Which Stranger Things Stars Are — And Aren't

Stranger Things is wrapping up its run on Netflix with a fifth and final season spread across three different drops — but not every cast member is returning.

The hit series, which debuted in 2016, focuses on a fictional town where a series of supernatural events take place and cause mystery and mayhem. Over the course of five seasons, Stranger Things has catapulted its cast members — Winona Ryder, David Harbour, Finn Wolfhard, Noah Schnapp, Millie Bobby Brown, Gaten Matarazzo, Caleb McLaughlin, Natalia Dyer, Charlie Heaton and Joe Keery — to stardom.

Ahead of the show’s highly-anticipated season 4 premiere in 2022, creators Matt and Ross Duffer announced that they were going to end the series after one more chapter in Hawkins, Indiana.

“Seven years ago, we planned out the complete story arc for Stranger Things,” they detailed in an open letter in February 2022. “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. Season 4 will be the penultimate season; season 5 will be the last.”

Later that year, the Duffer Brothers opened up about their vision for the final episodes and addressed the season 4 episode split.

“The original plan was to release it all at once again. But as we began turning over episodes, everyone began to feel the season was too big to be released in one batch — at nearly 13 hours, it is really more two seasons than one,” they told Variety in May 2022 after Volume 1 dropped the first seven episodes. “Episode 7 is as big as any season finale we’ve ever had, so it made sense to everyone involved to split the season there. Episode 7 really serves as the end of the second act — and we feel that our final act had enough meat on the bone to make up Volume 2.”

Keep scrolling to see which cast members have confirmed they are returning — and who won’t be back:

Ryder’s Joyce has been featured in the season 5 trailer and stills.

Before filming the finale season, Harbour teased Hopper’s potential story line in season 5.

“We’re walking into season 5. I’ve got a couple more months to train,” he said at the Middle East Film & Comic Con in March 2023. “I did a lot of training for season 4. He [Hopper] was in a very specific position, that Russian prison. It was about making him a different guy and sort of shedding a layer of himself physically, mentally, and emotionally. But now he’s back in town, he’s back in America where they have cheeseburgers, so he will be well-fed.”