Netflix’s Stranger Things is entering its final stretch, with the first four episodes of its fifth and final season released last month.
After a three-year wait, the show returns to Hawkins as the Upside Down continues to spread, with the group of characters facing one last showdown to save their town – and their world – from Vecna.
One of Netflix's most popular series, season four of Stranger Things broke records and reached the Top 10 charts in all 93 countries tracked by the platform.
The final season is being rolled out in three parts: four episodes in late November, followed by three more on Christmas Day and a feature-length finale on New Year’s Eve. Depending on the viewer’s time zone, release dates may vary. Here’s what to know.
Season five release across time zones
Episodes five, six and seven of the new season of Stranger Things will be released at 8pm (Eastern Time) on Christmas Day, which means it will come out at 5am (Gulf Standard Time) on Friday in the UAE.
Here is when the show is expected to drop in other global time zones:
- 1am in the UK and Ghana (GMT)
- 2am in western and central Europe (CET, UTC+1) and Nigeria (WAT, UTC+1)
- 3am in Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt (UTC+2) as well as South Africa (UTC+2)
- 4am in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain as well as Kenya, Ethiopia and Tanzania (UTC+3)
- 5am in the UAE and Oman (GST, UTC+4)
- 6.30am in India and Sri Lanka (IST, UTC+5:30)
- 8am in Western Indonesia, 9am in Central Indonesia and 10am in Eastern Indonesia
- 9am in the Philippines, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore (UTC+8)
- 10am in Japan and South Korea (JST/KST, UTC+9)
- Noon in Sydney and Melbourne (AEDT, UTC+11)
- 2pm in New Zealand (NZDT, UTC+13)
What are the episodes titled?
Episode 1: The Crawl
Episode 2: The Vanishing of …
Episode 3: The Turnbow Trap
Episode 4: Sorcerer
Episode 5: Shock Jock
Episode 6: Escape from Camazotz
Episode 7: The Bridge
Episode 8: The Rightside Up
Who is in the cast?
Most of the Stranger Things cast will return, including its young stars Millie Bobby Brown, Finn Wolfhard, Gaten Matarazzo, Caleb McLaughlin, Sadie Sink and Noah Schnapp. The series also stars Priah Ferguson, Joe Keery, Natalia Dyer, Charlie Heaton, Maya Hawke, Jamie Campbell Bower, Winona Ryder and David Harbour.
New to the final season are Nell Fisher, Jake Connelly and Alex Breaux, along with Terminator star Linda Hamilton, who is a long-time fan of the show.
“I’ve watched every season with relish. I just love it,” Hamilton told Us Weekly last year. “So it’s kind of like impostor syndrome where I don’t [feel that I] fit in there. That’s a whole world set in the 1980s.”
What happened in season five, volume 1?
The first four episodes of Stranger Things season five arrived on November 26, setting up the stakes for the final battle in Hawkins. By the end of volume 1, the focus has shifted firmly on Will Byers, who finally confronts his long-standing psychic connection to Vecna.
In the fourth episode, Sorcerer, Vecna appears to Will in a vision, forcing him to watch an army of Demogorgons set to attack Mike, Lucas and Robin. Will manages to tap into his happiest childhood memories, unlocking telepathic powers of his own. He freezes and destroys the creatures in a way that mirrors Vecna, ending the moment with a nosebleed that confirms the strength of his new abilities.
Vecna also reveals a chilling plan: he has chosen 12 children as “perfect vessels” to help reshape the world, starting with Mike and Nancy's younger sister, Holly, who was taken at the start of the season.
Meanwhile, the group learns that Max Mayfield isn’t truly gone. Instead, her consciousness is trapped inside a dreamlike world built from Vecna’s memories. She has been hiding in a cave that he seemingly cannot enter, and it’s here she meets Holly. Together, they create an escape plan, which depends on Holly returning to the real world and pretending everything is normal.
Elsewhere, Eleven and Hopper make their way into a secret military facility hidden inside the Upside Down. There, they discover that Dr Kay has been experimenting on Kali – also known as Eight, and someone Eleven referred to as her sister when they first met in season two.
What have the Duffer Brothers said about a spin-off?
While this may be the end of Hawkins, it isn’t the end of the story. A spin-off is in development, reports Variety – one with new characters and a different era – though the creators have said little about how, or if, it connects to the main series.
But for fans eager to see how the story may continue, the show’s creators – the Duffer Brothers – told The National that the finale will offer a first glimpse at what comes next.
“There’s one small scene in the finale that gives a hint as to what the spin-off will be,” Ross Duffer said. “We’ll see if people pick up on it.”
