Eight years ago today, Stranger Things premiered on Netflix. Its original cast of kids — Millie Bobby Brown‘s Eleven, Finn Wolfhard‘s Mike Wheeler, Gaten Matarazzo‘s Dustin Henderson, Caleb McLaughlin‘s Lucas Sinclair, and Noah Schnapp‘s Will Byers — are all grown up in real life now, and they’re preparing to say goodbye to the show. “This is home,” Matarazzo says on set in a new video going behind-the-scenes of Stranger Things‘ fifth and final season.
The clip arrives at the official halfway mark of filming for the upcoming season, helmed by the Duffer Brothers, which doesn’t have a release date yet. “Take it all in nerds, we’re going on one last final ride,” a caption from the official Stranger Things account reads. The video features the original cast, including Winona Ryder, Joe Keery, Natalia Dyer, and Charlie Heaton, as well as more recent staple cast members Sadie Sink, Priah Ferguson, Maya Hawke, and Jamie Campbell Bower.
A few new additions to the cast have been made with Linda Hamilton, Nell Fisher, Jake Connelly, and Alex Breaux joining the final expansion of the Stranger Things crew. “We’re just kind of savoring every single moment,” says Sink, who joined the show during Season Two. McLaughlin adds: “Like every season, you never really know what to expect — 100 percent, the wait will be worth it.”
Stranger Things Season Four premiered in two parts in 2022. Writing for Season Five initially began in August 2022, but was paused in May 2023 due to the Writers Guild of America strike. Back in November, the official X (formerly Twitter) account for the Stranger Things writers’ room shared a sneak peak into the final season. The post, captioned “Season 5. Chapter 1. Scene 1,” read: “DARKNESS. The sound of COLD WIND. GROANING TREES. And … A CHILD’S VOICE. Singing a familiar song.”
The title of the first episode of the fifth season is: “Chapter One: The Crawl.” The video marking the midway point in filming calls back to the eerie sights and sounds that the series has become known for over the past near-decade of its run.
