Exclusive: Linda Hamilton Cast In Stranger Things Season 5
We've exclusively learned Linda Hamilton has joined the cast of the final season of Stranger Things.
Update: This Giant Freakin Robot exclusive was confirmed, and Linda Hamilton was cast in Stranger Things Season 5.
She’s faced down Terminators and now she may be dealing with Vecna. Stranger Things is known for recruiting 1980s icons into its ranks, and now our trusted and proven sources tell us the show is staying true to form by bringing Linda Hamilton into the cast for Season 5. We don’t know what character Hamilton is playing — including whether she’ll be a good guy or bad — only that it’s described as a “major role.”
We could see the Duffer Brothers recruiting Linda Hamilton as either an ally to the heroes of Hawkins or an antagonist. She secured her place as a sci-fi icon in 1984’s The Terminator as Sarah Connor: the target of the eponymous cyborg’s wrath. Her character survives that film chiefly because of the actions of Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn), but by her most recent turn as Connor in 2019’s Terminator: Dark Fate, Sarah has become a hardened warrior who often gives off more “bad guy” vibes than good ones.
Not to mention that when it comes to the 1980s icons like Linda Hamilton we’ve seen so far in Stranger Things, their allegiances don’t always reflect their most well-remembered roles. Sean Astin’s Bob proves to be just as heroic as Mikey of The Goonies, but Cary Elwes’ Mayor Larry Kline is about as far from the pure-hearted Westley of The Princess Bride as you could get. Then you’ve got an outlier like Paul Reiser: most of his 1980s roles were for sympathetic characters like Stranger Things‘ Dr. Sam Owens, but when it comes to sci-fi and horror fans, his most well-remembered part of the 1980s is Burke of Aliens, who is such a snake that you wind up cheering when the xenomorphs get him.
Linda Hamilton has proven her ability to play both villains and heroes, most recently as General Eleanor Wright in Syfy’s Resident Alien. A high-ranking official tasked with finding visitors from other planets, Wright begins the series as the chief antagonist on the trail of Harry Vanderspeigle (Alan Tudyk). Later in the series, she actually becomes something of an ally to the alien.
Whether Linda Hamilton will be working against Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower) or with him, the bad news is we won’t get to see her or anyone else in Stranger Things for another two years. What’s on Netflix and others report that filming on Season 5 is scheduled to take a year, and that the absolute earliest we can expect the final season to hit the streamer is the summer of 2025. If any of that changes, we’ll make sure to let you know as soon as we know.
