The last installment of Stranger Things is bringing tears along with its Vecna-induced terror. Over the weekend, creators Ross and Matt Duffer teased the direction of their show’s fifth and final season, telling the audience at a Los Angeles event that their pitch had invoked waterworks from the steely execs at Netflix.
“We turned in the first script a couple of weeks ago and we’re onto the second. It’s full steam ahead,” Ross said, according to The Hollywood Reporter. “I remember season one we were just amazed that Netflix was letting us do this at all, but season two was when we really, with the writers, we developed an overall plan and a backstory for all of this and make sure that, with the Upside Down, everything about what it was.”
She woke up and chose violence.
That completed arc was presented in a two-hour meeting at Netflix, where Stranger Things season four remains the most popular English-language TV show in its history. “We did get our executives to cry, which I felt was a good sign, that these executives were crying,” Matt said on Sunday. “The only other times I’ve seen them cry were like budget meetings.”
Executive producer Shawn Levy quipped, “Those were different tears,” adding, “As a witness and having been in that two-hour pitch room and having read this first script—I’m paralysed with fear that I’ll spoil anything, but I will say the thing about these Duffer brothers is that even though the show has gotten so famous and the characters have gotten so iconic and there’s so much about the ’80s and the supernatural and the genre, it’s about these people, it’s about these characters. Season five is already so clearly taking care of these stories of the characters because that’s always been the lifeblood of Stranger Things.”
Before the show’s bleak season four finale, Joseph Quinn’s Metallica guitar solo and Sadie Sink “Running Up That Hill” to Kate Bush permeated pop culture. As for similar lightning rod moments in season five, Ross said that it will be “a culmination of all of the seasons, so it’s sort of got a little bit from each, whereas before each season was so distinctly—three, this is our big summer blockbuster season with our big monster; four was the psychological horror.”
“It needs to end like that.”
The final episodes—which are reportedly planned to be somewhat shorter than the fourth season’s feature-length runtimes—will potentially address Will’s sexuality with a proper coming-out scene and contain the return of Jamie Campbell Bower’s villainous Vecna. But they’ll also bring story lines full circle, teased Ross. “I think that what we’re trying to do is go back to the beginning a little bit in the tone of [season] one, but scale-wise it’s more in line with what [season] four is,” he explained. “Hopefully it’s got a little bit of everything.”
This story was originally published by Vanity Fair.