\n<\/p>\n
H<\/span>ow do you finish one of the biggest and most popular TV series of the last decade? Three years after season four came out, the fifth and final season of Stranger Things is about to make its way into the world. Millions of viewers are getting ready to find out what happens to the Upside Down and whether the plucky teens of Hawkins, Indiana can fight off Vecna for good, but it is early November 2025, and its creators Matt and Ross Duffer are finding it difficult to talk about. It\u2019s not just because they\u2019re feeling the pressure, or because the risk of spoilers and leaks is so dangerously high. It\u2019s because the identical twin brothers from North Carolina are just not ready. \u201cIt makes me sad,\u201d says Ross. \u201cBecause it\u2019s easier to not think about the show actually ending.\u201d<\/p>\n A decade ago, hardly anyone knew what the Upside Down was. Few had heard of Vecna, Mind Flayers or Demogorgons. In 2015, the brothers \u2013 self-professed nerds and movie obsessives \u2013 were about to begin shooting their first ever TV series. Stranger Things was to be a supernatural adventure steeped in 80s nostalgia, paying tribute to Steven Spielberg and Stephen King. Part of their pitch to Netflix was that it would be \u201cJohn Carpenter mashed up with ET\u201d. Winona Ryder and Matthew Modine were in it, so it wasn\u2019t exactly low-key, but it was by no means a dead-cert for success, not least because it was led by a cast of young unknowns. The first season came out in the summer of 2016, smashed Netflix viewing records, and almost immediately established itself as a bona fide TV phenomenon.<\/p>\n A \u201cwould you rather\u201d question for the brothers, then: would you rather have the demands of launching a brand new sci-fi series that nobody knows anything about, or would you prefer to try to stick the landing of a massive hit beloved by millions of viewers, knowing that every detail, every dollar spent, every character arc, will be scrutinised by an army of superfans?<\/p>\n <\/span>Facing up \u2026 (from left) Noah Schnapp and Jamie Campbell Bower in season five of Stranger Things.<\/span> Photograph: Netflix<\/p>\n \u201cI would rather have the pressure of trying to stick the landing,\u201d says Matt, after some consideration. In 2015, he and Ross had released their first and, to date only, feature film, a creepy, claustrophobic horror called Hidden. To their disappointment, it went straight to video-on-demand. \u201cYou can\u2019t even watch it high definition right now,\u201d says Matt. \u201cSo Stranger Things felt like we had been given this second chance, which a lot of people don\u2019t get.\u201d If that second chance hadn\u2019t worked out, that would have been that. Now, he says, they are more secure. \u201cEven if people don\u2019t love the final season, I know that Ross and I will continue to be allowed to make things.\u201d<\/p>\n On the other hand, he admits that it was fun to be the underdog. Ross agrees. \u201cWhen we started, Netflix was an underdog, we were an underdog, and everyone loves a good underdog story,\u201d he adds. \u201cSo it is a strange thing, 10 years later, to be the opposite of that. It\u2019s a little surreal.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe almost prefer to be uncool,\u201d says Matt. \u201cI don\u2019t know how cool we are.\u201d He laughs. \u201cWe\u2019re still not cool.\u201d<\/p>\n In Stranger Things, being uncool is the whole point. With it, the brothers have taken nerd culture fully into the mainstream. Dungeons & Dragons, which features heavily in the show, has experienced a huge growth in revenue since 2019 and a popularity not seen since its 1980s heyday. \u201cI hope we made some of this nerdy stuff cooler,\u201d says Ross. \u201cYou know, the show is ultimately about outsiders. When Matt and I were young, especially in high school, we were just making little movies, and we were in drama club, and we had trouble fitting in. We just felt very separate from everyone else, and it was a very scary time for us. So part of the goal of the show was just to go, no, there are people out there like you, and your differences are what make you cool.\u201d Matt says that one character sums up that ethos in particular: Eddie Munson, season four\u2019s metal-loving leader of the Dungeons & Dragons-playing Hellfire Club. \u201cIn many ways, we think of the show itself as Eddie, because Eddie is the person I wish had existed in high school, but did not exist.\u201d<\/p>\n Season four, which came out in 2022, had a sizeable impact on pop culture. Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God) soundtracks a pivotal scene, when Max (Sadie Sink) finally escapes from the villainous Vecna in the Upside Down by using the song as a kind of anchor. The subsequent exposure gave Kate Bush her first UK No 1 single since 1978. \u201cWe had no idea it would go viral in the way that it did. We were surprised, and Kate was surprised, by how much it connected with younger people. Kate thought that was really cool,\u201d says Ross. There is even more Running Up That Hill in season five.<\/p>\n <\/span>\u201cShe\u2019s kind of scary\u201d\u2026 Linda Hamilton as Dr Kay in season five of Stranger Things.<\/span> Photograph: Netflix<\/p>\n \u201cAgain, she\u2019s been so great about it,\u201d says Matt. Did she send a cake or flowers, to say thank you? \u201cWe did get a gift from Kate Bush, but it was way cooler than flowers,\u201d says Ross. \u201cIt was this gilded bird cage with animatronic birds inside it, and you wind it up, and the birds chirp a little song. It\u2019s very cool, very unique and very Kate Bush. Only Kate Bush would give this present.\u201d<\/p>\n Having played no small part in celebrating the careers of 80s icons such as Ryder and Modine, the brothers recruited yet another movie legend for the final stretch: Linda Hamilton, AKA The Terminator\u2019s Sarah Connor. Hamilton plays Dr Kay, a steely military scientist in charge of another mysterious laboratory. \u201cWe needed to sort our Dr Brenner replacement,\u201d explains Ross (the evil government scientist met his end in the Nevada desert, as season four drew to a close). \u201cAnd because this was the final season, we wanted someone intimidating, but in a very different way than Modine.\u201d Hamilton is \u201csuper-highly intelligent\u201d, so she is believable as the scientist, \u201cbut at the same time, Linda can shoot a gun, she can get in a fight, she\u2019s tough, and that toughness was perfect for the final season\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cShe\u2019s kind of scary,\u201d agrees Hamilton, calling from her home in New Orleans. Hamilton is famous for the physicality of her roles; as Sarah Connor, she is one of the all-time-greatest action heroines in movie history. Is there more action in Stranger Things? \u201cThere are a couple of real fightin\u2019 moments,\u201d she laughs. \u201cI mean, I do walk into every stunt rehearsal and go: \u2018I\u2019m 68 years old! When do I get to not<\/em> have stunt rehearsal?\u2019\u201d She has a stunt double, who was also her double on the last Terminator film. \u201cBut I\u2019m carrying my own there. Doing at least half of it.\u201d<\/p>\n When Stranger Things came calling, Hamilton had been talking to her agent about retiring from acting altogether. \u201cI had a hip injury, and I was in pain, and limping, and I couldn\u2019t get an injection until I was getting ready to do a job,\u201d she says. She told him she didn\u2019t think she could do another TV show. \u201cI just got really defeated there for a minute. And then he called me months later and said: \u2018Stranger Things just called and asked if you\u2019re free from June to June, and I said yes.\u2019\u201d She laughs. \u201cWe know each other so well. I did not hesitate to say, yes, let\u2019s talk.\u201d<\/p>\n She already loved Stranger Things, and admits to being a fangirl. Walking on set for the first time was \u201cvery overwhelming, quite frankly. I didn\u2019t have a lot of time with the Duffer brothers. Everything is so overly large in that show, and they didn\u2019t coddle. They trusted me to put a character together that was going to come alive on camera, but you don\u2019t know if you\u2019ve done the right thing until you\u2019re halfway through that first day and go, yeah, yeah, yeah, I\u2019m finding it.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>Emotional rescue \u2026 Caleb McLaughlin and Sadie Sink in season five of Stranger Things.<\/span> Photograph: Netflix<\/p>\n During the bumper-length season four finale, a weakened Vecna managed to open another gate to the Upside Down, collapsing the barriers between the regular world and the shadow dimension and setting the scene for an ultimate showdown between good and evil. Season five sees the residents of Hawkins under military quarantine, jumping forward in time a little to November 1987. The show has always faithfully recreated the 80s, from the cars to the technology, right down to the food packaging. \u201cA time that I\u2019ve lived through!\u201d says Hamilton. \u201cMy God, the 80s. My joke has always been that when a young actress comes up to me and says: \u2018Knowing everything you know, what\u2019s the most important thing for a young actress?\u2019 I say: \u2018Never go on film in the 80s.\u2019\u201d She laughs. \u201cI know that a lot of people are enchanted by the 80s, but the 80s was not, to me, the greatest. So it\u2019s really funny that here I am, at my age, playing someone back then, in that look.\u201d The hair is<\/em> large in the show. \u201cThe hair is very<\/em> large.\u201d<\/p>\n The trouble for Hamilton, now, is that she never watches herself on screen. As a fan, surely she will have to watch the final season to see how it ends? \u201cNo, I\u2019m afraid not,\u201d she says, a little sadly. \u201cIt\u2019s terrible, but I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever seen anything I\u2019ve done and wished I couldn\u2019t do it again, and do a little bit more.\u201d She refuses to put herself through it. \u201cBut I did get to read it, and be in the rooms with the actors during the readings and totally feel it.\u201d She had the live-action experience? \u201cYes. It was amazing to be in that room for the final two episodes. Just, a blob of crying twentysomethings. It was really, really powerful to be part of that. Just a crying blob of children.\u201d<\/p>\n (I ask the Duffers if they feel good about ruining the ending of Hamilton\u2019s favourite show by making it impossible for her to watch. \u201cThat\u2019s what she\u2019s saying<\/em>,\u201d says Ross. \u201cShe\u2019s gonna watch the show! I know other actors who are in the show and watch it, but fast-forward through their scenes. I\u2019ll try to convince her, because she has to watch it.\u201d)<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Get the best TV reviews, news and features in your inbox every Monday<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n <\/span>End of days \u2026 Millie Bobby Brown and Finn Wolfhard in season five of Stranger Things.<\/span> Photograph: Netflix<\/p>\n Back in the present day, a considerable portion of that crying blob of twentysomethings are sharing breakfast. Caleb McLaughlin (Lucas), Gaten Matarazzo (Dustin), Finn Wolfhard (Mike) and Noah Schnapp (Will) are picking at fruit plates, discussing what it feels like to become a Halloween costume. On set, says Schnapp, he would entertain himself by trying to guess which scenes might eventually show up as costumes.<\/p>\n \u201cLike when we did the stuff in season four, where we dressed up in the ghillie suits, and I was wearing your bandana,\u201d says Matarazzo, turning to McLaughlin. At the end of season four, the gang wears military gear to battle in the Upside Down. Look closely, and you\u2019ll see Dustin with Lucas\u2019 famous bandana over the top of his hoodie. \u201cYeah!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNo you weren\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYes I was!\u201d<\/p>\n They bicker like a family. The boys \u2013 though to call them boys is to tie them to the youth of their characters, as in real life they now range from 21 (Schnapp) to 24 (McLaughlin) \u2013 share the relatively rare experience of having grown up, on screen, in public, together. They were barely in double digits when they started work on Stranger Things. \u201cWhen you\u2019re younger, you tend to normalise weird situations around you,\u201d says Matarazzo. \u201cIt\u2019s not something you recognise as being peculiar until you\u2019re a little older.\u201d When they weren\u2019t filming, Matarazzo attended a normal school in south Jersey where he grew up, which kept life steady for him. \u201cIt made a difference later on, but really, I always felt the most normal when I was with these guys. Even though it is a very weird environment, it was normal to me. It was normal to us. I felt the most comfortable when I was with them.\u201d<\/p>\n It must be strange for them that Stranger Things is about to come to a close, having taken up almost half of their lives. \u201cPlaying these characters has been amazing, and I think their storylines have come full circle, and it\u2019s time for that to end, right?\u201d says McLaughlin. \u201cBut growing up with these guys, and having the family that we\u2019ve built, is something I won\u2019t get again. I\u2019m gonna miss that a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n Wolfhard is more introspective. He says they haven\u2019t even seen the second half of season five, which will arrive in two further instalments, on Boxing Day and New Year\u2019s Day. Any answers they give to my questions might change when they have. \u201cSo it feels weird to come up with surface answers, because the hard part, for me, is that it is<\/em> a lot to process, and it is<\/em> really emotional. There\u2019s a lot of layers to it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n On the last ever day of filming, Wolfhard says, everyone was there. \u201cWe can\u2019t officially say what we shot, but yeah, we were all together on the last day.\u201d This is not typical \u2013 on most series or films, actors finish their scenes at different times or even different days, and leave gradually. This was not the case on Stranger Things, says Matarazzo. \u201cIt was important to all of us that we were there for each other. There were people who had wrapped a few days or maybe even a week prior, who decided to stay and make sure that everybody was there for that last day. That was a very necessary experience. It\u2019s been 10 years.\u201d<\/p>\n The Duffer brothers had long known what the final scene of Stranger Things was going to be. When they began to work with writers on season five, they spent weeks and weeks on those last 30 minutes. \u201cThat\u2019s where we started, because we knew that if we didn\u2019t get those 30 minutes right, then it didn\u2019t matter how much time and effort and quality was put into what preceded that. It wouldn\u2019t matter,\u201d says Matt. It was the first time they had worked that way, and when they were happy with the ending, they got started on the rest. \u201cWe were able to design it so that it would be building towards those last 30 minutes,\u201d he explains.<\/p>\n Then, for a split second, he echoes the many millions of fans who are all waiting patiently for its conclusion: \u201cHopefully, it works.\u201d<\/p>\n Stranger Things 5 part one is released at 1am on 27 November, followed by three episodes on Boxing Day and the finale on New Year\u2019s Day.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" How do you finish one of the biggest and most popular TV series of the last decade? Three years after season four came out, the fifth and final season of Stranger Things is about to make its way into the world. Millions of viewers are getting ready to find out what happens to the Upside<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33808,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[3238,82,3866,225,3895,9751,1779,286],"class_list":{"0":"post-33807","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-epic","9":"tag-final","10":"tag-open","11":"tag-season","12":"tag-stars","13":"tag-stranger","14":"tag-television","15":"tag-time"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33807"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33807\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/33808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\u201cYou were wearing my bandana?\u201d says McLaughlin, sceptically.<\/p>\n