The Stranger Things Season 5 Trailer Confirms Vecna Has A New Score To Settle (And It's Not With Eleven)

The brand new trailer for the final season of "Stranger Things" has made its way out of the Upside Down and online, and naturally we're picking it apart like a freshly warm Eggo. Millie Bobby Brown's gifted hero, Eleven, is caught in the thick of things once again now that Hawkins has become what looks like the permanently open gateway to Vecna's (Jamie Campbell Bower) realm, but there's one blink-or-you'll-miss-it moment that suggests she might not be as high on the villain's hit list as we thought.

Following the events of last season, one member that's still on the bench and unable to fight back against anything with "demo" in their name is Sadie Sink's Max Mayfield, who was sadly left in a coma-like state after losing her second battle with Vecna in the season 4 finale. Early in the new preview, we see her lovestruck boyfriend, Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin), by her bedside, understandably heartbroken that she's still incapacitated thanks to her otherworldly encounter. What you could easily miss, however, is that later in the trailer, Max is out of bed and being held by Lucas while a pack of demodogs stalk her room in a riff on "Jurassic Park." In any other scenario, this could be just a simple case of bad luck for our heroes, but given the history of Max and the man/monster that tried to kill her, we have a feeling that Vecna wants payback and is willing to do anything to get it.

Look, we know these kids have gone through some stuff during the bonkers timeline and the unthinkable nine years since "Stranger Things" arrived. The experience has toughened them up to ridiculous levels, but we have our doubts that Lucas is going to be able to hold off a pack of interdimensional hounds that are on the hunt for Max. As far as we can see in the trailer, he's the only thing between a comatose Max and certain death, in which case we can only hope someone else is coming to their aid. That being said, could this be the time that Max finally returns to the land of the living and join the group she's been absent from for so long? Lucas would certainly appreciate it if his girlfriend would finally snap out of it, and considering how many Max fans there are out there, the audience likely would, too.

The good news is, we won't have long to wait and see just who makes it out in one piece, or who might end up in a hospital bed right beside Max. The first batch of episodes for the final season of "Stranger Things," labeled "Volume 1" and consisting of episodes 1-4, hit Netflix on November 26, followed by Volume 2 (episodes 5-7) on Christmas, and the series finale (episode 8) arriving on New Year's Eve. Honestly, a knitted sweater would've been enough this year, but sure, this will do.