Netflix and the Duffer Brothers will be giving Stranger Things a grand sendoff with this year’s highly anticipated season 5, and there’s certainly pressure to deliver a series finale that lives up to the show’s legacy and enduring popularity. The team is well aware of that, and that’s why they are intent on not just delivering a great finale, but also answering questions that we’ve been waiting 9 years to find out, and there’s no more kicking the can down the road.
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In an interview with Variety, Stranger Things showrunners Matt and Ross Duffer spoke about getting the final season right and paying off all of the various threads that came before, and that meant finally answering the question of the Upside Down. Going into the writers’ room, Ross says he knew the biggest questions were, “about what the Upside Down was. Every season would be like, ‘Should we talk about it?’ And we’d go, ‘No, let’s wait.’ And then finally, we’re like, ‘Well, we have to now!’”
Matt assured fans that they had the chance to execute their full vision for the Upside Down and the creatures that live there. “We do every last remaining thing we wanted to do with the Demogorgons and Mind Flayer and Vecna and the Upside Down and Hawkins and these characters,” Matt said. “This is a complete story. It’s done.”
Stranger Things Isn’t Leaving Anything on the Table
The script for the finale took quite a few attempts to nail down, and part of the process was studying other series finales and seeing what really worked and what didn’t. Ones that clearly worked were finales of Six Feet Under, Friday Night Lights, and The Sopranos, and they took away one key message from all of those. “The best ones were very true to themselves,” Ross said. “The shows that are trying to be super clever — I think that’s where it can go wrong really quickly.”
Stranger Things executive producer Shawn Levy knows how seriously the Duffer Brothers are taking getting this finale right, and they are doing everything they can to avoid failing the fans. “They have had their hearts broken by shows that they loved that failed fans in the end,” Levy said. “They did not want, and do not want, and refuse to be one of those shows.”
Ross stresses that the end goal is to conclude Stranger Things in a way that provides answers and resolution, which not only benefits longtime fans but also new fans who jump into the series in the future. “It doesn’t feel like we dropped a storyline — it all connects,” Ross said.
Stranger Things season 5 releases Volume 1’s four episodes on November 26th, with Volume 2’s three episodes releasing on Christmas, and The Finale releasing on New Year’s Eve. Each volume releases at 5 PM PT.
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