Netflix is gearing up for one of the biggest streaming releases it's ever been able to deploy, with the start of the fifth and final season of Stranger Things starting on November 26, before continuing on Christmas day itself and getting a huge finale on New Year's Eve.
Now, it's becoming clearer just how big an event this really will be for what many people feel is one of the best streaming services out there. For one thing, it won't stop releasing teasers for the new series, and the latest has now arrived in the form of a sneak peek at its first five minutes.
This looks like a flashback, showing us Will Byers in his time stuck hiding in the Upside Down much earlier in the show's run. If you're wondering how to figure out that timeline, it helps that Netflix has been forced to use CGI to pretty markedly de-age his face, since the actor playing him (Noah Schnapp) now looks like the 21-year-old he is.
The glimpse shows us him being agonisingly caught by a Demogorgon after nearly escaping up a tree, then being dragged in front of the major baddie Vecna, unconscious. Vecna promptly deposits something extremely nasty into Will via a mouth tube, and the implication is clear – Will's not out of the woods, despite being out of the Upside Down.
That's exciting stuff, but it was preceded by an all-new Stranger Things series being announced by Netflix and its showrunners, the Duffer brothers – Stranger Things: Tales from '85.
This animated series will tell stories from between seasons 2 and 3 of the show, rewinding time to show us some of the hijinks and stories that the gang of kids got up to in that time. After all, most seasons of the show have started after a time-skip, whether short or long, which means there's a lot of empty space in the timeline to fill in.
The art style looks really fun, and Netflix has a good track record when it comes to big-budget animated shows (with Arcane being the standout), so this could be quite a hit. It won't arrive until sometime in 2026, though, which means there might be a wait of quite a few months when the main show ends at the very end of this year.
That all makes for quite a feast if you're a Stranger Things fan – you've probably got 26 November circled in your head, but maybe set a calendar reminder if you haven't already.
