Are you ready for the return of Stranger Things? I sure am. It’s been a long wait for word on when season 5 will drop on Netflix, and during the streamer’s live Tudum fan event, we finally got some exciting new details about the highly anticipated final season of Matt and Ross Duffer’s global hit series. It’s coming in three parts: Four episodes on Nov. 26, three episodes on Christmas Day on Dec. 25 and the finale on New Year’s Eve, Dec. 31. 

Three years have passed since the show’s fourth season premiered on Netflix, with a nerve-jangling run of episodes that introduced Vecna — the biggest bad of the series — while setting the stage for an ultimate showdown between the kids of Hawkins, Indiana, and the dream-invading hellraiser. 

Stranger Things 4’s ending alluded to a hell-on-earth scenario looming on the horizon. The new eight-episode adventure will pick up 18 months later, in the fall of 1987. Yes, we’re still in the ’80s even if the cast members are full-fledged adults now. Just go with it.

Last season’s finale found Eleven processing the earth-shattering realization that, during her time undergoing experiments led by Papa (Matthew Modine), she inadvertently created Vecna and the Upside Down. A collection of Nightmare on Elm Street-inspired kills throughout the episodes helped to unlock the veil separating the netherworld and the real one. Thanks to Will’s psychic connection to the beast, we know Vecna is going to come back bigger and badder than before.

By the look of things, the whole cast is back at it for one final go-round: Millie Bobby Brown, Finn Wolfhard, Gaten Matarazzo, Caleb McLaughlin, Noah Schnapp, Sadie Sink, Natalia Dyer, Charlie Heaton, Joe Keery, Maya Hawke, Winona Ryder, David Harbour and Brett Gelman are all here. It’s a new year for Stranger Things. And something tells me it’ll be the most challenging one the gang has ever faced.