Stranger Things has become a bit of an interesting project for Netflix over the last couple of years, as people's expectations about how the series might conclude met with silence and reports of a final run of episodes taking literally years to film and finish up. Now, more than three years since the last season, we're weeks away from the first part of Season 5, and finally have a proper trailer.
Don't get me wrong, this is far from the first time we've seen glimpses of the fifth season, which Netflix has been teasing for literally years, but it's the first time we've got a clear sense of what the landscape might look like as it opens up. It's a trailer that goes heavy on the action and tries its hardest to make it clear that even mainline characters are under threat of not making it through.
It seems like, after the explosive confrontation that ended the fourth season, the town of Hawkins is now in lockdown, at least partially, and our young cast of main characters have all been locked inside it stewing on the situation. It's hard to tell whether there's been another time skip, this time around, but you'd assume at least some time will have passed.
So, what are they going to do? Well, exactly as you might expect, they all want to fight back against the incursions of the Upside Down, and its horrendous leader Vecna. So, you'd imagine we're going to get some big action sequences featuring a little underground resistance formed by the main cast, as they try to figure out how to beat Vecna and his goons once and for all.
This trailer shows us that this'll make for at least one huge set-piece action scene, as Demogorgons swarm over some sort of military installation and show a load of soldiers that they're not really up to the fight. We also see those same monsters chasing down various characters, making it even more clear that some of them might, well, die.
To be honest, my enthusiasm for Stranger Things has faded over the years – I found the fourth season really muddy and overlong, and I've been worried that those same issues are inevitable for the fifth. Still, there's a lot to be said for seeing something through, and I can't help but feel like this trailer has made me keener to watch the new season, despite myself. It might be time to re-up that Netflix subscription when the first part comes out on 26 November.
