Joe Keery has played Steve Harrington on Stranger Things since season 1. Steve began the show as a character who everyone disliked before turning into one of the show's beloved heroes. After working on the show for a decade, wrapping up the final season was one hell of an emotional rollercoaster for him.
The fifth and final season of Stranger Things has finished filming, but the process was long and arduous, and made longer thanks the delays brought on by the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes in 2023. But now, all of this time later, the end is in sight for the beloved Netflix series. The show will air its final episodes later this year, although we don't have an exact release date as of yet.
While appearing on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, Keery discussed his decade-long tenure on the show. “It’s crazy,” he said. “It was a long year.”
For Keery, it sounds like wrapping on the series was a bittersweet but ultimately rewarding experience. “But to wrap it all up and the anticipation of working on something for so long — I mean it’s been one-third of my life, really,” the actor said. Speaking about his last day on set, you won't be surprised to hear that it was a tear-filled event. “It was emotional. We sort of got to that last day and it was like everything really hit on that last day of shooting.”
While he was one of the older cast members on the show (at least compared to the main kids), Keery still spent many of his formative years in front of the camera. He's developed a real connection with his co-stars. “Those people are family for life for me,” he said.
Stranger Things season 5 consists of eight episodes. We expect many of them to be feature-length instalments, much like what we saw in season 4. We're sure Netflix will be along sooner or later to reveal the details, but they can afford to take their time. Stranger Things is one of the most popular shows on the streaming service, and Netflix will surely want to make the final season into a big event.
When last we left Steve and the other residents of Hawkins, IN, the interdimensional menace known as Vecna had punched a hole through reality, and the grim Upside Down dimension was leaking into our world...or rather, our worlds as it was in the 1980s, when Stranger Things is set. I'm pretty sure a bunch of teenagers can handle this.
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h/t PEOPLE