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Stranger Things creators Matt and Ross Duffer knew well before the final credits rolled that their epic story would conclude with a closed door.
In The Finale, which is now streaming on Netflix, Max (Sadie Sink), Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin), Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo), Will (Noah Schnapp), and Mike (Finn Wolfhard) ascend the steps of the Wheelers’ basement after completing their final Dungeons & Dragons campaign, and Mike shuts the door to close out the series. The Duffer Brothers had been sitting with the idea for that definitive ending “for a very long time,” Matt Duffer tells Tudum.
As each member of the party exits the basement, “that’s them leaving their childhood behind,” he explains. “I think Finn [Wolfhard] gave a really beautiful performance there because you see him go through this real grief and sadness about leaving it behind” before landing on a “bittersweet happiness.” When Mike’s younger sister, Holly, and her friends race past the crew to start their own D&D game, Mike understands what’s about to happen. “It is their time to leave it behind and pass the torch to the next group of kids.”
For Ross Duffer, that sentimental moment is also about Mike “remembering all the joys that he had as a kid.” Those memories will “always be there for him, but it’s time to move on.” The next generation, who can be heard playing in the background, will go on to “have their own amazing childhood, but our story is over once [Mike] shuts that door.”
With the Stranger Things journey now completed, the Duffer Brothers are opening up about how the emotional final chapter came together. Keep reading for a deep dive into where your favorite crew landed, Steve’s near-death experience, those eye-opening revelations about Vecna, and more in the final episode, titled “The Rightside Up.”
Stranger Things begins with a Dungeons & Dragons game and ends with the party playing their final campaign in the Wheelers’ basement. Why did you wrap the series on that note?
Ross Duffer: That’s been planned for a very long time. It felt right to go full circle. This is about this group of characters saying goodbye to their childhood. That basement, specifically the Dungeons & Dragons game, represents their childhoods [and it’s] how we first met them as an audience. To say goodbye to it, you have to play one last time. It was such a blast shooting, and it really reminded us of the first day on set when we filmed the kids playing D&D [in Season 1]. That was the first thing we ever shot, and it felt appropriate that this would be the last thing we ever shot. We even tried to mimic with the camera what we had done back in Season 1 all those years ago.
Matt Duffer: It was very emotional and nostalgic to shoot that scene. What was happening on the day [of filming] and what the actors were feeling and what we were feeling very much mirrored the scene. We’re really happy with how it turned out.
Before the Upside Down collapses, Hopper (David Harbour) delivers a moving speech asking Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) to promise that she’ll fight to survive. Later, Eleven delivers her own monologue, calling on Hopper to trust that she’ll make the right choice for herself. What’s the significance of both moments, and why was it important for them to mirror each other?
Ross Duffer: Hopper’s speech, in some ways, was us articulating how we and a lot of the writers felt when we were discussing Eleven. She’s been through so much over the years, and we wanted someone to communicate that to her as she’s trying to make this decision about what her life, if any, exists at the end of all this if they manage to defeat Vecna. With [Eleven’s] speech to Hopper … he’s been a great father figure, but he’s been very overprotective because he’s lost a daughter before and he’s so fearful of that. As a result, he’s not allowing her to make her own decisions or to really grow into an adult.
Matt Duffer: A lot of the finale is about growing up. It’s the end of a long coming-of-age story and part of coming of age is leaving your parents and making your own decisions. That’s the moment where Eleven reaches that point and Hopper realizes he does have to let go.
During the party’s final D&D campaign, Mike tells the story of Eleven possibly escaping the Upside Down and moving to a small village. Why did you leave her ending ambiguous?
Matt Duffer: What we wanted to do was confront the reality of what her situation was after all of this and how could she live a normal life. These are the questions that we’ve been posing this season that Hopper just doesn’t even want to think or talk about. Mike’s obviously talked about it a lot, but it’s sort of this fantasy version that would never work. There are two roads that Eleven could take. There’s this darker, more pessimistic one or the optimistic, hopeful one. Mike is the optimist of the group and has chosen to believe in that story.
Ross Duffer: There was never a version of the story where Eleven was hanging out with the gang at the end. For us and our writers, we didn’t want to take her powers away. She represents magic in a lot of ways and the magic of childhood. For our characters to move on and for the story of Hawkins and the Upside Down to come to a close, Eleven had to go away. We thought it would be beautiful if our characters continued to believe in that happier ending even if we didn’t give them a clear answer to whether that’s true or not. The fact that they’re believing in it, we just thought it was such a better way to end the story and a better way to represent the closure of this journey and their journey from children to adults.
Matt Duffer: And the reality is, if Eleven is out there, the most that they could hope for is a belief that it’s true because they can’t be in contact with her. Everything falls apart if that were the case. So if that’s the narrative, this is really the best way to keep her alive. And it’s about Mike and everyone finding a way to move past what’s happened.
Let’s talk through the kids’ endings: Mike becomes a writer, Dustin goes to college but still finds time for adventures with Steve (Joe Keery), Max and Lucas settle down together, and Will finds acceptance elsewhere. Walk me through the choices for each of these characters.
Ross Duffer: [There were] discussions with ourselves and also with the other actors, and everyone had very specific ideas of where their characters would end up. We wanted them to continue the journeys that they had all started. So, of course, Dustin’s going to continue seeking knowledge. But we wanted to show that bromance is going strong with Steve because they had a bumpy Season 5.
Matt Duffer: Mike’s a storyteller, so to us, it makes sense that he would continue to tell stories. And with Will, we like the idea of him going to a bigger city where he would be more accepted in a situation like that. We wanted each of the characters to find happiness but in their own specific ways.
And Max and Lucas settling together?
Ross Duffer: They had a movie date that had been planned for a very long time, so it was nice to finally get to see them go to that film.
Matt Duffer: And they’re watching Ghost.
Ross Duffer: We don’t show it.
Matt Duffer: We filmed it. It was a very romantic scene from Ghost, but then it just kind of took away from their own moment. But that is the movie they’re seeing.
Hopper and Joyce (Winona Ryder) finally have their date at Enzo’s, where Hopper proposes, and they plan to move to Montauk. Why did you end their story that way?
Matt Duffer: We knew they had to have their final date at Enzo’s. That final scene with them had been planned for quite some time. It’s very difficult what Hopper went through, especially with Eleven, and we liked the idea of him and Joyce having an opportunity to start a new chapter in their lives. David [Harbour] liked the idea of sort of a Dickensian ending for those characters. More than I would say is typical, we really talked a lot with all the actors to make sure they were content with where their characters ended up. That was important to us.
Ross Duffer: And, of course, we did the Montauk shout-out [where Hopper has a job offer] because the show was originally going to be set in Montauk. It felt like a nice little wink to the superfans of the show who were aware of that nugget.
Moving on to the teens: Steve becomes a little-league coach with Derek (Jake Connelly) as his catcher, Nancy (Natalia Dyer) drops out of Emerson College and takes a job at The Herald in Boston, Robin (Maya Hawke) attends Smith College, and Jonathan (Charlie Heaton) is a filmmaker at NYU working on an anti-capitalist cannibal movie. Why did you decide on these endings for these characters?
Matt Duffer: It just felt very organic to us. It always made sense to us that Steve would choose to stay in Hawkins. He just feels like that kid that you grew up with that ends up staying in their hometown and that he would be working with kids. That’s something we’ve discovered he’s very good at. We like the idea that he would be teaching and coaching. He doesn’t have kids of his own, but as we have implied, that’s imminent, I think.
Ross Duffer: And then for Nancy, we never want her to take the obvious path. Even in Season 1 when she’s going down the trajectory that all these suburban girls go down, Nancy obviously has proven to be much more independent than that, which is one reason she and Jonathan aren’t together at the end. She’s still trying to find herself and what she wants from the world, so that’s why we wanted to give her that ending. For Robin, Smith College was Maya’s suggestion. And then Jonathan at NYU, we set up that he’s been wanting to go to NYU for a very long time. That’s all the way back to Season 1. So it made us happy to see him finally realize his dream.
Matt Duffer: The teens had called us the day before we were gonna shoot that scene. I think Charlie, in particular, wanted some more specifics about what he was doing at NYU, so we all worked together to cook up this movie idea. Even on that day, we kept elaborating on what this movie is. The movie we made at film school in college was not an anti-capitalist movie, but it was a cannibal movie about a shape-shifting cannibal, so that was the idea behind that.
Heading into the final battle, Steve slips off the radio tower and almost dies. Why was it important to include that moment, and why is Jonathan the one to save him?
Matt Duffer: It wasn’t designed to torture fans who are terrified that Steve is gonna die. I’ve never really understood why they’re so worried about Steve dying. Really, it was about him and Jonathan coming together, and that’s why that moment is in there. We wanted those two to find common ground by the end of the series, and it leads to that conversation they have in the Abyss where they finally open up about their feelings and their conflict as it relates to Nancy. And Joe and Charlie in real life are very close, and we wanted to tap into that bromance and have that reflected on screen in some way. We wanted the least likely person to save Steve.
Ross Duffer: We needed to make sure that by the time we got to the final battle, any conflicts were resolved because they really needed to work together as a team. Steve and Jonathan were the last remaining source of tension within the group, and so we realized we had to resolve that before they would be able to defeat Vecna and the Mind Flayer.
This final episode reveals more about Vecna’s backstory, how he was possessed by the Mind Flayer and insistent that it was his choice and that he’s not being controlled like Will suggested. What were you signaling to fans about Henry at that moment?
Ross Duffer: We did discuss with the writers’ room if he could have a Billy [Dacre Montgomery] moment where he turns against the Mind Flayer [in a] Darth Vader-type situation. But the more we talked about it with the writers and with Jamie [Campbell Bower], he’s gone so far at this point to get here, he has to justify everything he’s done. And the only way to justify that is to go, “I chose this, and I believe in this still.”
Even though he is shaken by seeing this memory, he’s too far gone at this point to turn against the Mind Flayer. But we wanted to leave it up to the audience in terms of whether young Henry did choose this or whether it was simply the Mind Flayer controlling him from beginning to end. But ultimately, in terms of where Henry goes, it doesn’t matter because he chooses the side of the Mind Flayer at the end of the day.
During the cave scene, we get a better understanding of who Vecna is, and some of those moments are depicted in the play Stranger Things: The First Shadow. Why was it important to show his backstory in that way in the show?
Matt Duffer: When we were talking about the play and trying to figure out what story would be worth telling, we thought Henry’s story was the most interesting one in which we didn’t have enough time to fully explore in the show. We always knew we were gonna have the moment where you see the moment that he connects with the Mind Flayer. But we were interested in what happens after that moment, his struggles in terms of whether he fights off or embraces the Mind Flayer. And we thought that was rich territory for the play to explore, and it was a way of continuing his story and giving the audience a little more insight into his backstory without making it essential viewing for Season 5, because it is its own standalone piece. I like that more people are seeking out the play, though, because it does give you a little bit more insight into his psychology.
Ross Duffer: Once you’ve seen the finale, it’ll be interesting to watch the play with that knowledge because, right now, everyone’s seen it without knowing how all the dots connect.
Dustin delivers a rebellious valedictorian speech at the gang’s high school graduation. Why was it essential for him to have that moment, and how much of it was inspired by Eddie (Joseph Quinn)?
Ross Duffer: A lot of it was inspired by Eddie — even at the end where he rips the diploma and flips off the principal, which is something that Eddie said he wanted to do. A lot of it is honoring Eddie and what Hellfire had been. A lot of what Hellfire represents and a lot of what Dustin’s talking about is one of the major themes of the show, which is that this is a story about outsiders and outcasts. It’s about banding together and embracing your otherness to defeat the evils of this world.
Matt Duffer: So much of the show is [about] unlikely friendships. Nothing illustrates that more than Dustin’s friendship with Steve. Much of what we were trying to do with the show and with so many of the characters were to take these tropes and flip them on their heads. [With] Steve, you think he’s just a douchebag jock, and you learn that he has a real heart. Everyone has these assumptions of who Eddie is, all of which are proved to be wrong. The point of Dustin’s speech is that because of everything that happened, it thrust people together who never would have interacted in the first place and enriched their lives because of that. I think many people in this world are unfairly judged just because of the way they look or the way they’re perceived. We like the idea that so many of the characters transcend what you might initially think of them. Derek is another good example. Everybody thinks they know exactly who Derek is and realize he’s a good, courageous kid with a heart if you just take the time to get to know him.
PHOTO BY ERIC RAY DAVIDSON
Why did you bring back “Heroes” for the finale credits?
Ross Duffer: We’ve obviously used the Peter Gabriel cover of it in previous seasons. And it was actually Joe Keery who suggested that we do the David Bowie version, which we’ve never used on the show, for the end. Once Joe said that, we immediately knew that was the right song to end the show on because it is in some ways an anthem for Stranger Things. But to use the original Bowie version just felt right and fitting for the conclusion.
Where do you think Erica (Priah Ferguson), Murray (Brett Gelman), and Mr. Clarke (Randy Havens) end up?
Matt Duffer: I do like that Murray and Mr. Clarke have bonded. But I think Murray’s doing his own weird stuff, and Mr. Clarke is likely still teaching. I think at his heart he loves educating kids.
Ross Duffer: Obviously, no one’s concerned about Erica. She can take care of herself. She’s gotta go through high school now, but she’s just so tough.
Matt Duffer: She’s absolutely going to be valedictorian. That is for sure. What happens beyond that, I don’t know. She can go where she wants to go.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
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