In the finale of the supernatural epic Stranger Things, after Max (Sadie Sink), Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin), Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo), Will (Noah Schnapp), and Mike (Finn Wolfhard) ascend the steps of the Wheeler family’s basement after completing their final Dungeons & Dragons campaign, Mike shuts the door to close out the series. The Duffer Brothers had been sitting with the idea for that definitive ending “for a very long time,” says Matt Duffer.

Throughout the series’ five seasons, the expansive world created by the Duffer Brothers has captivated audiences as the kids of Hawkins, Indiana, fought off the ultimate evil of Vecna. Five seasons, 12 Emmys, and countless memorable moments later, it came time for the creators to confront the end of their coming-of-age epic. “I think everyone agreed that this was the right moment to end the show,” explains Matt Duffer, “but when it actually came down to the moment where you’re saying goodbye to these characters and these actors, and you’re shooting those final moments with them … it was hard.” It’s a sentiment echoed by Ross Duffer. “Our AD managed to design the schedule so that every actor’s last scene was their last day on the show. I think everyone was emotional in their last days, and that infused their final moments on the show with this very real, powerful emotion.” 

Every aspect of Stranger Things became more expansive for the show’s fifth and final season, from the sweeping emotions of the Hawkins gang’s final journey to the sprawling sets to the towering creatures. This presented some unique challenges for the behind-the-scenes sorcerers tasked with helping the Duffer Brothers execute their ambitious vision for the Emmy Award–winning drama. Across departments, artisans responsible for the series’ exemplary style came together to conjure real Hollywood magic. “The action is next level, the visual effects are next level, but I’m also happy to say that the emotional center remains the same,” says executive producer Shawn Levy.

Planning got underway well before the shoot kicked off in January 2024 as production designer Chris Trujillo conceptualized some of the largest sets he’d ever created for the show — everything from radio station WSQK to the cavernous interiors of a monster’s abdomen. The most complex was the Military Access Control Zone (or “MAC-Z”).

When Stranger Things 5 opens, the psionic villain Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower) has ripped Hawkins apart, providing the alternate dimension of the Upside Down direct access into our world; the epicenter of that rift is contained inside the MAC-Z and strictly controlled by government forces. In previous seasons, downtown Jackson, Georgia, had doubled for downtown Hawkins, but Trujillo quickly realized it wouldn’t be possible to build the MAC-Z’s infrastructure on location.

So he transformed the backlot of Atlanta’s Cinespace Studios, surrounding it with chain-link fencing and corrugated metal topped with razor wire. “We re-created essentially the entirety of our downtown, which was like this giant town-square space,” Trujillo says. Doing so required a massive retaining structure to serve as the skeleton of the many buildings that made up the square, all of which were in various states of disrepair. “We [had] endless dump trucks full of dirt and just unbelievable amounts of steel,” Trujillo says. “We had to create the topography because we were essentially in a flat parking lot. The library is up on this big hill, and the street is raised, so we had to create the topography of that curve.”

Giant rolling gates provided access in and out, and Trujillo and set decorator Jess Royal brought in Quonset huts to serve as barracks. Shipping containers stacked five feet high were used to create command centers. “We also went to local military surplus places and got a lot of equipment: trailers, big crates, engine containers,” Royal says. “We got the backstory of everything and made sure it was period correct.”

Perfecting the MAC-Z set was critical, as it’s the site of one of the season’s most explosive sequences — when Vecna and a phalanx of Demogorgons emerge from the rift, unleashing chaos and carnage. Both to reflect the damage he sustained at the end of Season 4 and to make sure he appeared as imposing as possible, Bower’s character received a gruesome makeover, undergoing significant design changes. For the new incarnation, dubbed Vecna 2.0, makeup effects department head Barrie Gower revised the number of prosthetics Bower was required to don. 

Instead of wearing custom appliances over his entire body, the actor now had all-new prosthetics covering just his head, shoulders, and right arm; he also wore contact lenses and dentures. “Vecna’s look [is no longer] purely humanoid in its shape,” Gower says of the design, which was created by the show’s senior concept artist Michael Maher Jr. “All the values and the forms of his body have started to get a lot more fluid.”

Bower wore a skintight Lycra suit covered in tracking markers, enabling the VFX team to build Vecna’s body digitally — including areas of burned and charred flesh, exposed wounds, and writhing vines — in postproduction. “He’s becoming even more part of the Upside Down, and we see … all the roots and all the tendons start to grow out of Vecna,” Gower says.

The VFX team was also tasked with turning stuntmen dressed in form-fitting gray bodysuits into ferocious Demogorgons. “The goal is always to [have audiences] just be so taken away by the story that they believe that that Demogorgon is there,” visual effects supervisor Betsy Paterson says.

Paterson also oversaw the development of the world-shakingly large incarnation of the Mind Flayer featured in the final episode: The enormous, multi-limbed creature confronts the heroes inside the Abyss, the jaundiced realm it calls home. Designed by Maher, the CG creature is so massive that the climactic battle between Vecna and Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) unfolds inside its body cavity — a set that took up an entire soundstage. 

As the two characters fight, using their powers to throw one another through the air, the Mind Flayer lumbers across the desolate landscape, chasing the show’s other heroes. Cinematographer Caleb Heymann designed the lighting for the fight scenes to reflect that motion. “When you get into the belly of the beast, and that thing starts moving around, we had hundreds of lights on cues that were simulating that diffused daylight kind of swirling around,” says Heymann. “It was a beautiful set. There were these 12 larger-than-life spires that had this amazing tactile structural quality. … But it was a challenging set to shoot on. Nothing is flat. It’s a sandy floor, but we did it mostly with Technocranes. There’s some incredible stunt work, Jamie and Millie just going at it.”

Knowing that Brown would be called upon to deliver a physical performance, costume designer Amy Parris developed a look for Eleven that made sense for the character and was comfortable for Brown to wear on set. As Stranger Things 5 primarily takes place in the fall of 1987, Parris drew inspiration from movies from that year, including Some Kind of Wonderful. 

The principal costume she assembled for Eleven consisted of red sweat shorts worn over gray sweatpants, paired with a zip-front cropped hoodie and a printed navy bandana. “I wanted her outfits to feel like she is focused on being an athlete and training,” Parris says. The costume designer completed the ensemble with a unique pair of Nikes based on a shoe the company manufactured between 1985 and 1987, called the Field General High Nike. “It’s almost like a wrestling boot,” Parris says. 

Nike was just one of the brands Parris worked with for Stranger Things 5 — pieces from Benetton, Gap, Adidas, Guess, Minnetonka, and Woolrich are also featured. In some cases, Parris commissioned custom garments; in others, she had access to the companies’ archives. But she and her team also created one-of-a-kind items for key costumes, like the aquamarine blue dress worn by Holly Wheeler (Nell Fisher) while she’s trapped in Mr. Whatsit’s (Bower) mind.  

Like Parris, hair designer Sarah Hindsgaul found inspiration in cinema, specifically Ridley Scott’s 1979 genre landmark Alien. Knowing that the heroes would so often be in fight-or-flight mode — running, climbing, brawling, attacking supernatural beings — she felt that their hair should appear “very sweaty, very messed up, stringy. I wanted to … feel the grit, to have that edge to it, dirt, grit, water, sweat, tears,” Hindsgaul says.

She modeled the wig she designed for Nancy (Natalia Dyer) on Sigourney Weaver’s legendary Alien coiffure. “I love that look she has — the way that she could just be so sweaty,” Hindsgaul says. “I think Natalia has that quality, that she can go there. One of my favorite things is to see Nancy fight.”

Still, as relentlessly fast-paced as Stranger Things 5 might be, the fighting does eventually end, good triumphs over evil, and the characters (mostly) move on to brighter futures — leading to the poignant, affecting scenes in the coda of the finale episode, “The Rightside Up.” In the show’s last moments, the Duffer Brothers return to the basement of the Wheeler family home, and the characters play Dungeons & Dragons, a callback to the beginning of the first installment. 

For those scenes, Heymann used three cameras to film the actors over  two days, adding little pops of blue to vary the largely warm mood of the lighting, creating a bittersweet effect that matched the mood on set. The cinematographer admits he became emotional at the end of the shoot, as he and the crew began to reflect on what they’d achieved over a decade of Stranger Things.

“It was just beautifully bookended,” he says. “The final episode, it’s like a huge action movie. And then at the end of it, to go back to something that’s very grounded and about friendships and about this core group of friends and how they’ve grown — shooting it was an incredibly moving experience. It brought all of us to tears at one point or another on that last day.”