Does Stranger Things' season 5 trailer tease an early death – and a close call for Dustin?

Netflix's second Stranger Things 5 trailer is notably more fun and optimistic than the first – but it could still be hiding a dark secret in plain sight.

The initial teaser, released just prior to Halloween, heavily alluded to profound suffering and sacrifice, with various shots of characters in danger or distress set to the epic backing track of Queen's Who Wants to Live Forever.

The dramatic reveal of this farewell season understandably left fans theorising about potential deaths – and we shouldn't let our guard down just because the follow-up trailer strikes a lighter tone.

We open on loveably mismatched besties Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo) and Steve (Joe Keery) as they wait in a car with some kind of satellite transmitter conspicuously plonked on the top.

From there, we get bread crumbs about an "insane" plan cooked up by Mike (Finn Wolfhard), Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) and their gang, which Dustin hopes will result in "Vecna's heart on a platter". Suffice to say, they aren't playing D&D any more.

As the trailer ends, we return to Dustin and Steve in the car – now joined by Jonathan (Charlie Heaton) and Nancy (Natalia Dyer) – as they speed through a portal to the Upside-Down, presumably in a daring bid to take the fight to their foe.

There's an air of hope and triumph to the 90-second sizzle reel, but two troubling signs remain.

Once again, Dustin spends much of the trailer with cuts and bruises all over his face. This is also the case in the preceding promo, which features a poignant moment when the bruised, crying teen embraces a worried Steve.

But what could cause such injury and distress? The answer is perhaps not in what the trailer shows us, but what it doesn't.

One major absence is the adult characters. OK, technically the 'kids' are all adults now too, but I'm referring to those who were grown-ups at the start of the show i.e. Joyce (Winona Ryder), Hopper (David Harbour), Murray (Brett Gelman), etc.

Across trailers 1 and 2, which come to a combined length of 225 seconds, we've only seen approximately 16 seconds worth of these older characters – and some of that has been the same footage repeated twice.

Clearly, Stranger Things creators Matt and Ross Duffer are wanting to refocus attention on the original youngsters, after the cast ballooned into a much larger ensemble during seasons 3 and 4. But will they take drastic action in order to achieve that?

It seems either that the roles of the grown-ups (for lack of a better term) are so small that there simply isn't much more footage than we've seen, or there is something relating to these characters that the Duffers are actively trying to hide.

Could it be that Vecna lures the adult population of Hawkins into the Upside-Down in a warped Pied Piper situation, leaving it up to the plucky local teenagers to rescue them? Or could the monstrous foe have a more lethal trick up his sleeve?

While it's unlikely that the Duffers would wipe out all of their adult characters in one fell swoop, it does seem plausible that at least one of them could be on the chopping block this time around.

Additionally, rather than building up to a major death – as was the case in seasons 2 (Sean Astin's Bob), 3 (Dacre Montgomery's Billy) and 4 (Joseph Quinn's Eddie) – they could instead kick off their swan song with a shocking early exit.

The question is, who? Obviously, Joyce and Hopper are prime candidates. The loss of either character would have an enormous impact, both within the world of the show and among the fanbase.

Notably, Hopper's trailer appearances all seem to revolve around one particular sequence with Eleven, where the adoptive father and daughter appear to be covertly infiltrating one of Hawkins' pop-up military bases. Does the mission go horribly awry?

It could be that demise which prompts a tearful Eleven to tell Mike that he doesn't "get to write the ending" of this real-world battle; another intriguing shot from the first trailer finds Joyce looking profoundly troubled by something. Is she mourning?

Given that Hopper was (briefly) thought to be dead at the end of season 3, there is a risk that actually killing him off could now feel repetitious, but the Duffers are capable enough to find a fresh approach to this potential loss. Don't rule it out.

Of course, this isn't the only route they could take, with a safer option being to target one of the less prominent adult characters, such as Mike's parents Karen (Cara Buono) and Ted (Joe Chrest), or supportive science teacher Mr Clarke (Randy Havens).

It's not yet confirmed whether Havens is returning to the show (after skipping season 4 entirely), but there have been rumours of a comeback for his character, which would be fitting given that he was first to explain the Upside-Down theory in season 1.

An untimely death for Mr Clarke could explain Dustin's emotional distress, as he and the other boys looked up to him, while not disrupting the status quo too drastically. In other words, it would be convenient for the writers.

We can't rule out that one of the younger characters could die too – fans have been fearing for Steve's safety since the show began, after all – but such a crushing loss seems more likely to be a closing sacrifice than an opening salvo.

Think of it this way: you kill Heimdall (Idris Elba) at the start of Avengers: Endgame. You don't kill Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr) in the first five minutes, unless you want to incite a riot.

For the sake of my argument, as well as for legal reasons, let me state clearly that the Duffer brothers have made no indication of wanting to start a riot with the release of Stranger Things 5. Second stringers be warned.

Stranger Things 5 premieres on Netflix on Wednesday 26th November. Further episodes follow on Christmas Day and New Year's Eve.

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