Stranger Things season 5 drops first official trailer, and it looks wild

It feels as if we've been waiting for this one for years; the first trailer for Stranger Things' fifth and final season has finally arrived, offering a glimpse at what's in store for our favourite folks from Hawkins, Indiana.

Stranger Things is, I believe anyway, still a titan of the streaming era.

It's drawn some criticism in recent years for taking so long to develop its seasons.

That's definitely a fault the series has, although the pandemic and SAG-AFTRA strike will have contributed to those production issues.

Every time a new season drops though, I feel I instantly recognise why filming took so long.

Each season is a marathon of blockbusters; there's little else on television attempting this scale of storytelling, perhaps aside from the Game of Thrones franchise, but I digress.

The new trailer for season 5 is here and it's thoroughly jam-packed with ambition and chaos. You can take a look below.

It can be pretty hard to decipher what's going on in Stranger Things, with the Duffer brothers careful not to give much away.

I'll do my best to unpack this trailer though.

The opening 45 seconds centres around some kind of countdown, with all of the show's key characters listening in on the countdown from various locations.

I'll be honest, it's nigh impossible to say what's happening beyond this but given that Will seems to sense something on his neck, I'm assuming it's all to do with the Upside Down.

We then see the military taking over Hawkins which is now home to a pretty gaping portal to the Upside Down (that broke open at the end of the prior season, if you recall), while our young heroes and their parents defiantly march around looking like they mean business.

We see Demogorgons and the Demodogs amidst an action-packed minute featuring plenty of concerned looking people, bomb explosions, and gunfire before Vecna turns up in the final shot.

"Found you," he menacingly calls out.

Stranger Things' fifth season will drop in five instalments with Vol. 1 landing on 26 November, Vol. 2 on 25 December, and the finale episode on 31 December.

This is specific to the PT timezone, so UK viewers can expect episodes on 27 November, 26 December, and 1 January.