Netflix's Stranger Things to end with its 5th season

One of Netflix's biggest shows is officially entering its endgame.

Netflix announced Thursday its hit series Stranger Things has been renewed for a fifth season, which will be the show's last.

"Seven years ago, we planned out the complete story arc for Stranger Things," creators Matt and Ross Duffer said. "At the time, we predicted the story would last four to five seasons. It proved too large to tell in four but — as you'll see for yourselves — we are now hurtling toward our finale."

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Stranger Things' highly-anticipated fourth season will debut this summer but be split into two parts, with the first dropping on May 27 and the second on July 1. This fourth season will have a "runtime nearly twice the length of any previous season," and it's being split into two due to this "unprecedented length," the Duffer Brothers said. Past seasons have debuted all of their episodes at once.

Stranger Things, which follows a group of kids dealing with supernatural events in the 1980s and draws inspiration from classic movies like E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, launched on Netflix in 2016 and became one of the streamer's most successful originals. The last season in 2019 was watched by 64 million households in its first four weeks of release, Netflix said at the time. The show has also won numerous Emmys, and it's been nominated for Outstanding Drama Series for each of its seasons so far.

But while Stranger Things might have an ending in sight, the Duffer Brothers' announcement hinted it could still continue via potential spinoffs, writing, "There are still many more exciting stories to tell within the world of Stranger Things: new mysteries, new adventures, new unexpected heroes." It's not clear when the fifth and final season might debut.