“I need you to fight. One last time.”

Netflix’s expanded finale will have a theatrical release to more than 600 locations.

Credit: Netflix

Stranger Things fans are hyped for the premiere of the hotly anticipated series finale on New Year’s Eve: they’ll either be glued to their TVs or heading out to watch it in a bona fide theater. Netflix has dropped one last trailer for the finale—not that it really needs to do anything more to boost anticipation.

(Some spoilers for Vols. 1 and 2 below but no major Vol. 2 reveals.)

As previously reported, in Vol. 1, we found Hawkins under military occupation and Vecna targeting a new group of young children in his human form under the pseudonym “Mr. Whatsit” (a nod to A Wrinkle in Time). He kidnapped Holly Wheeler and took her to the Upside Down, where she found an ally in Max, still in a coma, but with her consciousness hiding in one of Vecna’s old memories. Dustin was struggling to process his grief over losing Eddie Munson in S4, causing a rift with Steve. The rest of the gang was devoted to stockpiling supplies and helping Eleven and Hopper track down Vecna in the Upside Down. They found Kali/Eight, Eleven’s psychic “sister” instead, being held captive in a military laboratory.

Things came to a head at the military base when Vecna’s demagorgons attacked to take 11 more children, wiping out most of the soldiers in record time. The big reveal was that, as a result of being kidnapped by Vecna in S1, Will has his own supernatural powers because of his ties to Vecna. He can tap into Vecna’s hive mind and manipulate those powers for his own purposes. He used those newfound powers to save his friends from the demagorgons.

Vol. 2 picked up right where Vol. 1 left off. Since many readers might not yet have had a chance to finish watching just yet, we’ll avoid mentioning any major reveals. Suffice to say that there are some emotional heart-to-hearts and a big reunion; elaborate plots to foil Vecna; plus we learn more about the true nature of the Upside Down and Vecna’s master plan, which gets set in motion in the final moments of the penultimate episode. That tees us up nicely for the big feature-length finale. Expect a death or two, although I’d wager that we’ll be losing more minor characters rather than several major players (who frankly have suffered enough).

The footage in this final trailer is accompanied by a voiceover by David Harbour’s Hopper—a Duffer brothers St. Crispin’s Day speech. “I need you to fight one last time,” he tells Eleven as highlights from prior seasons play out. “Life has been so unfair to you. Your childhood was taken from you. You’ve been attacked, manipulated by terrible people. But you never let it break you. Fight for the days on the other side of this. Fight for a world beyond Hawkins. Let’s end this, kid.”

The Stranger Things series finale—with a feature-length runtime of 2 hours and 5 minutes—drops on December 31, 2025, at 5 PM PT/8 PM ET. It will also screen for two days only (December 31 and January 1) at select theaters nationwide, with over 1.1 million advance RSVPs.

Jennifer is a senior writer at Ars Technica with a particular focus on where science meets culture, covering everything from physics and related interdisciplinary topics to her favorite films and TV series. Jennifer lives in Baltimore with her spouse, physicist Sean M. Carroll, and their two cats, Ariel and Caliban.