Joe Keery Says Stranger Things Ending Is “Bittersweet”

There have been a lot of first times on Stranger Things. Like the first time Eleven used her psychokenetic powers, or the first time a group of friends saved Hawkins, Indiana, from the supernatural threats of the Upside Down. But in the fifth and final season of the Netflix series — which turns everything upside down as it plunges the small midwestern town into an apocalyptic nightmare — will be the first of a lot of last times, says star Joe Keery. In sending off Stranger Things, season 5 will be the last time Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown), Mike (Finn Wolfhard), Will (Noah Schnapp), Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo), Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin), Max (Sadie Sink), and the rest of the Hawkins gang are all together for one last fight against big bad Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower). 

“It’s going to be bittersweet, for sure,” Keery, who plays fan-favorite Steve Harrington, said of the final season during a panel at German Comic Con. “I think everybody’s excited to start working again, but it’ll be like the first time of a lot of last things, as well. It’ll be very bittersweet.”

In February 2022, series creators the Duffer brothers confirmed the two-volume Stranger Things 4 would be the penultimate season, and that Stranger Things 5 would wrap up a story that started in 2016.

“Seven years ago, we planned out the complete story arc for Stranger Things,” showrunners Matt and Ross Duffer said in the statement. “At the time, we predicted the story would last four or five seasons. It proved too large to tell in four, but — as you’ll soon see for yourselves — we are now hurtling toward our finale. Season 4 will be the penultimate season; season 5 will be the last.”

But the last episodes of Stranger Things don’t mean the end of the Stranger Things Universe: Netflix has ordered an animated spin-off series, and the Duffers teased that “there are still many more exciting stories to tell within the world of Stranger Things; new mysteries, new adventures, new unexpected heroes.”

Ahead of a reported June shooting start, the writers’ room has described Stranger Things 5 as “like if season 1 and [season] 4 had a baby. And then that baby was injected with steroids.” Season 1 is where it started, and is where it will end: with the final season set entirely in Hawkins, season 5 will bring things full circle.

“We wanna go back to a lot of the things wedid in season 1,” Matt Duffer told the Happy Sad Confused podcast. “A lot of the original groupings andpairings that we had in season 1 — there’s something nice about comingfull circle.”

Stranger Things 5 is expected to premiere in 2024 on Netflix.