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The first trailers for “Stranger Things” season five are here

Online Niel November 16, 2024

Set in a small town in Indiana in the mid-1980s, Stranger Things is about all sorts of very unusual goings-on: supernatural, sci-fi, dystopian, even geopolitical (don’t expect to find Stranger Things on Vladimir Putin’s tail on Netflix. ). Also hormonal: the heart of the series is the group of teenage friends who do everything they can to save the day, and teenagers are…teenagers. An incidental pleasure the show offers is how earnestly and happily it wallows in the popular culture of the era: the music, the movies, the home furnishings, two of the characters work in a video store.

Season 1 debuted in 2016 and Season 2 in 2017. So far so good. Season 3 didn’t come until 2019. Then Season 4 didn’t come out until 2022. That means a lot of waiting endured by many eager fans.

Last week, Netflix launched a teaser for the fifth and final season. As the teasers show, it didn’t offer much. It’s basically a version of the intro for each episode. The show’s synth-based theme (think Tangerine dream in a Hoosier tour) plays on the soundtrack. Those red letters in the series logo float on a black background, eventually coming together to form the title. That’s it: no new footage, no voiceovers, nothing but eight episode titles, followed by this: “In the fall of 1987, one last adventure begins. It’s coming in 2025.” It doesn’t even say When in 2025.

But wait: This week Netflix didn’t launch one but two trailers. “This time we’re putting an end to it, no matter what the cost,” says Police Chief Hopper (David Harbour). “It’s coming, for all of us,” says Will Byers (Noah Schnapp). “It’s time to fight back,” says Eleven (the phenomenal Millie Bobby Brown). There are a lot of undetermined crushes and scares. Both are heavy on the CGI – no surprise there – and the music is on a high note “Carmina Burana” module.

The very extended release schedule didn’t stop “Stranger Things” from becoming a phenomenon. In fact, it may have helped. A prequel play, “Stranger Things: The First Shadow,” runs in London from late 2023. It has won two Olivier Awards and opens on Broadway in April. Netflix has at least two spin-off series in the works, one live action, one animated. The series also revived the career of Winona Ryder (speaking of ’80s pop culture), who plays the mother of Will and his brother Jonathan (Charlie Heaton).

Elongation can be good for anticipation. It is definitely not good for the aging process. Actors can play a character who is older than that relatively easily. Playing younger is a completely different portal to worms. Season 5 will pick up nine years after Season 1. The show begins in 1983, so by Season 5 the characters are supposed to be four years old, not nine. Heaton is 30 years old. Joe Keery, whose transformation of Steve Harrington from villain to nice, even heroic guy is one of the show’s joys, is 32. Maya Hawke, who is so good as Steve’s friend Robin Buckley, is 26. You get the idea.

Here’s the real weirdness of “Stranger Things.” It is not Upside down (don’t ask) or Vecna (definitely don’t ask) or the various shenanigans of the Cold War. That’s how much growth is Slower in small town Indiana than anywhere else.