Why the Stranger Things Season 5 Trailer Has Fans Seeing Harry Potter and Voldemort

Stranger Things just dropped its second Season 5 trailer, and somehow we all ended up back in Hogwarts. Not literally, obviously, but the new footage has fans drawing some pretty on-the-nose parallels to Harry Potter. And honestly, the trailer does not shy away from those vibes.

What the new trailer actually shows

This is for the fifth and final season, hitting Netflix on November 26. The Duffer Bros are clearly going for a grand, messy, last-stand energy. Queen’s 'Who Wants to Live Forever' haunts the whole thing while Hawkins looks like a war zone. Vecna is back, the Upside Down is bleeding through again, and everything is bigger, darker, and more personal.

Quick hits from the footage: Demogorgons tearing through soldiers; Eleven and Hopper fighting on their own inside the Upside Down; and Mike delivering the pep talk of the apocalypse: 'Find Vecna and end this once and for all, together.' The capper is the real needle-mover: Vecna levitates a terrified Will Byers and lays out his plan.

'William, you are going to help me - one last time.'

Why everyone is suddenly talking Harry Potter again

Fans weren’t imagining it. The trailer leans hard into the 'chosen one vs ancient evil' archetype that Harry Potter popularized for an entire generation. The similarities jump out fast, and the internet did what it does.

• Eleven is positioned as the chosen one who has to face her nightmare nemesis. Vecna is staged like a scorched, shadow-dwelling tyrant bent on domination. You don’t need a wand to see the Voldemort/Harry setup.
• Will’s psychic tether to Vecna is getting louder, and that shot of him helpless in midair screams 'the villain is in your head' in a very familiar way.
• The tone is 'final battle' through and through. Think Deathly Hallows Part 2: cities under siege, friends regrouping, lines in the sand.
• Even the language around it echoed Potter. Posts on X (formerly Twitter) literally quoted the prophecy line, 'Neither can live while the other survives,' and called this season 'Harry Potter vs Voldemort all over again.'

The social chatter (and who said what)

Within minutes of the trailer dropping, X lit up. A post from @EvanAboutCinema on October 30, 2025 put it bluntly with that 'Neither can live while the other survives' line alongside Stranger Things imagery. Another from @EditedByGeo the same day said Season 5 is basically Harry vs Voldemort again. Beyond that, you’ve got replies tossing around 'The Boy Who Lived chills' and 'the chosen one' as shorthand for the mood of this trailer.

The bottom line

Stranger Things isn’t shy about playing with big, mythic storytelling, and this trailer makes it clear we’re getting an emotional, all-in final fight. The Harry Potter parallels aren’t just a stretch from fans; the footage invites them. Whether that’s homage or just shared storytelling DNA, the show is steering straight into a last-stand showdown where every character we care about has skin in the game. We find out how far it goes on November 26.