@Courtesy of Netflix

Q:  Stranger Things has always felt like a love letter to childhood between the friendships, adventures, and boundless imagination that turn the ordinary into something extraordinary. How has it felt building and evolving this world from its early sense of wonder into the cinematic universe it is today?  

MATT DUFFER:  That’s a really good way to put it. That is what we’ve been trying to do with the show. As big as the scale and digital effects have been, the core of the show, the heart of it it’s a coming-of-age story.  It’s about these characters.  Something that’s been important to Ross and I, as we continue to build up the show, is we’ve never wanted to repeat ourselves too much. You don’t want to get bored. Because if you’re bored, you’re gonna be making something boring.

We’re movie guys, we like the idea of changing it and making it feel different scaling up.  We look back at the sequels that we loved the most when we were kids, mostly James Cameron sequels, they tended to evolve what came before it in a way that felt organic. I am talking about Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Aliens. He didn’t betray what those original films were, but he took them in a new direction. We wanted to do that with every season of Stranger Things. That’s why it continued to evolve in the way that has.  

Q: Each season peels back another layer of the Upside Down.  What did you want to reveal this time that shifts how viewers perceive that world?  

ROSS DUFFER:  We wanted to reveal everything this season. Upside Down is one of the last big remaining mysteries. There are a few, like why Will was taken. But the Upside Down’s a big one, we have a full document from Season One going into great detail about exactly what the Upside Down is. We’ve talked about every season revealing it, but instead we’ve just given hints. All that gets explained this year, which we’re excited that people finally get to see what it is. It’s pretty crazy.  

Q: Vecna is such a terrifying but layered villain,  part monster and part man.  How did you approach building him for the final seasons, and what kind of story did you want him to tell about power and humanity? 

 MATT DUFFER:  We always wanted to introduce this sentient being into the show.  We had that all the way back in our original pitch to Netflix for Season One. It felt right to introduce him in season four because our kids, they were teens at that point, going into high school. High school was the worst four years of my life. That’s true for a lot of people. It’s just a hard time in your life. It’s not necessarily school, everyone’s trying to figure out who they are. There’s more pressure than ever before. It feels like your entire life is on the line. It was a hard time for me and Ross, we had a lot of anxiety and issues. We weren’t vocalizing it to anyone.

That’s really where Max’s story came from, where Vecna and his powers came from, which is that he’s preying on all those dark feelings that you have. The only way for Max to climb out of that is with the help of her friends. I suppose Kate Bush as well was helpful in that situation. Vecna was very much based also on the villains that we grew up with. The ones who scared us the most, they were all humanoid.  I mean Pinhead, Freddy Krueger, Pennywise. Pennywise really messed me up. Tim Curry.  We were the age of kids when we saw it. I saw it in fourth grade.  I couldn’t sleep for several weeks. Couldn’t look at his cover on the VHS tape. My mom had to stay in the bedroom with me until I fell asleep. So the goal was to do that, which was also to scare and traumatize other children. 

Q  How do you feel to be ambassadors from the ’80s to the new generations?  

ROSS DUFFER: It’s exciting to us. One of the things that got us excited to tell this story was that there was a chance to introduce these films that inspired us. A big movie was Scream, one of the first horror movies that we saw. Scream references a lot of other films, whether it’s Halloween or Nightmare on Elm Street. It inspired us to go back and watch all these classic horror films, we went through a full horror movie phase. So when I hear that watching Stranger Things has inspired younger kids to go back and watch some of these films, whether it’s John Carpenter or an earlier Spielberg or Wes Craven, that fills us with joy.  Or read Stephen King.  It makes us so happy.  

MATT DUFFER:  It is depressing when they refer to them as “old films” though. I don’t like that.  

Q: In what ways did Dungeons & Dragons help you shape the world or the characters of Stranger Things?  

MATT DUFFER: Ross and I were ’90s kids. We just grew up consuming a lot of ’80s pop culture. The game that was actually huge at the time was Magic: The Gathering. We did play Dungeons & Dragons, but not as much. We didn’t intend for Dungeons & Dragons to be that big of a part of the show, but in the opening scene, we had the kids playing Dungeons & Dragons, and we always wanted to do that. 

As the show continued, we needed something for the kids to be able to reference in order to help them understand what was going on. They had the D&D board out, so we ended up writing that in very organically, and it lends itself beautifully to the show and what we’re trying to say with the show, because that’s a game about not just imagination, but collaboration. You can only win by working together, by using your various skills. I’m very proud of the fact that it helped encourage some people to find that game. There’s something very powerful and important about friends getting together in the real world and interacting. 

Q: Some of the most moving parts of Stranger Things come from the parental relationships. Hopper and Eleven, Joyce and Will, Karen and Holly. How did you want to explore those connections in the final season, and why do you think they resonate so strongly with audiences?  

ROSS DUFFER: At its heart, this really is a show about family. From early on, we saw this as a multigenerational show. As we moved into season five, those relationships continue to be important, Hopper and Eleven probably being the most important just because they’ve had a long journey. We’ve seen that relationship change and evolve over the years, how it plays out is really important for both of their characters in the final season.  

Q: Each season, the Hawkins world has grown by introducing new characters who add depth without disrupting the ensemble’s rhythm.  What was your process for integrating new talent in the final season?  

MATT DUFFER:  We’re always very careful about adding new talent, you don’t want to upset the balance of things, especially in the last season. For a while, we were planning not to do it at all. One of the things we wanted to do with the final season was recapture some of the feeling of the first season, so that it would feel like everything is going full-circle. Because the kids in the show are clearly not kids anymore, the only way to really recapture some of the energy and innocence of the first season was to introduce a new, younger cast into the show. That’s when we came up with the idea of elevating Holly to a major character. Which made sense, because she’s another Wheeler, she’s really just been in the background. We were very lucky in finding Nell Fisher who is a very special kid and extraordinary actor.  

Q: Music and sound have always been such integral parts of the Stranger Things experience.  Can you share how you worked with the composers and sound team this season to elevate the emotional tone?  

ROSS DUFFER: Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein, prior to season one, had never composed a score for anything. I’m shocked Netflix honestly let us hire them. It’s been an incredible journey working with them, their sound is so essential to the DNA of the show. There are so many themes from them that are so incredible. There’s so much about this season that is about coming full-circle, so we’re revisiting a lot of cues and scores and themes. We’re adjusting them for the season, trying to bring back those sounds of thematics that went throughout the previous seasons.  

MATT DUFFER:  We have the most incredible sound team. It helps us visualize what the show is going to be, and ultimately sound like. We spend a lot of time, even on the rough cuts, making sure that it sounds great, even before we send it to Netflix. I think it’s the best-sounding first rough cut they will ever get, because we obsess over it. 

Q:  The writing has always balanced large-scale spectacle with intimate human moments.  What was your approach in the writers’ room to keeping those emotional throughlines strong while building towards the culminating finale?  

ROSS DUFFER: We love action and horror and spectacle. But for us, if you’re watching like a big-budget movie, no matter how amazing the visual effects are, we get bored if we don’t care about the characters. Jurassic Park being one of the best examples: you care about these people, and then you bring in the spectacle. When we’re talking about big sequences, we’re usually building it from the character. 

Where do we want our characters to be? If you can hit both the character’s emotional climax at the same time as you’re hitting a spectacle climax, if they both hit at the same time, that’s our sweet spot. Max’s escape is both a huge, emotional moment and turn for her as a character that we’ve been building to for four episodes, but it’s also a big visual effects sequence with huge shots, and a monster trying to dig into her brain. That’s always what we’re aiming foR: if you don’t care about these people, then none of them matter.  

MATT:  You don’t want spectacle for the sake of spectacle. But we do like monsters.  

@Courtesy of Netflix

Q:  How did you balance the fans expectations with your own vision for how the story should end?  

MATT DUFFER:  That’s one of the most challenging things with the show, that’s been challenging just every year. What we try to do as much as possible is shut off the noise and not listen to it.  At the end of the day, it comes down to me, Ross, and our four writers, all of whom have been on the show since either season one or season two. We just try to write something that we think is cool because that’s what we did all the way back in season one, when we had no fans.

We were just trying to make something that we loved, then it resonated with a lot of people. We try to apply that philosophy to every season. Especially with this final season because of the level of expectation, it can just paralyze you. We’re happy with the way this is ending, hopefully it will work for the rest of the audience. With Netflix, there are no test screenings, we don’t get any reactions from fans.  We’re only getting feedback from, I would say, a total of 10 people. Which is terrifying but on the other hand really freeing. You’re just trying to get it to a place where you’re happy, and then you put it out in the world and you pray.  

Q:  Did you feel emotionally about saying farewell, but also how did you say goodbye practically? Did you have a party? Did you give gifts?  Can you imagine a Stranger Things special in the future?  Or even like a Stranger Things things movie?  

ROSS DUFFER: To answer the first question, it was really emotional and difficult. The shoot was so hard and so long that all of us in the cast were just focused on the work for the majority of it. But once we started filming those final scenes, we organized in a way that every actor’s last scene in the show was the last scene we filmed. So every time we were on an actor’s last scene, it was really emotional all day for everyone. There were lots of tears. The most emotional moment for Matt and I was just the end, because we knew not only we’re gonna be wrapping a group of actors that we really cared about and loved, but also we were saying goodbye to this show, to the production, to the crew.  I’m sure some of these people we’re gonna work with again in the future, but not in the same way, not all together.  It was emotional. There was some confetti at the end, some champagne.  Everyone got a key prop.  

MATT: Sadie got her Walkman. Millie got the pink dress that she was wearing in season one. They all got something cool. Some little piece of memorabilia from their time on the show.  

ROSS: I don’t know about a movie. We are in the early days of talking. We have this spinoff idea we’ve spoken about before, a live-action spinoff.  It would be another TV series, though, we’re really excited about it. 

MATT: There is a cartoon, but that’s set between season two and three. The kids in that cartoon will never age, which is great. This is the end of their journey, we don’t want to explore anything beyond that. 

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Here’s the trailer for Stranger Things 5 – Volume 2: