Get ready to head back to Hawkins, Indiana. Season 5 of Stranger Things is inching closer, and a new member is joining the Party — 10 Cloverfield Lane director Dan Trachtenberg will direct an episode of the show’s upcoming final season. 

There’s no word yet on which episode the director will helm, but he’s an eminently qualified set of hands. Last year, Trachtenberg reenergized the iconic Predator franchise with Prey, a distant prequel that saw the alien hunter face off against a young Comanche warrior. If we’re playing Six Degrees of Separation, Trachtenberg is coming full circle with Stranger Things. The original Predator starred Netflix Chief Action Officer Arnold Schwarzenegger, who hunted Linda Hamilton in The Terminator, and Hamilton, like Trachtenberg, recently joined Season 5 of Stranger Things. At the end of the day, like Hawkins, Hollywood is just another small town. 

The Stranger Things writing team began working on the show’s final season in August 2022, and back in Nov. 2022, they gave us a tantalizing hint about the Upside Down’s epic conclusion. Episode 1 of Season 5 is called “The Crawl,” but what that might signify is anyone’s guess. One thing is for sure: The dense mythology that the Duffer brothers started crafting all the way back in Season 1 is about to reach its conclusion.

The fifth season of Stranger Things is coming soon. In the meantime, there’s plenty of Hawkins lore to delve into. Why not check out the Eddie Munson prequel novel, or keep an eye on the West End’s upcoming Stranger Things stage play?

See The Top 10 Moments from Stranger Things Season 4 From running up that hill to Eddie shredding, here are the top moments.