What the 'Stranger Things' season 5 premiere title means

The final season of the hit Netflix show is set to begin filming next year

Millie Bobby Brown as Eleven in 'Stranger Things'. All photos: Netflix

From left: Nancy Wheeler (Natalia Dyer), Dustin Henderson (Gaten Matarazzo), Steve Harrington (Joe Keery), Eddie Munson (Joseph Quinn), Robin Buckley (Maya Hawke), Erica Sinclair (Priah Ferguson), Max Mayfield (Sadie Sink) and Lucas Sinclair (Caleb McLaughlin).

Sink and McLaughlin in volume two. One of the more pressing questions from the latest season would be if any key characters would die.

The first volume of season four ended on a cliffhanger but also revealed the origins of Vecna, the main villain introduced at the start of the season.

One of the noticeable absents from this season has been of the Mind Flayer, the villainous creature in seasons two and three. Many fans are theorising it could return in the second part of season four.

A new trailer for part two of season four has been viewed more than four million times within hours of its debut.

The second volume of 'Stranger Things' season four will have two episodes.

The second volume of season four will be available to stream from Netflix on July 1.

Filming for the final season of Stranger Things has not even begun, but fans were treated to the title of season five's first episode on Sunday. Revealed on so-called Stranger Things Day, which has been celebrated every year on November 6 since 2018, the episode is called Chapter One: The Crawl.

While no other information has been revealed, the title is likely to give fans something to chew on. Some have already speculated that it's a reference to "dungeon crawl" a scenario in role-play game Dungeons & Dragons, which features heavily in the show. In the scenario, heroes navigate dungeons as they battle monsters and solve puzzles.

While the title reveal may not be much, Stranger Things creators Matt and Ross Duffer have already offered a few hints about what to expect from season five. The brothers revealed in February that the coming season would be the last.

"Seven years ago, we planned out the complete story arc for Stranger Things. At the time, we predicted the story would last four or five seasons. It proved too large to tell in four, but — as you'll soon see for yourselves — we are now hurtling toward our finale. Season four will be the penultimate season; season five will be the last,” they wrote in a letter to fans.

While the show has gained a reputation for introducing new characters, such as Bob Newby (Sean Astin) and Eddie Munson (Joseph Quinn), only to kill them off later in seasons, the Duffer brothers are hoping to avoid this in the final season.

“We’re doing our best to resist [adding new characters] for season five,” Ross Duffer told IndieWire. “We’re trying not to do that so we can focus on the OG characters, I guess."

The young cast have all grown up, so it'll be difficult for the main group to still play characters in their early teens as they get closer to their twenties.

“I’m sure we will do a time jump,” Ross told TVLine. “Ideally, we’d have shot [seasons four and five] back-to-back, but there was just no feasible way to do that.”

Executive producer Shawn Levy has spoken about not wanting Stranger Things to drag on, suggesting that a bold and satisfying ending is on the horizon.

“We don’t want to be one of those shows that outstays its welcome and is flailing while it searches for a way to stick the landing. We really want to stick the landing. I feel like we have been able to do that every season and we also want to do it for the series," he said in an interview with US Weekly.

The Duffer brothers have also said they more or less know how the show will end.

"We do have an outline for season five and we pitched it to Netflix and they really responded well to it," said Ross. "I mean, it was hard. It's the end of the story. I saw executives crying who I've never seen cry before and it was wild."

David Harbour, who plays Jim Hopper, told Variety that he knows how the series ends and said "it's quite moving and quite beautiful".

Stranger Things has been a runaway hit for Netflix ever since it began broadcasting in 2016, and has gone on to become a major global success and one of the streaming platform’s most-watched of all time.

According to data compiled by Nielsen, Stranger Things season four was viewed for 7.2 billion minutes in the week from May 30 to June 5, the highest for any programme on a streaming platform since weekly rankings were introduced almost two years ago, said The Hollywood Reporter.

How the 'Stranger Things' cast's lives have changed since the series began — in pictures