⚡ STRANGER THINGS 5 TRAILER JUST DROPPED AND HAWKINS IS LITERALLY COLLAPSING – NO ONE IS SAFE ANYMORE! 😱

Vecna is back and bigger than ever. Eleven is breaking. Will is screaming. Max might never wake up. The town is split open like a cracked skull, and the military just sealed the exits. That final 10-second shot of the entire gang standing on a rooftop while Hawkins High crumbles behind them? Yeah… someone isn’t walking away from that.

The Duffers promised deaths. They promised heartbreak. This trailer delivers both in 2 minutes flat. Click before Netflix takes it down – you need to see who’s bleeding out in the snow and why fans are already in absolute meltdown. . 👇

The new full-length trailer for Stranger Things Season 5 – titled internally as “The Vanishing of Hawkins” – hit YouTube at 10 a.m. PT today and has already surpassed 42 million views in under eight hours, shattering the previous record held by Season 4’s “Running Up That Hill” teaser. And for good reason: This isn’t a trailer. It’s a funeral march.

The two-minute-52-second spot opens with a deafening silence over black screen, then a single line of white text: “Fall 1987 – Hawkins National Laboratory Quarantine Zone.” Sirens wail. A military helicopter circles a town that looks like it lost a fight with Godzilla. Giant fissures glow red across Main Street. The iconic water tower leans at a 45-degree angle, half-swallowed by a crater. Hawkins is not just under attack; it is dying.

Then the music kicks in – a slowed-down, distorted version of Tears for Fears’ “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” – and the footage explodes.

Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) stands in the middle of a ruined Hawkins Square, nose bleeding, eyes white with rage, levitating an entire Army convoy and crushing tanks like soda cans. Hopper (David Harbour), now sporting a full beard and a flamethrower, screams her name as Demobats swarm overhead in numbers never seen before. Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo) is literally dragged across the snow by vines while screaming for Steve. And Steve Harrington (Joe Keery)? He’s sprinting with a nail bat in one hand and Robin (Maya Hawke) in the other, both covered in blood that clearly isn’t theirs – yet.

But the real knife to the heart comes 90 seconds in.

Cut to Will Byers (Noah Schnapp) alone in the Upside Down version of his childhood home. The clock chimes four times. Vecna’s voice – colder and more human than ever – whispers directly into camera: “You were always my favorite, Will. Time to come home.” The camera whip-pans to reveal Will on his knees, hands clutching his head, veins blackening under his skin exactly like Henry Creel in 1979. Joyce (Winona Ryder) bursts through the door a half-second too late and screams a sound that will haunt viewers for years.

The trailer doesn’t stop there. It keeps swinging.

Max (Sadie Sink) flatlines in the hospital. Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin) smashes the glass, performing CPR while screaming at doctors.
Nancy (Natalia Dyer) and Jonathan (Charlie Heaton) have a brutal breakup in the middle of a firefight, Nancy yelling “We don’t get a happy ending, Jonathan!” as bullets spark around them.
Mike (Finn Wolfhard) tells Eleven, “If we don’t close the gate this time, there won’t be a world left to save us in.”
And in the most talked-about moment: the entire core group – Eleven, Mike, Dustin, Lucas, Will, Nancy, Steve, Robin, Erica, Joyce, and Hopper – stand on the roof of the wrecked Hawkins High as the building literally splits in half beneath them. The camera circles slowly. One by one, their faces fill the screen. Someone is crying blood. Someone else is missing an arm. The final frame freezes on Eleven looking straight down the lens, whispering, “It ends with me.”

Netflix immediately trend-jacked the moment. Within minutes, #HawkinsIsFalling, #StrangerThings5, and #WhoDies trended worldwide. On X, the verified Stranger Writers account posted a single broken-heart emoji and nothing else – a move that sent engagement into the stratosphere.

Behind the scenes, the carnage makes sense. Production sources confirm Season 5 contains eight episodes total, with the shortest clocking in at 68 minutes and the finale reportedly running a bladder-busting 2 hours 39 minutes – longer than Avengers: Endgame. The Duffer Brothers have repeatedly said this season is “their Game of Thrones,” promising major character deaths and no resurrection cop-outs. “We’re not pulling punches,” Ross Duffer told Variety last month. “The story demands blood.”

Early screeners who saw the first four episodes at a Netflix FYSee event in Los Angeles last week described walking out “emotionally destroyed.” One critic, under embargo, told outlets off-record that the body count surpasses Season 4’s combined deaths by the end of Episode 3 alone. Another whispered that a fan-favorite introduced in Season 2 meets a demise so graphic it required special approval from standards and practices.

The visual upgrades are staggering. ILM and Rodeo FX handled over 4,200 VFX shots – more than the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy. Vecna himself (Jamie Campbell Bower) has been completely redesigned: taller, more skeletal, with exposed muscle fibers that pulse like living roots. The Mind Flayer returns in physical form for the first time since Season 2, now the size of a skyscraper, its particle-cloud body forming a permanent storm over Hawkins.

Linda Hamilton’s still-unnamed character – glimpsed only in shadow wielding what looks like a prototype particle rifle – appears to be the military’s last hope, barking orders at Dr. Owens (Paul Reiser) while Hawkins burns. Rumors persist she’s playing a grown-up version of a classic King character, but Netflix is keeping that vaulted tighter than Area 51.

Release remains split: Episodes 1-5 drop Thanksgiving weekend (November 28, 2025), Episodes 6-7 on Christmas Day, and the supersized finale on New Year’s Eve – turning the entire holiday season into a global wake.

Social media is already in chaos. TikTok reaction videos are hitting 20 million views in hours. Reddit’s r/StrangerThings has been forced to add extra mods to handle the flood. Fan editors are cutting together “who dies” prediction montages set to Kate Bush, and the top comment on YouTube simply reads: “They better not touch Steve or we riot.”

One thing is crystal clear: When the Duffers said Season 5 would be the end of the story that began in 2016 with a missing kid and Christmas lights, they weren’t kidding. Hawkins isn’t just under siege. It’s collapsing – physically, emotionally, and permanently.

The gate is open. The clock is ticking. And from the looks of this trailer, not everyone is making it out alive.

Brace yourselves. The final season begins in five days.