It’s been more than two years since the fourth season of Stranger Things, and we’ve only gotten the vaguest of hints about what’s to come in the fifth and final season. (The long wait wasn’t entirely Netflix’s fault; last year’s strikes caused a major delay in production.) But every day is a day closer to the series’ conclusion, and in celebration of Stranger Things Day (i.e., the day Will Byers went missing in the first season) the streamer has shared some pretty big clues: the Stranger Things episode titles for the eight-episode final season, which will premiere in 2025.
The video released on Wednesday—which follows the tradition of previous episode title teases—also features one other reveal. It states that “In the Fall of 1987, one last adventure begins.” You may remember that the fourth season took place in March 1986, so that confirms a year-plus time jump between seasons. Series creators the Duffer Brothers had previously hinted at such a move, and it certainly makes sense in consideration to how much older the young cast has gotten over the course of filming the series. However, it also means we’ve missed a lot of action. At the end of the fourth season, the Upside Down was bleeding into Hawkins and seemed to cause some pretty intense destruction. Who knows what the small Indiana town will look like when we return to it in the fifth season.
As for the episode titles themselves, some dedicated Stranger Things fans on Reddit have already begun speculating about the list (below) after some of them were leaked earlier this year. For instance, sleuths have noted that “The Turnbow Trap” seems connected to the “Turnbow Land Development & Realty” billboard that was seen in the Upside Down. “Camazotz” is a Mayan bat spirit that serves the lords of the underworld, so it could refer to the demobats the kids had to battle last season. But it’s also the name of the dark planet where IT resides in A Wrinkle In Time, which the Stranger Things writers have also hinted as a reference. Plus, with the Duffers’ regular references to ’80s pop culture, it appears to be a double reference to Escape From New York, in which all of Manhattan becomes an open-air prison. After the government’s meddling with the Upside Down in previous seasons, it wouldn’t be a stretch to think Hawkins might be sealed off into its own sort of prison sector with all the residents stuck inside; perhaps “Camazotz” is another one of the kids’ codenames (like “Vecna” and “the Demogorgon”).
The most mysterious of all is the second episode, “The Vanishing Of…” is incomplete, but it recalls the very first episode of the series, “The Vanishing Of Will Byers.” We don’t know who’s doing the vanishing this season, but it all concludes with “The Rightside Up.” The Duffer Brothers have already suggested that the finale will be a movie length “Return Of The King-ish” event, so the gang will have a lot of time to set things, well, rightside up. You can check out the full list of titles below.
- “The Crawl”
- “The Vanishing Of…”
- “The Turnbow Trap”
- “Sorcerer”
- “Shock Jock”
- “Escape From Camazotz”
- “The Bridge”
- “The Rightside Up”
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