Stranger Things is gearing up for one last ride in Hawkins as production will soon begin on the fifth and final season of Netflix’s hit TV show.

Filming is currently scheduled to start in January, though the exact date may change. The initial goal was to film during the summer of 2023, but Netflix’s mega series was delayed for over seven months due to strikes from the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and the Screen Actors Guild‐American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA).

The Duffer brothers, the show’s creators and executive producers, have been working tirelessly during the pre-production process, “since it’s our scripts, you’re changing it all the time on the fly,” explained Matt Duffer. “You’re either working it out with the actors, you’re changing the blocking, you’re changing it based on locations. When you’re talking about this many hundreds of pages, it is always evolving.” 

The familiar cast is returning for the final season including: Noah Schnapp, David Harbour, Winona Ryder, Finn Wolfhard, Millie Bobby Brown, Gaten Matarazzo, Sadie Sink, Caleb McLaughlin, Natalia Dyer, Charlie Heaton, Joe Keery, Maya Hawke, and Priah Ferguson while a couple new faces are joining like Linda Hamilton from Terminator and the director of 10 Cloverfield Lane, Dan Trachtenberg, will contribute his extensive skill set.
Stranger Things has built a special place in the hearts of many since its release in 2016, and Harbour describes the peak moments in the final season as, “very, very moving. It’s a hell of an undertaking, too. I mean, the set pieces and the things in the scripts that we saw are bigger than anything we’ve done in the past.”