After years of anticipation and speculation, Netflix's Stranger Things will finally conclude later this year with its fifth and final season. The season will see the culmination of almost a decade of storytelling as the kids from Hawkins, IN fight the oppressive forces of the Upside Down, from the Demogorgon and the Mind Flayer to the all-powerful Vecna.
Naturally, there's some apprehension about the final season. Will they stick the landing? Over the years, we've seen so many beloved shows slip at the final hurdle, like Game of Thrones (which isn't the only example, but it's a very well-documented one). With that said, according to Stranger Things star David Harbour (Hopper), who's been a key figure in the series from Episode 1, the finale won't disappoint. "I've said it before, but I do think the finale is spectacular," he told Collider. "I think that it's so satisfying if you've been a fan of the show."
Hopper went on to explain that the finale won't tie up every plotline, perhaps leaving room for spin-offs, although fans will still get the payoff they're looking for: "It takes a lot of threads that you may have worried about or wondered about — I'm not saying it ties them up into a nice, neat bow, but it gives you the having-eaten-a-big-meal satisfaction that you will crave. Whether that be sad or happy, we don't know, but it will give you that."
While Hopper doesn't give away any plot details (those Netflix NDAs are strict), he certainly knows how to build hype.
David Harbour looks back on a decade of Stranger Things
Harbour also looked back more generally on working on the show for a decade. Not a lot of shows get to run that long. And for Stranger Things, which featured prodominantly children in its cast at the start, it's been a rollercoaster of a journey. "It's very emotional," he said. "Those kids were kids when we started. It's been 10 years of our lives, come 2025. We started the series in the late summer of 2015. We shot, and then it came out in 2016."
""But we've been shooting for nine years, so those kids, some of them were 10 and 11, and now they're in their twenties, and some of them were 15 or 16. So, you've gone through watching the show, and that was their childhood, shooting it for you. I think that that's very profound when you come to a close.""
Netflix has not set a release date for the final season of Stranger Things. We know it's set to release sometime this year. The streamer hasn't even released a trailer yet. We'll keep you posted on any updates!
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