The end is near.

At last, the long-awaited final season of “Stranger Things” is set to be released in parts, the first one coming out on Nov. 26, with the last part coming out on New Year’s Eve.

After an incredible nine-year run, the wildly popular Netflix show is wrapping up all of the strangeness in Hawkins with its fifth and final season.

The show has been popular worldwide, reaching 1.8 billion views in the first 90 days of streaming Season 4 alone.

Some of the show’s actors have grown from 10-year-olds to fully married adults with children, and it looks like students are also growing up fast.

“I was eight when the first season came out, but I binge-watched all of the available seasons when Season 3 came out with my sister,” senior Michelle Kennedy said.

“Stranger Things” is about a group of kids who uncover hidden secrets about their town, the fictional Hawkins. Much of the strangeness comes when they first meet a girl named Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) who has telepathic abilities.

This slowly leads to them learning about the Upside Down, which is an exact copy of Hawkins, Indiana, but filled with monsters like Demogorgons, Demodogs and the Mind Flayer.

“Before I knew there was gonna be a Season 5, I thought the ending of Season 3 was brilliant,” counselor Jon Sawyer said. “They could have ended the show right there.”

It was emotionally satisfying. Closed story arcs, and it was just very well found.

In the most recent season, which ends on a cliffhanger, the kids, now mostly in high school, learn about the power source behind all of the monsters from the upside-down: Vecna.

Vecna has the same powers as Eleven, and the two used to know each other at the lab where she was raised.

Vecna was almost defeated last season, but now the gates to the upside down are open all over town, and Vecna is back for the kids to try and defeat him one last time.

Most students have grown up watching the show with their family or friends, and some even have emotional attachments to many of the characters. Most seniors were 9 years old and in third grade when Season 1 was released in 2016.

“It was so popular. I remember, even if you didn’t have any internet or online access, you knew what ‘Stranger Things’ was,” senior Mohsina Anwar said. “It was the most mainstream thing ever.”

People are even saying it’s a purposeful choice that the show is ending with the seniors’ high school journey.

“I can almost think of the show ending as a closed chapter in my life because of the timing coinciding with my graduation,” senior Michelle Kennedy said.

After such a long time running, there is a lot of emotion behind the show finally ending, kind of like the last chapter of a long story someone’s been writing.

“I’m really excited for the new season,” freshman Seth Bachman said. “But I’m also kind of sad that there’s not going to be any more of the show.”

All the anticipation put aside, the show’s popularity has slowly decreased over the years.

Many fans complain the show loses momentum because of the number of years between seasons.

“The new season’s anticipation will probably help with its popularity,” Bachman said.

Now that the last season’s trailer and teasers have been released, predictions and ideas are all over social media and the internet.

Fans are trying to uncover and understand hidden meanings in any trailers and teasers, looking to see who dies, who the villains are, and how the show plays out.

”I think they’ll start the season with a big kill, but not as big as Steve and Will, probably a smaller character,” Bachman said.

Some fans are also hoping their favorite dead characters might make an appearance in the coming season.

“I would love to see Eddie come back in some form or another, whether he is an antagonist or protagonist,” Sawyer said. “ I just loved his character.”

Others hope the story wraps up nicely and doesn’t leave unanswered questions. Since the show has been airing for so long over the years a nice ending is long awaited and pretty much expected.

“To be honest, I feel like the writers are really good at being original and intentional with their scripts,” Kennedy said. “But I hope that all the characters have endings that make the plot feel resolved. Ideally, I don’t want any loose ends in their stories .”