In Stranger Things 5, Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown), tasked with saving the world one last time, is in full-on warrior mode. In her quest to be better, sharper, and faster, she won’t let anything stand in her way. “All she’s thinking about is protecting her friends,” Brown says. “Her friends are her chosen family, so she will do whatever it takes to protect them.”
And there’s a lot to protect them from in the final eight episodes of the Emmy Award–winning cultural juggernaut from creators Matt and Ross Duffer. Throughout the latest season, the young heroes find themselves up against constant danger, sending them into melting buildings and colliding dimensions and putting them face-to-face with a towering, bellowing incarnation of the series’ biggest bad, the Mind Flayer. But now that Stranger Things has ended its groundbreaking run — and its decade with the Hawkins gang — the emotional moments among the principal cast are what resonate. “This is the biggest season we’ve ever had in terms of action, visual effects, and story,” Ross Duffer says, “but ultimately what people want is to see these characters together one last time.”
Finn Wolfhard
Matt and Ross Duffer
Throughout the yearlong shoot for Stranger Things 5, the cast and crew never lost sight of that goal, prioritizing the relationships among the characters as they embarked on their final adventure. For the Duffers, guiding the show’s ensemble of young stars — also including Finn Wolfhard as Mike, Caleb McLaughlin as Lucas, Gaten Matarazzo as Dustin, Noah Schnapp as Will, and Sadie Sink as Max — through their final scenes was “astonishing.”
The actors executed both the action sequences and the most demanding character moments with as much grace as Eleven leaping over a rusted school bus inside a Hawkins, Indiana, junkyard, and their shared commitment bled into their lives offscreen. “I think it also helped that none of them were going through it alone. They were all facing the same challenges,” says Matt Duffer. “To watch them grow up into these amazing young adults has just been an amazing, once-in-a-lifetime experience,” adds Ross. “We're just so grateful for it.” That bond among the core group of actors dates back to the summer of 2015, when they first met in Los Angeles for the initial screen test. The sense of camaraderie was immediate. “From the beginning, I knew that [this group] would get me,” Wolfhard recalls. “I was like, ‘These guys are awesome.’ I think we’ve all gotten even closer than how we were that first season because we all went through this shared experience together.”
Gaten Matarazzo and Matt Duffer
Maya Hawke, Amybeth McNulty, Caleb McLaughlin, and Sadie Sink
“The chemistry reads we did early on were probably one of the most important parts of the process and allowed us to find each other,” Schnapp adds. “That chemistry is everything for our show.”
Although Sink joined Stranger Things later, in the second season, she also felt an instant connection to her co-stars that has only strengthened over the years. “I can’t think of anyone else I’ve known longer, other than my actual family. The bonds and memories that were made with them, I’m just going to cherish those,” says Sink. Her co-stars echo her sentiment. “We all grew up together and went through the same thing together. It’s a relationship and a bond that I will never have again, because I experienced my adolescence with them, and that only happens one time in everyone’s lifetime,” McLaughlin says.
“It’s very rare you get to grow up with your friends and remain so close into adulthood, and to have the experience of those formative years being defined by the show and defined by our relationships with each other has been a real honor,” Matarazzo adds.
Charlie Heaton, Maya Hawke, Ross Duffer, Natalia Dyer, Noah Schnapp, and Amybeth McNulty
Joe Keery
In Stranger Things 5, the actors had the chance to build on their IRL rapport, bringing newfound depth and maturity to their roles as the characters leave behind adolescence and step into young adulthood. Brown was overjoyed to play Eleven as she comes into her own, even if the surrounding circumstances are fraught. “She’s making her own decisions, even if they’re tough ones, and she’s learning to trust herself,” Brown says. “That’s such an important part of growing up, and it was really powerful to play those moments [in which] she’s not just reacting to what’s happening around her but [also] actually shaping her own story.”
It was Schnapp’s Will Byers, however, who underwent the greatest personal transformation, wielding psionic powers of his own after seasons spent wrestling with his identity and self-worth. No longer insecure and haunted, Will comes to terms with his sexuality, and by embracing his authentic self, he discovers that he can accomplish more than he ever imagined.
Maya Hawke, Winona Ryder, and Noah Schnapp
“Will was really this shy, very insular kid who wouldn’t open up about anything,” Schnapp says. “He was scared to share his feelings and felt like he didn’t belong and he was wrong for being different. And through the years of being on the outside and being excluded, and being slower to grow up, he realizes that that’s kind of his superpower. And that’s one of the themes of our show: What makes everyone so special and beautiful and unique are their differences.”
By showcasing characters who are flawed yet learn from their mistakes — who evolve and change over time — Stranger Things managed to connect so deeply with its audience, McLaughlin believes. “What’s very interesting about the show is that it’s a real portrait of how humans are,” he says. “There’s a lot of insecurity, a lot of fear, a lot of excitement, a lot of love, and it is expressed in a fun way in this world the Duffers built with the Upside Down. The supernatural world offers an escape, where it’s like, ‘Oh, it’s not real,’ but we’re still able to connect with people on a human level.”
Noah Schnapp, Shawn Levy, and Jamie Campbell Bower
Millie Bobby Brown
Wolfhard agrees. “It’s a universal story because it appeals to all age groups. It appeals to people who grew up in the ’80s, and there’s that nostalgia for them, but also, it’s about friendship. There are many people my age who watch the show because it’s about this ensemble of friends, and I think people will always relate to that no matter what time period it’s in.”
