Stranger Things Season 5 Trailer Teases Will Byers as Vecna’s Undoing — A Full-Circle Twist Fans Are Buzzing About

Cancel the turkey trot—Stranger Things season 5 drops on Netflix this Thanksgiving.

Stranger Things 5 just dropped a new trailer, and the fandom has already made up its mind about who is taking the last swing at Vecna. Hint: it might not be Eleven this time. The case for Team Will is surprisingly strong, and the trailer is basically waving a big neon sign about it.

Why the Will theory suddenly makes a lot of sense

• Vecna calls his shot in the trailer. He grabs Will (Jamie Campbell Bower in full menace mode) and says, one last time — which sure sounds like a direct callback to Will getting possessed back in season 2.
• The D&D tie-in actually tracks. Will is the party’s Wizard, and in D&D the Wizard’s most busted spell is Wish — the reality-warping, game-breaking kind. Fans are speculating that a Wish-style solution could, metaphorically or even literally, remove the big bad from the board.
• Story symmetry. Will was Vecna’s victim from day one, so closing the loop with Will as the hero is clean, classic storytelling — and the Duffers have basically said as much.

The trailer line that set the internet off

"William, you are going to help me. One... last... time."

That phrasing is doing a lot of work. The first time is pretty clearly season 2, when the Mind Flayer used Will as a backdoor into Hawkins. Season 4 finally puts a face and a name to the mastermind — Vecna — and the show heavily implies he’s been behind the curtain since the beginning. Will’s tether to him has never really gone away. Remember the Stranger Things 4 finale: Will tells the group he can still feel Vecna — hurt, but definitely alive.

Fans are reading that as setup for Will turning the tables. Some think he’s been harboring powers of his own, or at least a connection he can flip from liability to weapon. It’s a bold swing, but the pieces line up.

The D&D angle (yes, it matters)

Inside the party, Will is the Wizard. In D&D, Wizard equals Wish, the top-tier spell that can reshape reality in very specific, sometimes monkey’s-paw ways. One popular explainer I’ve seen: if a character tried to Wish a villain dead, the rules-as-written might punt you forward to a time when that villain is already gone — effectively removing you from the immediate fight to keep the game from breaking. Translated to Stranger Things logic, the show could riff on that idea — not literally rolling dice, but using the concept of a cost-heavy, reality-bending move that outsmarts a villain you can’t just blast.

Full circle with Will

"Because the story really began with Will and his disappearance, it felt, in order to go full circle, it needed to really end with him in so many ways."

That’s co-creator Matt Duffer, talking to Entertainment Weekly. If you’re wondering whether the show intends to put Will at the center of the endgame, that quote is doing everything but handing him the final boss controller.

One more clue buried in the soundtrack

The trailer leans on Queen’s Who Wants to Live Forever, written for the 1986 movie Highlander. In that world, immortals can sense each other’s presence — a tingling awareness called The Buzz — and the intensity scales with the power of whoever is nearby. That’s a pretty on-the-nose echo of Will’s lingering sixth sense for Vecna. Could be a stylish needle drop, could be a hint. Given this show’s track record, I’m not betting on coincidence.

Stranger Things seasons 1–4 are streaming now on Netflix. Season 5 is set to premiere November 26. Whether it’s Eleven or Will that lands the final hit, the trailer makes one thing clear: Will and Vecna are on a collision course, and this time Will isn’t just the canary in the Upside Down.