After Stranger Things aired its first season in 2016, the entire cast quickly became household names, especially Millie Bobby Brown (Eleven), who went on to become one of Hollywood's biggest young actresses. The same goes for the show's adult stars, namely David Harbour, who has gone on to have a big role in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Alexei Shostakov, aka Red Guardian.
Harbour has been a key figure in Stranger Things from the very beginning, and he'll continue his journey into the show's final season later this year. After all these years of working on such a massive, cornerstone series at Netflix, he is more than ready to move onto other projects. Speaking to Interview alongside Scarlett Johansson, Harbour explained that, for a long time, he felt like he wanted to stick with the show forever.
“When I started I loved it so much,” he said. “Buddies of mine who’d done TV shows for many years said, ‘By season three or four you’ll be running.’ And I was like, ‘Never! I love all these guys so much.'”
However, as the years passed, his buddies would be vindicated in their opinions. Now, as the show nears its conclusion, Harbour is keen to move on, lest the show exhaust his character. “You get to a certain point where you’re like, ‘How much more story is there?’ You’re having to play a lot of the same beats,” he said. “And there’s a feeling where you’re like, ‘I want to take a risk. I want to do something that people haven’t seen me do before.’ So yeah, after 10 years, it’s like, ‘Okay.'”
Harbour has made a few interesting career choices in the last few years. For instance, he took on the role of Hellboy in 2019, but the movie flopped hard, receiving a meagre 17% on Rotten Tomatoes. Later on, however, he'd return to comic book movies in Black Widow, and later Thunderbolts*, to much more success. Suffice to say, he'll continue to land big roles for many years to come!
The Stranger Things finale is going to make everyone cry
Looking at what some of the other cast members are saying, you get the idea that a lot of them are ready to move on. For instance, Finn Wolfhard, who plays Mike, told Cosmopolitan that, "in a lot of ways...I want to move on...I obviously have aspirations outside of the show that I really want to do. And for me, it’s more about the connections with people, less about the show."
At the same time, he knows that Stranger Things has been "a tentpole part" of his life, and saying goodbye wasn't easy. A lot of the cast members have talked about how emotional it was to film their final scenes. "I've known the cast and crew for so long, and they're my family," Caleb McLaughlin (Lucas) told ScreenRant. "And last year, of course, the last day I was like, 'I'm not going to cry. I'm not going to cry.' And then ended up just bawling, man. Ten years of just love, laughter and sadness and peace. So I was able to get all those feelings out."
Speaking to Extra, Harbour promised a lot of tears when people watch the series finale. “The final episode is quite, quite moving, and we did a read through of just us, the kids, and they were all weeping like I've never seen human beings weep, so I can't wait,” he said. “It's gonna be a day for you, a day and a half of binge-worthy weeping.”
Stranger Things returns for its fifth and final season on November 26, 2025; the first four episodes will drop at that point. The next three will drop on December 25, and the series finale will drop on December 31.
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