The Duffer brothers are teeing up what to expect from the Stranger Things Season 5, revealing that the final batch of episodes will answer two key questions that fans have been asking since the start.
It’s all been building to this. Stranger Things – the Netflix series that debuted nine years ago and quickly became a global sensation – is now drawing to a close.
The Season 5 trailer launched today, in advance of an Episode 1 premiere in LA next week, before Netflix drops Part 1 of the final series on November 26, Part 2 on December 25, and the climactic finale on December 31.
The new footage appears to be hinting at a major death, while creators/showrunners Matt and Ross Duffer have now revealed what big questions will be answered before the final credits roll.
Stranger Things Season 5 will explain the Upside Down
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Matt Duffer said that “so much of the season was built around the idea of coming full circle, answering many of the questions that were posed all the way back in Season 1,” before adding that “the two biggest questions that we didn’t really answer in Season 1… we do answer this season.”
The first of those is “what is the Upside Down, truly?” As it stands, our knowledge of the terrifying netherworld is limited.
Although there were previous iterations, the Upside Down that the Stranger Things characters know was created in 1983, functions as an alternate dimension that exists in parallel to the human world, and is filled with monsters and predators that all connect to evil entity Vecna.
Matt explained, “A lot of the season takes place in the Upside Down. If I have to look at one more visual effects shot, I don’t know what I’m gonna do. We will never make anything else with floating anything. Snow, spores, ash, I’m done with all that.”
But it’s all in service of bringing the story full-circle, with Matt adding that: “We reveal really everything about the Upside Down, all of which was planned out in Season 1. It was fun to finally pull back the curtain on all of that.”
The final episodes will reveal why Will Byers was taken
In terms of the second question that Stranger Things 5 will answer, Matt Duffer simply said “why Will Byers was taken.”
Will’s disappearance was the inciting incident at the start of Season 1 Episode 1, with the Hawkins kids teaming up to track him down and bring the Byers boy home. But we’ve never had an explanation as to why he was wanted, though it sounds like there could be clues in Season 2.
In the same interview, Ross Duffer said the key to understanding Vecna’s intentions is in Episode 2 of that season – titled ‘The Castle’ – where Will was taken to the Hawkins lab for testing.
“Will was really working, in a way, for the Mind Flayer,” explained Ross, adding that in Season 5, “We start to learn more about what happened and what the connection is to all of this and Vecna.”
The new trailer backs that up, as it ends with Vecna telling Will “you are going to help me, one last time.”
Will’s storyline will also tie back to the start, with Matt adding: “Because the story really began with Will and his disappearance, it felt, in order to go full circle, it needed to really end with him in so many ways.
“In the last couple seasons, we hadn’t really centered much of the show on Will. So there was so much to explore with him from a character perspective and plot perspective.”
For more Hawkins action, check out the Stranger Things characters most likely to die in the final chapter, a breakdown of the Season 5 time jump, and Dexerto’s favorite Stranger Things episodes ranked.
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