By O’Connor Daniel | Reporter
When Netflix finally dropped the trailer for the final season of “Stranger Things” and confirmed the 2025 release date, the realization hit me that it’s been three years since we’ve seen anything new from Hawkins. Many people have moved on or forgotten half the plot by now, but I know I’m still watching.
This is mostly because I still remember the first time I clicked on Season 1 in 2016. It wasn’t hyped. It wasn’t a franchise. It was a mysterious new show featuring kids on bikes, blinking Christmas lights and a missing boy no one could explain. Nothing on Netflix looked like it. It felt original, even while nodding at the movies it pulled inspiration from. It had pieces of “E.T.” and “The Goonies,” but it wasn’t trying to be them. It just understood why those stories worked: a group of kids who shouldn’t be the heroes … but somehow are.
As The Guardian reported, the Duffer brothers pitched the series as “John Carpenter mashed up with E.T.,” drawing from Spielberg, Stephen King and the adventure-film DNA of the 1980s. A decade ago, hardly anyone knew what the Upside Down was. No one was talking about Demogorgons or Mind Flayers. The cast was mostly young unknowns. Nothing about it was guaranteed.
But when Season 1 premiered that summer, it shattered Netflix viewing records and immediately became a cultural phenomenon, and for a lot of us, it became personal. With all its scrappy sincerity, it captured why those beloved ’80s stories mattered: a tight-knit group of kids who weren’t chosen or special — just loyal, brave and in way over their heads.
And now, after a three-year wait for its final season, I’m still going to watch it. “Stranger Things” was always built to be that kind of story: a group of ragtag kids teaming up to fight evil in their small town, where nothing ever happens, until something does and it changes everything.
The final-season trailer doubled down on exactly that. Vecna isn’t gone. The Upside Down is spilling into Hawkins. And for the first time since 2016, we’re back in the basement with the original crew. The bikes, the maps and the supernatural girl with a number for a name. Full circle, but with everything at stake.
Over the footage, we hear Dustin say, “We stay true to ourselves, to our friends, no matter the cost.” After nearly 10 years, this is the last ride, and the characters are teaming up one final time.
And as the series filmed its final scenes, the cast felt that weight too. Caleb McLaughlin, who plays Lucas Sinclair, said in an interview with The Guardian that the ending felt emotional in a different way.
“Playing these characters has been amazing … but growing up with these guys and having the family that we’ve built is something I won’t get again,” McLaughlin said. “I’m going to miss that a lot.”
Now, they’re facing the collapse of Hawkins and the end of their childhood all at once. It’s a full circle: the first adventure and the last one somehow meeting in the middle.
And maybe that’s the real reason fans are still here. As Finn Wolfhard, who plays Mike Wheeler, told The Guardian, “Everyone was there on the last day … even people who had wrapped earlier stayed to be together. That was a very necessary experience. It’s been 10 years.”
And that’s reason enough to watch the final season when it arrives.
Volume 1 of the final season will be released on Netflix Nov. 26, with Volume 2 following on Christmas Day and the series finale on New Year’s Eve.
