Netflix’s drop of the full trailer for Stranger Things season 5 should have been an easy win: the final season of one of the streamer’s biggest shows, a return to Hawkins, and the long-promised showdown with Vecna. Instead, it set off a mini culture war in the fandom.

The trailer confirms the story picks up in fall 1987, more than a year after the events of season 4. Hawkins is no longer pretending everything’s normal—it’s under full military lockdown. Roads are blocked, surveillance cameras watch every corner, and the Upside Down’s destruction has literally bled into the real world. Ross Duffer even said this year is “different” because the heroes start in chaos rather than easing in with school, bullies, and mall drama. This time, they already lost, and season 5 is the attempt to claw things back.

Eleven is in what Millie Bobby Brown called a “warrior state,” hiding and training for Vecna’s return, determined to protect the friends she now sees as her chosen family. Will (Noah Schnapp) looks like he’s back at the center of the mythos—he’s shown coming face to face with Vecna, which ties the finale back to season 1. Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo) is trying to “keep all the pieces together” while Hawkins is locked down, Mike (Finn Wolfhard) is back in mission-planner mode, and Max (Sadie Sink) is still recovering from her brutal season 4 near-death but hanging onto “a small glimmer of hope.” Caleb McLaughlin points out the obvious spine of the season: Vecna was never defeated, so everybody’s operating on edge.

On paper, that’s exactly what fans said they wanted: higher stakes, a sprinting plot, everyone back in Hawkins, and a real ending. But online, the reaction was sharply split.

One big complaint: the wait. Season 1 dropped in 2016. Season 4 arrived in 2022. Now it’s 2025 and then we’re getting the finale. A lot of viewers said the gaps have eaten away at the show’s momentum. Comments like “They’re all grown-ups now,” “This has been going on too long,” and “Just release the episodes already” popped up everywhere. Some joked it’s no longer Stranger Things but “Normal Things” because the kids don’t look like kids anymore. That’s the downside of a show built on teen nostalgia taking nearly a decade to finish.

Another talking point was David Harbour’s light presence in the trailer. Hopper is there—but only briefly—so fans immediately started asking why he wasn’t featured more, especially with tabloid noise around his ex Lily Allen supposedly overshadowing the rollout. For a fanbase that tracks every frame, that was noticeable.

Still, the trailer wasn’t a flop. A big chunk of the audience is all in. People loved the darker, war-movie tone, the sense that Hawkins is now a battlefield, and the promise—finally—of closing the gate for good. Executive producer Shawn Levy reinforced that: the action and VFX are “next level,” but it’s still about the core group we met in 2016.

Netflix is clearly making it an event release: four episodes on November 26, three more on Christmas, and the finale on New Year’s Eve—basically turning the end of Stranger Things into a holiday TV takeover.

So where does that leave things? The trailer proved two truths at once:

1. People still care about this show.
2. The years-long gaps have tested that loyalty.

Season 5 now has to do something tricky: deliver a massive, emotional, Hawkins-vs.-Vecna finale and convince the fans who drifted away that it was worth waiting almost nine years for the ending. That’s a big swing. If it lands, it’s an all-timer. If it doesn’t… people will say the fandom aged out before the show did.