Later this year, Netflix will air the fifth and final season of Stranger Things, an event nearly a decade in the making. No one expected this 1980s period piece about about a bunch of kids fighting inter-dimensional evil in small town America would catch on like this, but catch on it has, and a lot of fans are going to be teary-eyed when it's over.
You can bet that the cast members had teary moments as well. “I was on set, and I was like, ‘Well, I have one more day left.’ And I started crying," star Millie Bobby Brown (Eleven) told The Hollywood Reporter. "I don’t actually like to cry at work. I’m a really emotional person, but I try to stay super strong. It made me feel so uncomfortable … and I just started welling up.”
Sadie Sink (Max) also got wistful during a visit to The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. "It was really hard, really difficult to say goodbye," she said. "I think 10 years for the whole show. But I don't know, we grew up on it, grew up with each other, like our audience grew up watching us." She expanded on that with The Hollywood Reporter: “I had cried so much that my eyes were so puffy — they had never been like that before and there are some pretty embarrassing photos of me just with these giant puffy eyes.”
Even Jamie Campbell Bower, who plays the malevolent Vecna, was moved during his final days on set. "Somebody took a photo of me after we finished the last scene and I just looked like a man that's just been carrying so much weight for so long and it's just been like, there you go. So that's how it felt," he said on a panel where ScreenRant was in attendence. "I was in tears, it was weird, I didn't want to say goodbye but I definitely was ready to put down what I had been doing for some time."
This isn't to say there weren't light-hearted moments during the filming of these final episodes. When she was hoisted into the air as the telekinetic Eleven, Millie Bobby Brown had showrunners Matt and Ross Duffer play the song "Defying Gravity" from Wicked so "she could pretend to fly like Elphaba," because wouldn't you? “Not just because she loves the song, but because she knows it drives us a little crazy," Matt Duffer told THR. "As soon as the camera rolls — barely a second before — that silliness vanishes and she just … transforms into Eleven.”
Meanwhile, Sadie Sink assuaged her melancholic by taking "a lot" of stuff from set. "I needed Max's skateboard, which that was actually gifted to me, the skateboard, cool," she said. "I've got some Walkmans, some Kate Bush cassette sand some vans and stuff. Like, every shoe that she's worn." She even joked about making a "little museum" of Stranger Things memorabilia at home.
Expect powerful moments from Vecna in Stranger Things 5
So the final season of Stranger Things will be like any parting: bitter and sweet. Before we reach the happy crying portion of the program, there will surely be a lot of action and excitement. When last we left our heroes, the Upside Down dimension was leaking into Hawkins, IN. Vecna was stepping up his assault on our reality. To hear Jamie Campbell Bower tell it, there are some catch-your-breath exciting moments ahead.
"I have had some artistically, really powerful moments this season, that as an artist, you just hope happen, you can't really prepare for them," Bower said. "They just kind of appear out of thin air. And in those moments, the whole room goes like dead quiet. And you'll finish a take. And like, I'll turn around. And I'm like, you should go home now. It's not getting any better."
Campbell brought a ton of menace to the role of Vecna in season 4. There's no way our entire gang escapes him unscathed.
Stranger Things 5 WILL come out this year
Netflix hasn't set a firm release date yet for Stranger Things season 5, but at least the Duffer brothers have reassured fans that it will come out this year; even for a show this big, three years is a long time to wait, and I don't know if fans would have stood for another delay.
“We’re focused on visual effects sequences right now, which started back in January,” Ross Duffer told an audience at the SCAD TVfest, per Variety. “It’s going well. We’re actually ahead of schedule, which is rare for us.” His brother chipped in with the thing every fan wants to hear: “I will say that it is coming this year. We’re definitely on target.”
After that, we've heard talk of Stranger Things spinoffs, but the Duffers aren't giving away details. “This story, these characters’ stories, that’s done,” Matt said. “So that that whole story is coming to an end. There’s not like a Steve/Dustin spinoff or something. The hope is, we finished telling this story, and then you leave it, and then you tell new stories. And hopefully there are new characters that people can fall in love with.”
For the record, we've heard that the final suite episodes will be released in two chunks: one around Halloween and the other around Thanksgiving. But we'll have to wait on official word to be sure. "It's an amazing season," Millie Bobby Brown told GamesRadar. "I can't wait for everyone to see it. I hate gatekeeping all the information, so I'm really excited for everyone to enjoy it."
Let's sign off with a quote from Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos, who agrees with everyone else that the final season of Stranger Things will leave everyone bawling. As he told Variety: "There won’t be a dry eye."
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h/t PEOPLE