This Stranger Things Season 3 Canon Twist Proves the Duffer Brothers’ Genius
Stranger Things saved its wildest twist for a sing-along. In the Season 3 finale, Dustin and Suzie halt the Mind Flayer showdown at Starcourt Mall to belt The NeverEnding Story, forcing the whole team to listen while he hunts for Planck’s constant.
Remember when Stranger Things paused a monster battle so Dustin could sing The NeverEnding Story over a ham radio? Yeah, that happened, and it was glorious. With the final season finally locked in and the Duffers making a big studio move, now feels like the right time to revisit that musical detour and then break down how Season 5 is rolling out — including a theatrical finale. No, you didn’t imagine that last part.
The Season 3 sing-along that broke the internet (on purpose)
The scene lands during the Starcourt Mall showdown in the Season 3 finale. Dustin needs Planck’s constant to basically save Hawkins, so he calls his genius girlfriend Suzie — who will only cough up the numbers if he duets with her. Cue Gaten Matarazzo and Gabriella Pizzolo belting The NeverEnding Story while literally everyone else in the cast waits, stunned, mid-apocalypse.
"We all knew that Gaten had the voice of an angel... I love that this is like canon that Dustin has like an amazing voice."
Finn Wolfhard said that with the kind of grin you can hear. And yes, the Duffers engineered the whole thing to show off Matarazzo’s pipes. He didn’t just stumble into that voice: before Stranger Things, he was on Broadway — Priscilla, Queen of the Desert starting in 2011, and later Gavroche in the 2014 Les Miserables revival.
Wild bit of trivia: the original plan wasn’t The NeverEnding Story at all. They first tried a mournful Ent song from The Lord of the Rings, then pivoted when Amazon announced its LOTR series and the vibe changed. The switch paid off. After the season dropped on July 4, 2019, views for the original NeverEnding Story music video spiked 800% on YouTube within days, and Spotify requests for the song jumped 825%. The moment works because it deflates the tension right when you need a breath — and it tracks for Dustin, who canonically can sing his face off because Matarazzo actually can.
Season 5 release plan (and yes, the finale is going to theaters)
Netflix is slicing the final season into three drops, and they’re getting fancy with the ending:
- Volume 1: November 26, 2025 at 5pm PT/8pm ET — four episodes
- Episode 1: The Crawl — 1 hour 8 minutes
- Episode 2: The Vanishing of ___ — 54 minutes
- Episode 3: The Turnbow Trap — 1 hour 6 minutes
- Episode 4: Sorcerer — 1 hour 23 minutes - Volume 2: December 25, 2025 — three episodes
- Finale: December 31, 2025 — standalone episode, about two hours, streaming and in select cinemas worldwide the same day (Netflix announced the limited theatrical release on October 23, 2025)
On scope: the Duffers compiled over 650 hours of footage for the season. They say it’s pedal-to-the-floor from start to finish, with everybody back in Hawkins bouncing off each other like Season 1 — which, if you’ve missed the original dynamic, is exactly the right promise.
What the Duffers are doing next (besides finishing Stranger Things)
Matt and Ross Duffer signed a four-year exclusive deal with Paramount Pictures on August 19, 2025. It kicks in April 2026 after their Netflix contract wraps and covers features, TV, and streaming through Upside Down Pictures. It’s the first big swing under new Paramount CEO David Ellison and reunites the brothers with former Netflix execs Cindy Holland and Matt Thunell — the duo who greenlit Stranger Things back in 2015.
Their motivation is pretty straightforward: they want to make big original movies for theaters again. The deal lets them write, produce, and direct theatrical releases, while still being open to playing with Paramount IP if it fits what they want to make. They’re not abandoning Hawkins entirely, either — they’ll remain executive producers on Stranger Things after Season 5. Over at Netflix, they still have two new shows in development: The Boroughs and Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen. No, there are no Stranger Things spin-offs planned after the final season.
Your turn
Are you Team NeverEnding Story forever, or did you want the Ent lament just to see the chaos? And how are we feeling about a two-hour finale you can watch at home or on a big screen? Drop thoughts below.
Stranger Things Season 5 starts streaming November 26, 2025, in three volumes.