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STRANGER THINGS: SEASON 5. (L to R) Sadie Sink as Max Mayfield and Millie Bobby Brown as Eleven in Stranger Things: Season 5. Cr. COURTESY OF NETFLIX © 2025
The past few weeks have been a bit insane on the Stranger Things front. Volume 2 kicked off a movement, which then kicked off another movement after Volume 3, unlike anything I’ve ever seen for a Netflix show in my ten-plus years of covering the streamer. A mass psychosis resulted in people genuinely believing that the wool had been pulled over their eyes, and more episodes, specifically a ninth episode, would be on the way.
As we’ve already covered, since the finale aired, traction has been gained that the epilogue was all a ruse and that the ending we got, which left things rather ambiguously unfinished with El’s fate left entirely to the viewer, and an actual final episode would strip down that ending and tell us what really happened. It’s been an elaborate exercise with people pointing to inconsistencies in season 5 (which there were many), vague social posts, and other coincidences.
January 9th, for multiple reasons, was the date some fans of the show had reckoned would be when episode 9 would release. They pointed to false claims, like Netflix France’s Tweet with a picture of “J-7,” as evidence. Omitting that “Days” in French is “Jours” and Netflix FR has consistently counted down using the shortened “J,” and in this instance it was posted on December 19th, 7 days before volume 2 was released… They then kept changing the time throughout the day, with 8:45 PM ET eventually cited as the time it’d release, based on the WSQK radio station number.
Fans pointed out that Netflix has made surprise additions before, with The Sandman getting a bonus episode in its first season, and Rebel Moon getting two extended cuts (which were revealed before Netflix wanted).
They pointed to old, outdated social media bios that had yet to be updated after New Year’s reading, “One More Episode.” They pointed out that Netflix’s own search would show Stranger Things when you typed in terms like “Fake Ending” or “Stranger Things Episode 9.”
That’s not to mention the fake websites with countdowns set up, AI-generated videos and images spread far and wide across socials, and many other elaborate ways fans have convinced themselves that something else is coming.
And then there’s the videos, and they’re compelling…
So, then. Yesterday was the moment of truth. Did the new episode come? No. The episode never arrived, and while Netflix reportedly briefly crashed, we never got the fabled episode addition.
Was someone or multiple people at Netflix playing into it all? We’ll probably never know, but given how social media algorithms work, once you were exposed to any of this, you were in deep. Heck, it even led Hollywood trade publications like Variety and The Hollywood Reporter to cover the fan-led phenomenon. Many state that Variety received official confirmation from Netflix on the matter, though, reading their post, I don’t know if you can say that definitively, as they don’t specifically state that a rep for Netflix confirmed.
Were all the fans feeding this just chasing views, deadly serious, or trolling? Again, we will never truly know the extent to which accounts fall into each camp, although many that have made Byler their obsession clearly fit into the deadly serious category.
Many have been calling on Netflix to make a public statement on the matter, but that’s a slippery slope. Just because this gained traction, what’s stopping 100 more fake fads from arising in the future? Must they really issue statements for each and every one? Netflix not going on the record for this matter doesn’t surprise me in the slightest, and my understanding is that the entire thing has caused befuddlement throughout the company (and some frustration).
Making matters 10 times worse have been The Duffer Brothers and their interviews. Over the last few months, they’ve said A LOT. It’s not always been consistent, and while I appreciate they wanted to give each outlet they spoke to something new to quote rather than just repeating the same line, as we’ve spoken about before, they’ve ended up setting up their show to fail in numerous ways and often contradicted what we saw on screen. I wish they’d spoken less, particularly after that finale, and let the work (whether you think it’s good or bad) speak for itself.
A classic quote from the late David Lynch comes to mind whenever he’s been questioned about his films… “Elaborate on that,” one interviewer asked. “No,” Lynch responds.
But alas, it’s now January 8th, and there are no more Stranger Things episodes coming. The mothership show and our time in Hawkins, at least for the foreseeable future, has truly ended.
It’s been a bizarre experience for someone covering this. We’ve had accusations of homophobia leveled at us, as have other journalists like Paul Tassi for Forbes, who has been tracking this phenomenon (and feeding it) for the past few weeks.
For some, we’ll undoubtedly now see the goal posts shift. “They really meant January 12th,” we’ve already seen, citing the letters and colors of their d&d books from the finale. We’re not kidding.
There are more adventures in Hawkins to come in 2026, with two seasons of Stranger Things: Tales from ’85 and more planned beyond that, including a live-action spin-off. Don’t forget that we’ll get a 2-hour-plus documentary coming up on Monday that’ll hopefully do a little more to flesh out some of the creative and story decisions for season 5.
Did you really think Conformity Gate was real? Let us know in the comments.
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