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Stranger Things season 5 teaser promises nail-biting finale
Netflix
Potential spoilers below...
With Stranger Things Day taking place this week (November 6 is the day in 1983 that character Will Byers, played by Noah Schnapp, went missing and entered the Upside Down), and the first four episodes of the fifth and final season dropping on Netflix on 26 November, many fans of the beloved series are rewatching the episodes to refresh their memory.
Except, your massive binge of all four seasons could well be lacking some important context – context which is only revealed in the award-winning stage play The First Shadow, which is currently running on Broadway (at the Marquis Theatre) and the West End (London’s Phoenix Theatre).
The show’s description, listed on its official website, reads: “Hawkins, 1959: a regular town with regular worries. Young Jim Hopper’s car won’t start, Bob Newby’s sister won’t take his radio show seriously and Joyce Maldonado just wants to graduate and get the hell out of town.
“When new student Henry Creel arrives, his family finds that a fresh start isn’t so easy… and the shadows of the past have a very long reach.”
Of course, if you’ve already watched the TV series from start to finish, then you’ll recognise those names. Jim Hopper is played by David Harbour, Bob Newby is played by Sean Astin in the second series, and Joyce Maldonado – who is married and Joyce Byers by the first season – is played by Winona Ryder.
Oh, and Henry Creel is introduced in season four as big bad Vecna and later to be ‘One’, as in the very first child to be part of Dr Martin Brenner’s experiments at Hawkins National Laboratory.
Eleven, the main character in the TV series and played by Millie Bobby Brown, is… well… the eleventh.
The show’s website also says The First Shadow will “take you right back to the beginning of the Stranger Things story – and may hold the key to the end”.
The aforementioned description of the show also confirms that Joyce and Jim both knew Henry Creel before he became Vecna, which could well lead to a major reveal in season five when the penny drops…
The fifth and final season of Stranger Things begins with the first four episodes dropping on Netflix on 26 November, the next three landing on Christmas (how festive) and the finale being released on New Year’s Eve.
Why not read…
- Netflix just dropped Stranger Things season 5's first major spoiler
- Stranger Things star shares why they disappeared for five years
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