Stranger Things 5: Watch First Five Minutes

Netflix has released the opening five minutes of Stranger Things 5, and it wastes no time throwing fans back into the Upside Down, and back in time.

A Flashback to the Beginning

The final season begins on November 12, 1983, the day Will Byers disappeared, and the moment Hawkins began to unravel. The opening scene, from Episode 501 titled “The Crawl,” debuted during a virtual fan event and brings viewers into a grim vision of the past.

Will is alone in the Upside Down, hiding in a makeshift fort deep in the forest. A Demogorgon lurks outside, forcing him to flee. But he doesn’t get far. He’s dragged into Vecna’s lair, where the villain appears and utters his first words of the season: “At long last, we can begin.”

Vecna wraps Will in vines, inserts one into his mouth, and whispers, “You and I, we’re going to do such beautiful things together.” It’s a brutal, chilling sequence that resets the tone of the final chapter.

Watch below.

No More Slow Build

According to the Duffer Brothers, Stranger Things 5 skips the usual setup. There’s no return to normal life, no slow introduction — just action from the first frame.

“This season is sprinting from the start,” Ross Duffer said. “Nothing in Hawkins is normal anymore,” Matt Duffer added. “Their movement is restricted, and there are Big Brother cameras everywhere.”

What Happens After

Following the flashback, Vecna disappears. The gang scrambles to regroup while Hawkins remains under military quarantine. The government is once again hunting Eleven, and the threat of Vecna looms large. The synopsis teases that the group will need to reunite — the full party — for one last stand.

Fans can expect more lore from the Upside Down as well. The Duffers plan to finally use material from a 25-page mythology document they wrote at the start of the series. Some of the final season’s biggest moments will draw from those early notes.