What is the story about?
Not everyone was happy after Stranger Things Season 5 Vol 2 premiered on Christmas Day. Three episodes of the second part of the fifth and final season
were released on Netflix to mixed reactions. The majority of fans have disliked the seventh episode titled The Bridge, making it the lowest-ranked ever by audiences in the history of the show. Others have gone so far as to create a petition with over 300,000 online signatures asking Netflix to release "unseen footage" from Vol 2. But does said "unseen footage" exist? We clear up the rumours about the so-called Vol 2 Files and the fan petition?
Is there unseen footage from Stranger Things Season 5?
In the run-up to the fifth season, several online accounts claimed to have insider information and shared fake material and so-called tips. One of the posts had claimed that Vol 2 running times were 1 hour 43 minutes, 1 hour 41 minutes, and 1 hour 58 minutes for episodes 5, 6, and 7, respectively. Ross Duffer himself debunked this rumour by sharing the final run times for the last four episodes on Instagram a week ago.
But after the release of Vol 2, which probably didn't go the way many fans wanted, a large and loud section of the fandom seems to believe that Netflix cut the episodes down and states that hours of lost footage exist. They've even convinced themselves that the original runtimes were once listed on IMDb and the original runtimes for the episodes were over two hours, with the finale coming in at three hours. First of all, information on IMDb can be edited by anyone, which is not entirely reliable, and if the creator himself is confirming the episodes' runtime, that's all the info you need to know as valid.
Stranger Things Season 5 fan petition
Despite the information in front of them, over 300,000 fans have signed a petition demanding the footage be released by Netflix. There is precedent for this. In 2021, Zack Snyder's Justice League was released and featured the filmmaker's vision of the superhero film. In 2017, Joss Whedon took over the director duties on the film after Snyder left for a personal reason. The difference in the two films is vast, but that is a one-off case.
The Stranger Things petition demands, "We want the unseen footage of stranger things. I believe it was more to the episodes and we didn’t see them either due to Netflix or the team of stranger things cutting them. This has been a long 10 years process and this is what we get. They must have cut out a lot of scenes from volume 2 and from our loved characters… Everyone is clearly dissatisfied with this season volume. And also the amount of clues and information we got from the cast members and interviews are not matching up with the episodes provided. We want stranger things to have a legacy not be seen as some show that couldn’t pull though due to it bad writing.”
While Vol 2 did suffer from some jarring storytelling, especially with the origins of the Upside Down being explained and some big changes (Nancy and Jonathan break up), there is still a two-hour finale to go. Moreover, it seems these vocal fans aka 'Bylers' are also upset about a lack of romance between the characters of Will Byers (Noah Schnapp) and Mike Wheeler (Finn Wolfhard). During Will's coming out scene, the character himself admits that his crush will never like him back the same way. But it seems fans can't read between the lines. The series finale of Stranger Things will be released on December 31 at 5 pm PT (January 1, 2026, at 6:30 am in India). In the US and UK, the finale will be screened in select cinema halls.
