Ahead of Stranger Things: The First Shadow’s opening on Broadway, Netflix took fans behind the curtains with a special behind-the-scenes look at the making of the stage show inspired by the hit drama. Behind the Curtain: Stranger Things The First Shadow provides fans with an exciting look at the work that went into bringing the franchise to the West End, where it was met with rave reviews and its success paved the way for the production’s Broadway opening.
While the special keeps the focus entirely on the stage production of Stranger Things: The First Shadow, when watching the credit sequence, I couldn’t help from put on my detective cap and look for any possible hidden Easter Eggs within the credit sequence – after all, Netflix has been known to quietly hide teasers in the past.
As I watched the credits’ title cards, I immediately took notice when I saw an illustration of Big Ben pop up on the screen with the clock interestingly set to 8 o’clock. This illustration was then followed by a second clock illustration, which this time showed the clock hands set at 2 o’clock. That illustration then led to an illustration of a Stage Door number that read “Stage 8.” If you put these three corresponding numbers together, you’re left with 828, which just so happens to translate to August 28 from a date perspective.
Interestingly, August 28 just happens to fall on a Thursday this year, and Thursday has become Netflix’s go-to day of the week for dropping its bigger original series. So could it be that the title cards in the credits of the Behind the Curtain: Stranger Things The First Shadow documentary have been used to quietly tease when the first part of Stranger Things season 5 is going to release?
What’s even more interesting is that just before the series of credits’ title cards featuring the numbers appeared, we see a card that features a series of script pages floating through the wind. It just so happens that the fifth page in the sequence of pages is the only red script page, with every other page on the screen being transparent against the black background. The red page then corresponds with the red clock hands in the two illustrations and the red eight.
Now, this might be nothing more than wishful thinking, but honestly, an August 28 release for Part 1 of Stranger Things season 5 would make sense. This would get the first part of the final season out just as summer is coming to an end and allow Netflix to potentially save the final episodes of the show for October should they put a month between the two parts as they did with season 4, which released in May and July 2022. That release strategy would also help give Netflix a big release as Q3 comes to a close and help to kick off the final quarter of the year with a massive release, which is good for their business structure and its advertisers.
With Tudum coming on May 31, it’s likely we’ll officially get a release date for Stranger Things season 5 in the weeks ahead. For now, we’re going to be eager to see if perhaps the creative team really did sneak the release date into the credits for Behind the Curtain: Stranger Things The First Shadow or if our theory turned out to be nothing more than that, a theory.