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A lot can happen in a year, which the town of Hawkins, Indiana is about to find out. Netflix has just confirmed that Stranger Things season five takes place nearly a year-and-a-half after the events of season four, which has some pretty serious implications for the world and the characters. After more than a year of having the Upside Down bleeding into their town, can anyone in Hawkins really be normal again?

The teaser trailer that revealed the titles of each of the Stranger Things season five episodes also featured a single sentence near the end. “In the Fall of 1987, one last adventure begins.” That appears to confirm when the final season of the Netflix hit series will take place. Season four happened during the Spring of 1986. This gap isn’t itself unusual; each of the previous seasons had at least a year between them. However, it does raise some serious questions about how the team has been dealing with things during that time.

Not to get too heavy into spoilers, but season four of Stranger Things ended with Vecna succeeding in breaking down the barrier between our world and the Upside Down. The ground breaks open and dust that we often see floating in the air in the Upside Down is in the real world. There is a decidedly unnatural cloud creating spooky red lightning in the sky. Overall, things aren’t looking good for the town.

The time skip between seasons four and five of Stranger Things implies that the town has been dealing with all this for well over a year by the time we see them again. A year of plants dying in front of them. Of dust scattering across the world. Potentially, a year of monsters coming to eat people. Are the regular people of Hawkins just ignoring all of this, trying to ration it away as impossible so they don’t believe it is happening? Has Eleven and the rest of the crew been fighting for more than a year to find a way to fix this? 

These are all big questions that need to be answered by the final season of Stranger Things. Fortunately, we’ve probably got a long time before Netflix has to answer them as we still don’t have a release date for season five.

As we all collectively wait for Stranger Things season 5, here's the keys to getting ready:

• How to watch Stranger Things in chronological or release order
• Getting to know the Stranger Things season 5 cast
• There needs to be more death in Stranger Things, says co-star Gaten Matarazzo
• The Stranger Things time jump between season 4 and 5 has been confirmed by Netflix - and it raises some serious questions
• "They land the plane," David Harbour describes the Stranger Things finale, which he calls its "best episode"