Stranger Things: Joe Keery and Maya Hawke Reflect on Robin’s Coming Out Scene

This month marked one year since the third season of Stranger Things dropped on Netflix, and one of the most talked-about moments of the season was Robin (Maya Hawke) coming out to Steve (Joe Keery). In a recent Netflix Queue interview, the actors reflected on the moment and shared their thoughts on the coming-out scene after being asked if it was emotional to film and how it felt to be the show’s first LGBTQ+ character.

“I don’t know about emotional,” Keery replied. “It was rewarding to get to that final sequence in the midst of all this crazy supernatural shit that’s going on — to do a scene that felt real and pretty honest. The action stuff is really fun, but it’s always nice when you get a two- or three-page scene to do in full, especially on a show with so many characters.”

“I was really happy about it for a simple reason,” Hawke added. “There are a lot of complicated reasons, but the simple reason was that I think it’s really amazing to show a male-female relationship form on camera that isn’t about sex. Most of the time, that’s an undercurrent in one direction or another, and for Steve and Robin, it really isn’t. Even if Steve thinks it is for a little while, or it gets confused, as soon as it’s taken off the table for him, he’s equally invested in the friendship. He reacts so unbelievably well, and their friendship gets deeper. That was really important to me because that, also, was unique — not just being the first LTBGTQ+ character, but having one of the few aromantic friendships between a man and a woman on mainstream TV. It’s really cool to me.”

Back in February, Stranger Things released a teaser that showed Jim Hopper (David Harbour) alive. Now that we know the fate of Hop, another big question is how long the beloved Netflix series will last. Recently, a casting notice alluded to the fact that the series will at least have a fifth season after the upcoming fourth. It’s also been reported that the fourth season could have nine episodes instead of the usual eight, which is what they did during the series’ second season. Recently, ComicBook.com learned that Agents of SHIELD‘s Joel Stoffer was cast in at least one episode of the series.

The first three seasons of Stranger Things are streaming on Netflix.