Stranger Things Adds Linda Hamilton To Its Cast For The Fifth And Final Season

Vecna will never know what hit him. Terminator badass Linda Hamilton has been added to the Season 5 cast of Stranger Things, Netflix announced Saturday at its annual Tudum fan event. And if there's anybody you want on your side during a life-or-death struggle to save the world, it's probably the erstwhile Sarah Connor.

While no details about the onetime Beauty and the Beast leading lady's character were revealed, we do already know quite a bit about the final season of the Duffer Brothers' 1980s-set smash. For starters, Ross Duffer told TVLine back in June 2022, "I'm sure Happy Sad Confused podcast, the siblings hinted that Season 5's episodes wouldn't be as long as Season 4's — although the finale is likely to be not just feature-length but "Return of the King-ish." And you'll recall that the last movie in the Lord of the Rings trilogy was three hours, 21 minutes! 

On that same podcast, the Duffers said that, while Season 4 had scattered our protagonists from California to Kamchatka, they'd be reunited for their last attempt to keep the Upside Down from being unleashed on Earth. Key to their efforts, per an interview with our sister site Deadline, will be figuring out why the hellish realm had made a Groundhog Day of the date that Will was taken by the Demogorgon in Season 1.

Finally, we know from the most recent of Netflix's annual Stranger Things Days that the Season 5 premiere is titled "Chapter One: The Crawl" — perhaps a reference to the classic Dungeons & Dragons scenario in which "heroes navigate a labyrinth environment/dungeon, battling various monsters, avoiding traps and solving puzzles."

Of course, when Stranger Things Season 5 will see the light of day is anyone's guess. The Writers Guild of America Strike has brought the Duffer Brothers' work on the final episodes to a halt. "Writing does not stop when filming begins," they tweeted in May. "While we're excited to start production with our amazing cast and crew, it is not possible during this strike. We hope a fair deal is reached soon so we can all get back to work. Until then — over and out."