'Stranger Things' season 5 has a release date. Here's everything we know about the conclusion to the hit Netflix series.

Netflix has announced that the final season will be released in three parts.

The first four episodes are set to arrive on November 26. The next three episodes are then due to air on December 25, before the much-anticipated finale lands on December 31.

The full synopsis for season 5 reads: "The fall of 1987. Hawkins is scarred by the opening of the Rifts, and our heroes are united by a single goal: find and kill Vecna. But he has vanished — his whereabouts and plans unknown."

"Complicating their mission, the government has placed the town under military quarantine and intensified its hunt for Eleven, forcing her back into hiding. As the anniversary of Will's disappearance approaches, so does a heavy, familiar dread. The final battle is looming — and with it, a darkness more powerful and more deadly than anything they've faced before. To end this nightmare, they'll need everyone — the full party — standing together, one last time."

In a teaser, Netflix released titles (or at least, partial titles) for eight episodes in season five. They are, presumably in order: "The Crawl," 'The Vanishing of...," "The Turnbow Trap," "Sorcerer," "Shock Jock," "Escape from Camazotz," "The Bridge," and "The Rightside Up."

Netflix also shared behind-the-scenes photos from season five on Instagram.

On January 8, 2024, the official "Stranger Things" account posted on X that the fifth season had entered production. 

"THIS IS A CODE RED," the post read. "STRANGER THINGS 5 production has officially begun!!!"

Netflix released a behind-the-scenes featurette from the set of "Stranger Things" season five on July 15, 2024, marking the halfway point of filming for the final season. 

"I started when I was 10," Millie Bobby Brown says in the video. "I'm now turning 20 years old. It feels very weird."

The teaser also features appearances from other members of the primary cast, including Finn Wolfhard, Caleb McLaughlin, Sadie Sink, Gaten Matarazzo, Joe Keery, Maya Hawke, Natalia Dyer, Charlie Heaton, Noah Schnapp, Jamie Campbell Bower, and Winona Ryder.

Season five newcomer Linda Hamilton of "Terminator" fame also briefly gets the spotlight. 

There are some fun glimpses in the trailer of Dustin wearing a Hellfire Club shirt (RIP Eddie) and the original four — Mike, Dustin, Lucas, and Will — attending school together. There's also a brief shot of Hawke and Ryder sharing a scene, and one glimpse of Mike's younger sister Holly looking shocked by something off-screen.

In a May 6, 2023 tweet from the writers' room X account, the Duffer brothers announced that production was being put on pause until the Writers Guild of America and Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers had reached a "fair deal." 

"Duffers here. Writing does not stop when filming begins," the tweet began. "While we're excited to start production with our amazing cast and crew, it is not possible during this strike. We hope a fair deal is reached soon so we can all get back to work. Until then -- over and out. #wgastrong."

The account also liked several tweets supporting the strike, including one featuring an image of a picket sign reading, "Pay us or Steve Harrington is toast."

The Duffer brothers told Collider in an interview published in July 2022 that after some time off that month following the release of season four, part two, they were planning on starting up the writers' room for season five of the series during the first week of August.

Later, the official writers' room X account for the show confirmed that writing had started on August 2, 2022.

During a July 2022 episode of the "Happy Sad Confused" podcast, the Duffer Brothers told host Josh Horowitz that they didn't expect the show's final season to be as long as season four, in part because it won't require the exposition that season four did. 

"I don't know if it's gonna be going 100 miles per hour at the start of five, but it's gonna be moving pretty fast," Matt Duffer said. "Characters are already gonna be in action, they're already gonna have a goal and drive, and I think that's gonna carve out at least a couple hours and make this season feel really different."

Ross Duffer said, however, that they're likely to have another "two-and-a-half-hour episode" for the series finale in order to avoid a television phenomenon in which a series' climax falls in the penultimate episode while the finale acts as more of a "wind down."

Still, the brothers said that during the writing process, things could change.

Ross Duffer told TVLine in June 2022 that he was "sure we will do a time jump" for the show's fifth season, given the young cast's increasing age. At the time, the series' young actors were three to five years older than their characters in the show. 

"Ideally, we'd have shot [seasons four and five] back to back, but there was just no feasible way to do that," he told TVLine.

Netflix has confirmed that the series would take place "in the fall of 1987." That will put it approximately a year and a half after the conclusion of season four, which took place in March 1986. 

In February 2022, Netflix announced that the fifth season of "Stranger Things" would be its last.

In a letter at the time, the Duffer brothers laid out their plans for the universe. While there was plenty left to explore, the letter read, the series finale would bring an end to its central story.

"We hope that you stay with us as we finish this tale of a powerful girl named Eleven and her brave friends, of a broken police chief and a ferocious mom, of a small town called Hawkins and an alternate dimension known only as the Upside Down," the letter read.

The brothers told Collider in July 2022 that they had confidence in the show's ending.

"We do feel good about the ending," Matt Duffer said. "I was like, okay, I think this ending is not… I'm not super insecure. I'm insecure about a lot of things, but I feel like this ending feels good." 

Ross Duffer told the publication at the time that the final 20 minutes of the series were already "locked in."

Ross Duffer told Netflix Geeked in 2022 that lingering questions about the Upside Down, such as why it's frozen in time to the point where Will was taken in season one, would be answered in season five. 

"The answers to what the Upside Down actually is, is really gonna be the core of what season five is, and the mysteries of season five," Ross said. "And those answers are really gonna lead us to the conclusion of this story."

In 2022, Ross Duffer told The Wrap that when he and Matt pitched season five to Netflix, some tears were shed in the room.

"I mean, it was hard. It's the end of the story," he told the publication. "I saw executives crying who I've never seen cry before and it was wild. And it's not just to do with the story, just the fact that it's like, 'Oh my God, this thing that has defined so many of our lives, these Netflix people who has been with us from the beginning, seven years now,' and it's hard to imagine the journey coming to an end."