Stranger Things 5 Titles Tease Final Season’s Monster (And It’s From D&D)

The episode titles Stranger Things Season 5 seem to tell us which Dungeons and Dragons monster will feature prominently in this installment: Camazotz. Netflix released a teaser on Wednesday featuring eight new episode titles, and Episode 6 is called “Escape From Camazotz.” Presumably, that means the Hawkins, Indiana will be contending with this bat-like god from the World of Greyhawk.

Camazotz is “the god of bats and evil” in the D&D setting Greyhawk, and it looks like he will play a role in the upcoming season of Stranger Things. Camazotz is also the god of vampires and the underworld, according to the fictional civilization known as the Olman on the planet Oerth. The Olman are loosely based on the real-life Aztec civilization, and most artwork of Camazotz is stylized accordingly. If he manifests in a game, he usually takes the form of a giant bat-shaped cloud, made up of thousands of normal-sized bats.

Camazotz was included in the World of Greyhawk setting in Advanced D&D, published in 1977. Created by Gary Gygax, it was a popular setting for D&D 1st Edition, and even more so for 3rd Edition. That means we could see a change in the way the Hawkins gang plays D&D – previously, they’ve been shown playing the Dungeons & Dragons Expert Set – an expansion of the Basic Set – which primarily uses the setting Mystara. According to author Lawrence Schick, the authors of the Basic Set and its expansions were told not to use the Greyhawk setting because it was reserved exclusively for Advanced D&D. If the Hawkins gang have a run-in with Camazotz, they will likely have upped their game and obtained some AD&D material.

There are other possible meanings to this title as well. Earlier this year, Ross Duffer posted a handful of photos from the set of Stranger Things, including the cover of the novel A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle. In that book, Camazotz is actually the name of a planet where the main characters go to try to save their father, who was captured by an alien race. The planet seems utopian at first, but is actually under the control of a massive brain-shaped organism called IT. The phrase “Escape From” could indicate that Camazotz is more of a setting than a character, but we won’t know until we see it for ourselves.

Stranger Things Season 5 is nearly done filming as far as we know, having been delayed by the pandemic and the writers’ strike. It will be the grand finale to Netflix’s most successful original series to date, set about a year and a half after the last installment. The season is slated to air sometime in 2025, but so far no precise date has been set. Previous settings are streaming now on Netflix.