Stranger Things 5 is finally getting real, official runtimes, straight from Ross Duffer himself. If you saw those viral posts claiming every episode would be feature-length, yeah... no. Here is what is actually happening with the final season.
So, about those runtimes
On October 13, co-creator Ross Duffer posted the runtimes for the first four episodes of the last season and labeled them "ACTUAL runtimes" for anyone still doomscrolling rumors.
- Chapter One: "The Crawl" — 1 hour, 8 minutes
- Chapter Two: "The Vanishing of..." — 54 minutes
- Chapter Three: "The Turnbow Trap" — 1 hour, 6 minutes
- Chapter Four: "Sorcerer" — 1 hour, 23 minutes
So no, they are not all 90 minutes or longer. In fact, none of these first four cross the 90-minute mark. That early-October report saying the episodes would all run 90 minutes to two hours does not hold up here. "Sorcerer" is the beefiest of the bunch and doubles as the mid-season finale.
How Netflix is rolling this out
Season 5 is coming in three drops:
Volume I (4 episodes) lands November 26, 2025. That batch ends on "Sorcerer," which is your mid-season finale. Volume II (3 episodes) hits December 25, 2025. The final episode of the entire series arrives December 31, 2025. Yes, they are literally closing the book on New Year's Eve.
Where the episodes stand right now
Back in August, Duffer said the first two chapters were finished in post and teased some aggressive openings for the season opener and Episode 2:
"Chapters One and Two: locked, mixed, scored, colored, DONE."
He called "The Crawl" "the most eventful first episode since Season 1" and said Chapter Two has "by far the craziest cold open we have ever done."
Cast roll call
Everyone you expect is back: Winona Ryder, David Harbour, Millie Bobby Brown, Finn Wolfhard, and Gaten Matarazzo lead the returning crew, along with Caleb McLaughlin, Noah Schnapp, Sadie Sink, Natalia Dyer, Charlie Heaton, Joe Keery, and Maya Hawke.
A couple title tidbits
"The Vanishing of..." is clearly hiding something in the ellipsis, which is very on-brand for this show. And "The Turnbow Trap" is a curveball title that is already begging for fan theories. "Sorcerer" closing out Volume I is a fun nod if you know the 1977 thriller; what it means here, we will see.
Bottom line: the episodes are not uniformly supersized, the schedule is locked, and the Duffers are clearly swinging for the fences right out of the gate. First stop: November 26.