Few songs capture with such melancholy the human dilemma between the desire to endure and the cost of loss as Who Wants to Live Forever, by Queen. Written by Brian May in 1985, while composing the film’s soundtrack and after watching a scene from Highlander in which the immortal Connor MacLeod witnesses his beloved grow old and die, the song was born as a restrained cry before the impossibility of stopping time. It is about love that dies, the fleeting moment that slips away, and the loneliness of remaining.

Now, almost forty years later, the song resurfaces with renewed power in the final trailer for Stranger Things 5, released in October 2025. Amid scenes of chaos and collapse, the first notes echo like a prophecy. The contrast is striking: the softness of Freddie Mercury’s voice, the tragic orchestration, and the question that has lingered for decades — “Who wants to live forever?” — play against images of a ravaged Hawkins and characters who have spent years battling seemingly immortal forces.

When Time Closes in on Hawkins

The choice of song is more than aesthetic — it’s narrative. From the start, Stranger Things has thrived on 1980s nostalgia, but in this farewell, the soundtrack is not merely a wink to the past; it’s a reflection on the end itself. The “forever” that once comforted fans now turns into a haunting echo. Eternity weighs heavy.

As the characters face the return of darkness and impending destruction, the lyrics of Who Wants to Live Forever take on a new meaning. “When love must die,” Mercury sings, and it’s impossible not to think of everything lost since the first season: friendships, innocence, and the illusion that time could be reversed. In the world of Hawkins, living forever is no blessing — it’s a curse.

The Beauty of Finitude

Brian May wrote the song as a meditation on death and love, on what truly makes life worth living. That same tension lies at the heart of this final season. Between monsters and goodbyes, the series seems to ask the same question: what remains when time takes everything away?

The use of the song in the trailer weaves a rare emotional thread. As the melody swells, we see familiar faces marked by fear and courage. Mercury’s tenderness meets Eleven’s despair, Hopper’s exhaustion, Joyce’s determination. The epic and the intimate merge. The eternal and the fleeting embrace — and the result is devastating. And yes, we’re afraid of who won’t make it out alive.

A Farewell with a Soul

It’s also an homage. The series that has always celebrated the 1980s now says goodbye with a song born in that same decade — one that remains eternal precisely because it speaks of the impossibility of being eternal. “Forever is our today,” says one of its lines. And perhaps that’s the ultimate message of Stranger Things: forever exists in the now, in the bonds we create, in the emotion we share.

The trailer reminds us that every story must end — and it’s in that ending that beauty resides. Eternity, as May already knew, has no meaning without love. And Stranger Things seems to understand that perfectly.