At long last (and we mean so, so, so long), we can finally feast our eyes on the first few minutes of Stranger Things‘ fifth and final season. Netflix revealed the opening scene a bit early today, and while it kicks off the long-awaited final confrontation between big bad Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower) and our intrepid Hawkins heroes, it does so by going all the way back to the beginning. It even de-ages Will Byers (Noah Schnapp) to do it, so steel yourself for that real-life uncanny visage before hitting play.
In a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, Stranger Things creator Matt Duffer teased that “so much of the season was built around the idea of coming full circle, answering many of the questions that were posed all the way back in season 1.” The opening scene starts to answer a pretty big one: namely, why Will was taken to the Upside Down in the first place. We saw some of Will’s experience in alt-Hawkins in season one, but it appears this season will fill in some very conspicuous gaps. Here, we see young Will cowering in Castle Byers and running for his life from a demogorgon, before said demogorgon eventually catches him and drags him to Vecna’s lair. There, the latter pumps some sort of icky-looking liquid into Will’s body via tentacle (this season already promises lots of good work for the [tentacles roiling wetly] subtitle guy) and monologues a bit. “At long last, we can begin,” he says. “You and I, we are going to do such beautiful things together, William. Such beautiful things.”
In the EW interview, Ross Duffer teased that the “most important episode” for understanding Will’s arc is season two’s “The Spy,” during which he “was really working, in a way, for the Mind Flayer.” Maybe he still is. “Because the story really began with Will and his disappearance, it felt… it needed to really end with him in so many ways,” Matt said, adding “I think the two biggest questions that we didn’t really answer in season 1 that we do answer this season is ‘what is the Upside Down, truly?’ and ‘why was Will taken?'” We’ll see how the rest of the premiere begins to flesh out those answers when the first part of season five drops on November 26, followed by volume two on December 25, and the grand finale on New Year’s Day. There’s still a long journey ahead. In the meantime, you can check out the first five minutes of the season below:
