Rumor: Episodes from the fifth and final season of Stranger Things are about to leak?

The other week, new episodes of several upcoming Netflix shows leaked online, including Arcane, Heartstopper and Terminator Zero. Such is life when you have a digital distribution platform for your content. Something similar happened to HBO and the season 2 finale of House of the Dragon not long ago. This is a pretty common problem in the age of streaming.

But the Netflix leak has come along with an eyebrow-raising rumor: that someone has gotten ahold of the first three episodes of the upcoming fifth and final season of Stranger Things, one of Netflix's biggest series, and is planning to release them online this Wednesday, August 15.

Even some of the folk spreading these rumors agree that Stranger Things episodes were part of the wider Netflix leak that sprung last week, but rather obtained by a hacker or group of hackers acting independently. They also advice people to take this news with a grain of salt, which is common sense. July last month, the Stranger Things cast and crew announced that they were halfway through filming on season 5. The very idea that Netflix has strung the footage that's been captured into three episodes in complete enough state to leak is kind of dubious. The cast and crew have a long road ahead of them, and we'll be lucky to see new completed episodes before the end of 2025. That's in contrast to episodes of the other Netflix shows that leaked, which have premieres coming up in the next few months; Terminator Zero drops at the end of August.

So I'm looking suspiciously at this rumor, and don't expect anything to happen on Wednesday...but if it did, that would be a seismic event that Netflix (and other streamers) would have to take very seriously. We'll watch and wait and see.

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h/t Forbes