Screenshot provided by Netflix/YouTube
Nell Fisher, Alex Brix and Jake Conley have joined the final season of the hit Netflix series.
It’s the beginning of the end for “Stranger Things.”
Netflix revealed the first look at the fifth and final season of its massive sci-fi adventure series on Monday, with a behind-the-scenes video from the set that also revealed three new actors joining the show: Neil Fisher (“Evil Dead Rise”), Alex Brix (“Waco: The Aftermath”) and newcomer Jake Conley.
The video features several key cast members, and largely captures footage from the Atlanta soundstages where “Stranger Things” season 5 was filmed for most of 2024, with a good chunk of the season yet to be shot — Caleb McLaughlin says in the voiceover that they’re roughly halfway through production. While the video carefully avoids revealing much of anything about the story of season 5, there are still some interesting moments that you’ll miss in the blink of an eye.
There’s a shot of the core group of friends — Mike (Finn Wolfhard), Dustin (Gates Matarazzo), Lucas (McLaughlin), and Will (Noah Schnapp) — huddled together around a radio, followed by a shot of this quartet of Joyce (Winona Ryder), Nancy (Natalia Dyer), Jonathan (Charlie Heaton), and Steve (Joe Keery) huddled around an overhead projector. These characters have been apart for most of Season 4, so it’s a relief to see them all working together again. Dustin also appears to be wearing a Hellfire Club t-shirt, suggesting he’s keeping the spirit of the club’s late leader, Eddie Munson (Joseph Quinn).
Oddly enough, there’s no footage of Millie Bobby Brown with any of the other actors, but Brown noted that the show spanned 10 years of her life.
Elsewhere, there are several shots that appear to be from the Upside Down, including a crew member putting dripping goo on some mysterious red threads. Jamie Campbell Bower — who plays Vecna, aka Henry Creel, the show’s main villain — says that “season four was big,” but that “season five definitely feels bigger.” Linda Hamilton (The Terminator, Terminator 2: Judgment Day) — the latest ’80s movie icon to join the cast — appears briefly, saying out loud, “I love this show so much — I’m a real fan.”
The new cast also pops up in passing. Fisher, who played the terrified daughter in 2023’s “Evil Dead Rise,” plays a girl (possibly Mike’s younger sister Holly) whose bedroom is filled with flashing lights, a la Season 1. Brix, who played Timothy McVeigh in 2023’s Showtime series “Waco: The Aftermath,” can be seen briefly brandishing a gun. There’s a shot of Connelly standing next to Lucas’ sister Erica (Bria Ferguson), possibly as one of her classmates.
Netflix has not announced a release date for season five, though it is expected to premiere sometime in 2025.
