Just like all good things, so too must Stranger Things come to an end.
It’s not a shock that the mega-hit Netflix series has finally reached the end of the line nearly one decade after it turned pop culture upside down. For quite some time, it’s been clear the Hawkins crew was approaching the endgame. But there’s a difference between theoretically entering the endgame, and actually entering the endgame.
For their part, the Duffer Brothers Matt and Ross, presiding over the Stranger Things franchise since its inception, are now acutely aware of that difference. The eight-episode final season will unravel over the course of a month, with four episodes arriving Nov. 26, the next three landing on Dec. 25, and the action-packed finale hitting both Netflix and theaters on Dec. 31. With such a whirlwind event on the horizon, one imagines the Duffers are already locked, loaded and long past considering the end of their darling.
But in truth, they’re not quite done locking the final portion of the season, as they tell The Hollywood Reporter, and have only just started coming to terms with what it means to truly close the book on this career-defining chapter of their lives.
“Ross and I started out wanting to make movies,” Matt Duffer tells THR, “and it kind of surprised us that we ended up in television. But one of the things we’ve fallen in love with is that it is so alive, so constantly evolving, and that you’re able to shift the story even mid-production based on what you’re seeing and what’s working with the actors who have enormous influence on the story. So, it’s constantly evolving.”
According to the Duffers, the brothers have known for a long time how they wanted to end the show — literally. They say the final scene of the series was mapped as far back as season two’s development. But the specifics of how to reach that last image? That’s where they needed to stay as nimble as the heroes navigating Vecna’s (Jamie Campbell Bower) various forms of villainy.
“We’ve known for a really long time what the final scene of the show was going to be, which gave us a North Star,” says Matt. “But as far as a lot of the details, that was us and our writers following the story and the characters in ways that often surprised us. Really the way we approach every season — and occasionally, it’s gotten us into trouble, but I think, ultimately, it was the right way to do this — was as if every season was a movie. Let’s not leave anything on the table. Let’s not hold this back because maybe it’ll be better for later. No. We want every season to not only have its own identity, but we wanted to swing for the fences. And that’s what we tried to do, season by season.”
Ross adds, “We always tried every season to make it the best one we possibly can, as opposed to stressing about the end. It’s very hard when people have to plan three movies ahead. You have to make one good movie first. And the fact that we grew up watching almost no television, and only watching movies, is why we ended up calling them Stranger Things 2 and Stranger Things 3, rather than seasons two and three. We wanted them each to have their own identity and feel very different. It kept us from getting bored. The second we’d get bored, we knew we’d have to end the show because the creative would suffer.”
For their part, the Duffers never reached that point of apathy. With the final scene already in mind, and with an each-season-is-a-movie tactic in place, the Duffers entered the fourth and fifth seasons with an endgame plan fully in place. The result: five volumes of Stranger Things with a narrative thread running throughout, while still maintaining a fresh feeling from iteration to iteration.
“We love how people argue over which season’s the best one,” says Matt. “It was always our goal for none of the seasons to ever meld together, that each one has its own identity, and you get to yell at your friends about it. It’s so fun to see that happening.”
The eight-episode fifth and final season of Stranger Things begins its three-part rollout Nov. 26 on Netflix with Part 1.
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