Stranger Things is a science fiction horror series created by Matt and Ross Duffer for Netflix, set in the fictional town of Hawkins, Indiana, and running five seasons from July 15, 2016, through December 31, 2025. The series follows a group of young friends whose encounters with the Upside Down, an alternate dimension adjacent to their world, pull them into conflicts with increasingly powerful supernatural threats over a decade of in-universe time. Season 5 concluded on New Year’s Eve 2025 with the series finale episode titled The Rightside Up, ending the show after eight years of production. An animated anthology spinoff series, Stranger Things: Tales From ’85, is in development at Netflix.

Hawkins, the Upside Down, and the Mythology

Stranger Things’ central mythology connects the town of Hawkins to a parallel dimension called the Upside Down, a dark mirror of the physical world inhabited by hostile entities. The Hawkins National Laboratory, a Department of Energy facility with classified Cold War research into psychic abilities and interdimensional physics, is responsible for the gate between dimensions that allows the Upside Down’s threats to enter the human world. Eleven, a girl with psychokinetic powers who escaped the laboratory, is the franchise’s central figure, her abilities both the cause of the initial dimensional breach and the primary defense against what comes through it. The Upside Down’s hierarchy across the series escalates from the Demogorgon in Season 1 through the Mind Flayer and ultimately to Henry Creel, also known as One and Vecna, a former Hawkins Lab subject who becomes the franchise’s defining villain in Season 4.

Seasons 1 Through 4

Season 1 premiered July 15, 2016, across eight episodes, following the disappearance of twelve-year-old Will Byers and the simultaneous appearance of Eleven, a girl with a shaved head and no last name who escapes from Hawkins Lab. Winona Ryder plays Joyce Byers, Will’s mother, and David Harbour plays Jim Hopper, the Hawkins police chief who becomes the investigation’s adult anchor. The ensemble of young actors including Millie Bobby Brown as Eleven, Finn Wolfhard as Mike Wheeler, Gaten Matarazzo as Dustin Henderson, and Caleb McLaughlin as Lucas Sinclair established a dynamic that carried the franchise through its entire run.

Season 2 in October 2017 introduced Max Mayfield, played by Sadie Sink, and explored Will’s possession by the Mind Flayer following his rescue from the Upside Down. Season 3 in July 2019 centered on the Starcourt Mall and Billy Hargrove as the Mind Flayer’s primary host, ending with Hopper’s apparent death in a machine explosion beneath the mall. Season 4, released in two volumes in May and July 2022, was the franchise’s most expansive, revealing the origins of the Upside Down’s hierarchy through the backstory of Henry Creel and expanding the story to Russia, where Hopper had survived as a prisoner. Season 4’s conclusion left Hawkins in ruin from four simultaneous gates and Max in a coma following Vecna’s attack.

Season 5: The Final Season

Season 5 released across three volumes on Netflix. Volume 1 arrived November 26, 2025, across four episodes. Volume 2 arrived Christmas Day, December 25, 2025, across three episodes. The series finale, The Rightside Up, released December 31, 2025. The eight episodes of the final season range from fifty-seven to one hundred twenty-eight minutes in length. The season is set in November 1987, nineteen months after the earthquake that destroyed much of Hawkins, with Vecna still at large and the town under military quarantine. Holly Wheeler’s mysterious disappearance becomes part of a larger scheme the Party must untangle as they devise a plan to stop Vecna from destroying the world entirely.

What Comes Next

Stranger Things: Tales From ’85 is an animated anthology series in development at Netflix that will continue the franchise beyond the conclusion of the main show. The format allows stories set in 1985 featuring the show’s characters without requiring the conclusion of the main series’ arc to be undone. Stranger Things: The First Shadow, a stage musical prequel focusing on a young Henry Creel and the origins of the Hawkins Lab mythology, launched on Broadway following its successful West End run. The Duffer Brothers have described additional Stranger Things universe projects in development beyond Tales From ’85.

Games in the Stranger Things Franchise

Dead by Daylight

Dead by Daylight is an asymmetric multiplayer survival horror game developed and published by Behaviour Interactive. Initially Starbreeze Studios was the publisher of the game,…

Read More