Stranger Things Season 5 Hides a Clever Nod to Netflix’s Best German Sci‑Fi
Stranger Things Season 5 appears to tip its hat to Dark, unveiling a striking shot of ominous red spiraling clouds that mirrors the German sci-fi hit—and fans are already flooding social media with side-by-side comparisons.
If you saw that red spiral eating the sky in the Upside Down this season and immediately thought of Dark, you are not alone. Stranger Things 5 slips in a visual that feels like a playful wink at Netflix's German sci‑fi mind-bender, and the story swings harder than ever into time, space, and the weird places in between.
Yep, that red spiral looks familiar
There's a shot in Stranger Things 5 where the crew stares up at red, spiraling clouds boiling over the Upside Down. Fans were quick to call out the resemblance to Dark's blue spiral that Jonas encounters, which in that show is tied to its whole time-travel/dimension puzzle. An Instagram post from @sinemapeak even put the two side by side for the receipts. It's a striking nod that fits where Stranger Things is heading thematically this year.
So... is time travel finally on the table?
Short answer: the show is nudging right up to it. Season 5 reframes the Upside Down not as a separate world, but as a kind of wormhole connecting points in time and space. Dustin spells it out in Episode 5 and, for once, the explanation is refreshingly clean:
"It’s not another world. It’s a bridge between two points in time and space, between our world and another."
The show also echoes 'A Wrinkle in Time' (which Holly was reading back in Volume 1) with the idea of folding time to cross dimensions — tessering, basically — a parallel Deadline flagged early on. If that tracks, it helps explain why Henry is trying to possess twelve children this season: harness their abilities, yank 'Dimension X' closer to Hawkins, and collapse the gaps.
Dimension X vs the Upside Down vs the Abyss (let's untangle it)
Season 5 finally lays out the geography of the nightmare:
- The Upside Down: not the destination, but the bridge. It's how you get from here to there.
- The Abyss: the actual hostile dimension on the other side. Episode 7 reveals this is where Eleven originally blasted Henry after the Rainbow Room showdown. He would have stayed lost if Dr. Brenner hadn't pushed Eleven to reach out via the sensory-deprivation tank. That remote contact unintentionally spun up the Upside Down itself, giving Henry and his monsters a way back toward Hawkins.
Visually, the Abyss is all yellow skies, jagged canyons, and knives of rock jutting at impossible angles. It's home base for Vecna's whole ecosystem: the Mind Flayer, Demogorgons, Demodogs, the vines — the works. Vecna's endgame is to merge the Abyss with Earth, using the Upside Down as the connective tissue. The twist: the kids each have dormant abilities that might be channeled to push back. Tearing down the Upside Down could be necessary, but the show makes it clear the true threat isn't the bridge — it's the world on the other end.
The dates that won't stop echoing
The Upside Down's 'frozen' clock on November 6 has always been suspicious, and Season 5 keeps stitching that date (and others) into the larger pattern:
- Will Byers vanishes: November 6, 1983
- Joyce's opening night of 'Oklahoma!': November 6, 1959
- Holly's kidnapping: November 3, 1987
Put together, it looks less like coincidence and more like overlapping events across time, potentially manipulated to draw Dimension X/Abyss in line with Hawkins. Whether Vecna and Henry are steering those intersections — or just exploiting them — remains one of the season's big question marks.
Where all this leaves our heroes
Season 5 leans into reality bending, multiple timelines, and yes, the possibility of time travel in a way that genuinely mirrors Dark's vibe (moody visuals included) without copying it. The plan on the villain side is clear: fuse the Abyss to Earth. The counter-plan is messier: locate and channel the kids' latent powers, sever the bridge, and stop the merge before the spiral swallows Hawkins.
Quick hit: who made it, who is in it, how it's playing
Stranger Things comes from the Duffer Brothers and stars Millie Bobby Brown, Finn Wolfhard, Noah Schnapp, Winona Ryder, David Harbour, Gaten Matarazzo, Caleb McLaughlin, Sadie Sink, Natalia Dyer, Charlie Heaton, Maya Hawke, and Joe Keery. It is five seasons in, streaming on Netflix, and sitting at 8.6/10 on IMDb with a 90% score on Rotten Tomatoes.
When and where to watch
Volumes 1 and 2 are streaming now on Netflix. The finale — Episode 8 — drops on New Year's Day on Netflix and in select US theaters.
Ready to watch Hawkins face its biggest threat yet? Drop your theories below — especially if you think those dates are more than Easter eggs.