whether it’s someone new or someone we have seen before still remains to be revealed, but we definitely have some theories!

When is season 5 happening?

According to Deadline, the series was set to start filming on January 8, 2024, although it could have also started on January 5 depending on timelines. Either way, Netflix was keen to start right after the holidays as the cast and crews were already in Atlanta ready to go. No word on the actual release date just yet, but at least this means we’re one step closer to returning to Hawkins!

Have they already started writing the scripts?

On August 2, 2022, the show’s writers revealed that they had begun working on season 5.

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They haven’t given many updates after that, but things seem to be moving along smoothly as they’re way past the grid stage, which also gives us a big clue for the final season. There will be at least eight episodes, and fans are also wondering about a mysterious double line that seems to split the season into two.

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The writers confirmed that it isn’t a time jump but might mean something else. Does this mean we’re getting another split season?

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For Stranger Things Day 2022, the writers gave us a major clue by revealing the name of the first episode of the fifth season, which will be called “The Crawl.” Your guess is as good as ours about what or who is crawling, but clearly, it can’t be good….

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How long is the season going to be?

I DON’T KNOW AND I’M SCARED. The final episodes of season 4 were supersized, and we have no doubt the Duffer Brothers will try to top that in season 5, right? Jeez Louise. That “Are you still watching?” Netflix thing is gonna pop up mid-episode.

Has Netflix revealed any other details?

As we already know, Netflix loves to play some fun and games when it comes to Stranger Things announcements, but even we didn’t see this coming.

On September 12, 2023, the Stranger Things IG account posted a mysterious video showing off a very destroyed Scoops Ahoy that had fans wondering what was up their sleeve.

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@StrangerThingsTV//Instagram

I mean, what could it mean?!?! We might have to travel down to the Upside Down to find out!

Oh, and here are Jonathan and Nancy looking absolutely scared in the back of Steve’s car. NBD.

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How about any of the Stranger Things cast?

We’re glad you asked! During a May 27 episode of Penn Badgley’s Podcrushed podcast, Maya Hawke (who plays Robin Buckley on the show) dished that part of the reason season 5 is taking so long to film is because of how long each episode is: “We’re making, basically, eight movies…The episodes are very long.”

She also revealed that the Duffer Brothers’s workflow plays a role in the wait time: “Our showrunners, Matt and Ross, take a lot of responsibility. They have an amazing team of writers, but they’re very involved.”

Adding that the duo is “very intense and serious” about the writing quality, Maya said, “It takes a long time to write each season, and it takes a long time to shoot them.”

No-ted!