Stranger Things Season 5 Is Worth The Wait
Despite a few cringey moments, Stranger Things Season 5 Volume 1 revitalizes the series.
At this point, Stranger Things Season 5 is a punch line more than an anticipated release. Since Season 4 premiered in 2022, the cast playing the Hawkins gang have gotten married, started families, starred in movies, directed movies, and headlined Broadway shows. The 18-month time jump between Seasons 4 and 5 is very evident in the cast, and has been the target of derision with each passing trailer.
But the actual story of Stranger Things Season 5 proves that it may have taken three years, but not a minute was squandered. Even in just the first four episodes of the eight set to premiere before the end of 2025, the story finds a way to navigate shifting lore, growing characters, and raising stakes. Sure, things may look a little different than expected, but by the start of the epic 90-minute Episode 4, it’s barely noticeable.
The basis of this winning approach is finding a way to repeat what worked in Season 1: Something bad happens to a local child, and the remaining children use the language of a popular fantasy property of the time in order to make sense of it. But instead of tracking down a lost child within the Upside Down, Stranger Things Season 5 splits its time between the Upside Down and Rightside Up.
The actors may be older, but Stranger Things Season 5 brings back the characters’ magic.
On the Rightside Up, Mike Wheeler (Finn Wolfhard) and his family are playing host to the Byers family, including Joyce (Winona Ryder) and her sons Will (Noah Schnapp) and Jonathan (Charlie Heaton), who is still wooing a now much more badass Nancy (Natalia Dyer.) Meanwhile, Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo) is still mourning his old friend Eddie Munson — remember him? — and Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin) is dutifully by Max’s (Sadie Sink) bedside whenever he can, waiting for her to emerge from her coma.
But this season’s secret weapon is Robin (Maya Hawke), who is using her new gig as a radio DJ to keep the town of Hawkins grooving and the viewers at home kept up to date, along with her seemingly eternal coworker Steve Harrington (Joe Keery).
In the Upside Down, Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) and Hopper (David Harbour) are on a mission of their own, a spotlight that allows them to hone in on their dynamic in a way we haven’t really seen since Season 3. But now, the things that are driving them apart aren’t puberty or boys, but Eleven’s genuine desire to risk her life to save the world and Hopper’s desperate bid not to lose another daughter.
Hopper and Eleven spend much of their time this season together in the Upside Down.
This dynamic duo aren’t the only ones who have figured out how to traverse the Upside Down. Hawkins itself is now completely occupied, under the control of the military who are slowly starting to explore the Upside Down and its possibilities. The supernatural elements of this town are no longer the secrets of a select few. Like late-stage Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the Hellmouth is open and everyone’s at the ready.
At this point, you’re probably wondering if you need to rewatch Season 4 to refresh yourself on how things ended up so dire, and thankfully Stranger Things showrunners The Duffer Brothers knew this would be a popular impulse. Season 5 opens with an immersive early scene that seamlessly sets up the different status quo for this final chapter, something viewers who watched the sneak peek saw firsthand.
Of course, not everything feels so natural. Throughout the first four episodes, there are some clunky nostalgia-bait moments and callbacks to weird parts of Stranger Things lore — even the Broadway play, Stranger Things: The First Shadow — but at this point, that’s just a classic Stranger Things move hardcore fans should expect.
Old-fashioned Stranger Things missions are well and truly back.
“Classic Stranger Things” is the guiding light of these episodes. After an eerily similar tragedy to that of Season 1, Mike, Will, Dustin, and Lucas all embark on a harebrained scheme like the old days, a tone-perfect caper that requires help from everyone, including Joyce, Nancy, Jonathan, and even Murray (Brett Gelman) and Erica (Priah Ferguson). It’s in those middle few episodes I realized that even unlike Seasons 3 and 4, this season, or at the very least this volume, isn’t trying to top the previous season. Instead, it’s just trying to bring back that feeling of a small, Stand-By-Me-esque coming-of-age adventure, and it works so well you don’t mind that these characters came of age about seven years ago.
As the story bends and twists, it’s surprisingly easy to forget these are some of the last episodes of Stranger Things: they just feel like more Stranger Things episodes, which is the highest compliment a final season can achieve. Maybe this will change in the back half, which will be split between Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve with the final even getting a theatrical release. But for now, we get one last classic Stranger Things adventure with multiple moving parts, shocking reveals, and gorgeous cinematography while still feeling like that kids-on-bikes magic that brought us all together back in 2016.
