as the highly anticipated final season approaches, Netflix is rolling out an expansive promotional campaign for its flagship series, Stranger Things. From a Los Angeles cycling event echoing the show’s iconic bike rides to merchandise partnerships and global pop-up experiences, the streaming giant is leaning into the cultural phenomenon that began in 2016. The final season will be released in three volumes,beginning this Thursday,November 27th,marking an unusual strategy for the platform and signaling the importance of this series conclusion.
Thousands of fans took to the streets of Los Angeles this past Sunday for “One Last Ride,” a cycling event celebrating the upcoming final season of the hit Netflix series Stranger Things. The ride playfully echoed a key element of the show, where the teenage characters frequently navigate their fictional Indiana town of Hawkins by bicycle.
The cultural phenomenon surrounding Stranger Things is already in full swing, with retailers across the U.S. and beyond offering everything from Demogorgon-themed oatmeal to backpacks emblazoned with the logo of the Hellfire Club, the Dungeons & Dragons group central to the show’s storyline.
According to Netflix’s Chief Marketing Officer Marian Lee, the campaign for the final season is the streaming service’s largest to date. Target, for example, currently boasts over 150 Stranger Things-branded products. This level of merchandising is typically reserved for blockbuster film franchises, demonstrating the show’s immense reach.
Many companies are capitalizing on the show’s 1980s setting. Gatorade has reintroduced its Citrus Cooler flavor, originally popular during that decade, while Walmart has brought back Care Bears, the beloved franchise encompassing toys, plush characters, and films that defined the era.
Stranger Things merchandise is available worldwide. “We’re talking about a series that truly resonates on a global level,” Lee explained.
Trailer from the fifth season of Stranger Things.Video: Netflix
In Paris, shoppers can visit a special Hawkins-themed Christmas market at the Galerie Lafayette department store. Pop-up experiences resembling the show’s Hawkins Laboratory have also appeared in San Francisco, New York, Rio de Janeiro, and Sydney.
Netflix is employing a unique release strategy for the final season. Instead of dropping all episodes at once, as it has in the past, the season will be divided into three parts released around the holidays. The first episodes will premiere this Thursday, November 27th, at 2:00 AM Central European Time, just ahead of the American Thanksgiving holiday.
The second set of episodes will follow on December 26th, also at 2:00 AM CET, coinciding with children’s winter breaks. The final episodes will arrive on New Year’s Eve, debuting at two minutes past midnight CET.
Stranger Things and its stars, including Millie Bobby Brown, Finn Wolfhard, and Noah Schnapp, are poised to dominate the holiday season. The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, for instance, will feature a float with members of the British-American rock band Foreigner, whose music has appeared on previous season soundtracks.
More merchandise is arriving in stores now as people begin their holiday shopping.
This extensive marketing push is reminiscent of campaigns for major film releases like Barbie or The Wizard of Oz, notes Amanda Cioletti of research firm Informa Markets. She points out that it’s unusual for a television series to receive this level of promotion.
“Stranger Things is everywhere. In stores, on social media, everywhere it makes sense to be,” Cioletti observes.
Photo: Netflix
The series Stranger Things has received 12 Emmy Awards to date. The photo shows Winona Ryder as Joyce, Finn Wolfhard as Mike, and Jake Connelly as Derek.
Participants in Sunday’s cycling event in Los Angeles clearly felt the anticipation for the final installment. “The show started when I was in sixth grade, and I was around the same age as the characters,” said 21-year-old Chloe Allen. “It’s a huge part of my life.” The first season premiered in the summer of 2016.
Netflix is also hoping to extend the Stranger Things universe beyond the final episode. A stage play, Stranger Things: The First Shadow, is currently running in London’s West End and on Broadway. An animated series is slated for release next year, and work is underway on another live-action series set in the same world. “It won’t be a continuation of the Hawkins story, or with the characters you know, but it will exist within the Stranger Things universe,” one of the creators, Ross Duffer, has said.
Executive producer Shawn Levy declined to provide further details, but believes he, Ross Duffer, and his brother Matt Duffer will offer fans something new. “We definitely won’t be repeating ourselves,” Levy stated.
Matt Duffer revealed that the team drew inspiration from the finale of HBO’s Game of Thrones when crafting the final season. “In a way, we were inspired by what they did with Game of Thrones. We tried to build it up gradually, the way a movie franchise would,” he explained.
According to Duffer, the fifth season will feature more elaborate special effects. However, the creators’ primary goal was to provide closure for the story and its characters. “People have really grown attached to them, they’ve been on this journey for almost ten years, and they want to know how it ends,” Duffer said.
Photo: Netflix
Linda Hamilton, known from the Terminator film series, plays the new antagonist Dr. Kay in the fifth season.
The fifth season will also see the return of Winona Ryder as Joyce, David Harbour as Jim Hopper, and Millie Bobby Brown as Eleven. Brown, who first appeared in Stranger Things as a 12-year-old, approached the end of filming with particular emotion. “The last day was really sweet for all of us,” the actress said, adding that her experience on Stranger Things sparked a passion for science fiction and she would welcome similar roles in the future.
The fifth season is set in the fall of 1987, when the town of Hawkins is disturbed by newly opened rifts—portals to the alternate dimension known as the Upside Down—that appeared at the end of the fourth season. Authorities declare a quarantine, and the military searches for Eleven, who must once again go into hiding. As the anniversary of Will’s disappearance—which occurred at the beginning of the series—approaches, a final battle looms. The group of friends must find and defeat the antagonist Vecna before darkness consumes the world.
