“I kind of wanted a little Cast Away insanity, but it wasn’t the season for that. When the setting changes, you need to keep the core of the character alive.”
Photo: Netflix
If anyone can survive a dream world consisting of depressing memory trails while babysitting a precocious tween and running from a disgusting humanoid made of vines, it’s Max Mayfield. That’s where Sadie Sink’s character finds herself for the majority of Stranger Things’s final season. Until the sixth episode, she and Holly Wheeler (Nell Fisher) remain in the place they call Camazotz, Vecna’s mind prison, where a demoralized Max has been held captive for two years. Holly joins Max once Vecna captures her as part of his grand plan to remake the world with children’s bodies as his vessels. But in a twist that wasn’t met with a gruesome death, for once, Holly ended up being the savior Max was looking for.
Thanks to Holly’s relentless insistence on leaving their cave — the one place safe from Vecna — and finding a way home, the young women take an odyssey through Vecna’s mind after determining they can escape through the memory of the night he captured Holly. One trail leads to another, and suddenly, they come upon the origin of Henry Kreel’s transformation into Vecna and why he was so petrified of that cave: As a Boy Scout, he stumbled upon an injured, manic scientist guarding a briefcase within the rock formations. In his delirium, the man believes Henry was sent by rogue forces to kill him, and he shoots the child. Henry then bludgeons the scientist to death with a rock before opening the briefcase. We’ll have to wait for the finale to know for sure what was worth killing over, but until then, we get to celebrate — Max made it out!
In the red void where an earlier escape attempt of hers failed, Max tearfully credits “Holly the Heroic” for getting her out before they part ways to separately try to flee Vecna’s clutches. “For Holly, the betrayal she’s experienced this whole season is so destabilizing for someone so young,” Sink says of their relationship. “To have found an unlikely friend she can really trust is beautiful.” Max finds her way back to Hawkins, but Holly isn’t so lucky. Meanwhile, Vecna sent a bunch of Demogorgons into the real world in the hopes of killing Max in the hospital. (He failed.)
With Max now reunited with her friends and devoted boyfriend, Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin), the core Hawkins crew is preparing for Stranger Things’s biggest battle yet. Despite Max being confined to a wheelchair and, as she puts it, “feeling useless” as the others hatch the plan to defeat Vecna, Sink says the best is yet to come in the series finale. “It feels like a homecoming of sorts. It feels complete,” she teases. “We all got together and watched the final episode this week. I think people are going to be really happy with how it ends.”
Max was stuck in this dream world for two years, resigned to life in the cave, where she was immune to harm. Were you surprised she was so defeated at this point?
Yes, I was. The Duffers told me ahead of time what Max’s plotline was going to be because when you read that you’re in a coma, you’re like, Okay, where can this go? It makes a lot of sense, figuring out how time affected her in this dream world and how she has a different type of energy because of it. Max has been dealt some consistently shitty cards over the course of the series, so if anyone can survive, wait around, and weigh her options, it’s her. She’s always been incredibly resilient.
What was interesting and unexpected was her dynamic with Holly. Max really never had someone like that. She had a difficult relationship with her big brother. For her to offer that guidance to Holly, it was really beautiful and something Max needed.
I love the little details, like Max giving Henry the middle finger in one of Holly’s memories and provoking him from the cave. Why do you think she never lost her sense of self or, even worse, spiraled into insanity? It could’ve turned into a more perverse Cast Away situation.
I was so tempted. I kind of wanted a little Cast Away insanity, but it wasn’t the season for that. When the setting changes, you need to keep the core of the character alive. With Max, she’s gone through the memories so many times. She’s so tired. In episode four, when she’s explaining how she thought realistically about what options she had, she was prepared for whatever way it went. It’s not that she doesn’t care. She’s accepted all of her fates, no matter what they are. It helps her be more effortlessly brave throughout the season.
Max and Holly witness, through a memory, the disturbing circumstances around Henry’s fear of the cave. Max later calls Vecna “a psychopath with a serious god complex, but human.” Is it fair to say Max is sympathetic to him?
Yeah, for sure. Spending so much time in someone’s memories, and the fact that a realm like that even exists, where there’s a place he can hold all of his trauma? Max has a special view into the human behind Vecna. I don’t know if she’s necessarily empathetic toward him, but she does understand that. She’s seen the origin story. At one point, he was just a kid. Seeing him as a child and killing a person changes things. That describes the show in a way: There’s that perfect blend of the supernatural, but also the human behind it.
Max does an excellent job calming Holly’s fears and getting her to trust that she’s not a monster. How did you and Nell build chemistry with each other throughout the filming process?
My first couple weeks of filming didn’t feel like Stranger Things, because I was with a new actress and a character I’d never worked with before. I didn’t look like Max; I looked like a cavewoman. The sets were all different. It was unfamiliar from all angles, but it also made sense for where Max was — it shouldn’t feel familiar. I met Nell about a year before we started filming when she did her chemistry read. I felt like I had a sense of protection over her, because she was roughly the age I was when I started the show. Our relationship mirrored Max and Holly’s in a way.
She was heading into this crazy world and fandom that I’ve been part of for a long time. I wanted to do anything I could to help prepare her for it. That felt really important for me, because it’s so scary. I think that was reflected in our chemistry onscreen. There’s that moment at the end of episode six that really got me in a way I wasn’t expecting. When Max hugs her, I thought, Oh, it’s been so long since Max has hugged anyone. You never see her have that with anyone.
What do you make of the fact that the person who saved Max wasn’t telekinetic like Eleven or a tough guy like Hopper, but a young girl who put her full trust in Max when she had no good reason to?
It’s really fitting, especially to see someone so young possess so much strength and resilience. That’s what the show has always celebrated and stood for — young kids persevering through these huge obstacles and coming out as heroes at the end. Also to not have it be some huge, otherworldly thing. I mean, obviously they’re in a realm and they’re running through the red void or whatever, but it’s coming from somewhere from within that gives them the power to find their exit.
You have an emotionally heady monologue in your final scene with Nell in that red void. How do you psych yourself up for something like that, especially for a set that entirely consists of green screens?
The hardest part about Stranger Things is that they love a lengthy monologue in the middle of the world ending. It’s life or death stakes, but we still have time to do a heroic moment? It was pretty easy to find because it perfectly encapsulated what their journey together had been. Everything was leading up to that moment. One thing with the void that was important was, obviously, Max had been there before. So I was thinking, How does this stand out from the last time she was trying to escape? The last time, she had Vecna chasing her, so it was more intense. But with Max and Holly, this felt like acceptance and relief. There was some kind of maturity to it.
At one point, Max gives her new friend a boost of confidence by saying she’s no longer “the old Holly.” I’m curious what you think is the “old” and “new” version of Max and how she was shaped by this cave purgatory. When she wakes up from her coma after all this awful shit she went through, what has fundamentally changed about who she is?
Having spent so much time away from any sense of familiarity or real people, she’s going to find a newfound appreciation for the bonds in her life, especially Lucas, who was there for her the whole time. There’s going to be this desire for that kind of closeness and support.
Something that floored me in these episodes was seeing the depth of Max and Lucas’s relationship. Max tells Holly she never needed Kate Bush’s music to escape Henry’s mind, but rather “something that makes you feel safe, something that brings you strength, something that gives you hope.” For her, that was Lucas. What do they possess as a couple that the other teens and adults lack?
They’ve always had a unique ability to understand each other and accept each other wherever they’re at. For Max especially, she hasn’t had a lot of consistency in her life. People have always disappointed her, or she’s gotten close to someone and then that person has been taken away. Throughout all of that, Lucas has been the only one who’s stayed with her, even in times when she’s tried to push him away. That’s just them. Max waking up is one of my favorite scenes in the show because you do forget about Max and Lucas, especially this season. She’s in a coma. You’re not seeing them together. They’re just kind of talking about each other, so it’s emotional seeing them reunite and realizing, Oh my God, these two have been through so much together. There’s something that feels very complete about them and it’s meant to last.
Do you view them as soulmates?
For sure. So much has gotten in their way that if they’re still together by the end of this, they’re definitely perfect for each other.
How equipped was Caleb for running around the hospital and carrying you? Were there any falls?
There were no falls. I was really, really impressed. He was running with me and the boom box, and then he’s kicking Demogorgons. I felt so bad. I was literally just dead weight, doing nothing.
Have you given much thought as to where Max’s mother has been during this period and how she might have handled her daughter being in a coma? I noticed Max didn’t mention her to Holly.
It’s kind of common for the parents on the show: You just don’t know where they are except for Karen Wheeler. My theory is that Max’s mom must have disappeared or died at some point in the rift at the end of season four, because it goes through the trailer park. We kind of gloss over that day now.
Max has a great quip near the end of the seventh episode in which, after learning about how Vecna is moving and remaking worlds, she says, “It gives me a headache to try to understand all of this.” That’s also how I’ve felt all season. Has the lore of the monsters and world-building become secondary to you over the years?
When it comes to the supernatural side of things, I have no clue. Especially with my plotline last year, there’s so much language and confusion. But that’s always me when I watch a show. I felt the same way with Severance. Sometimes you don’t actually know what’s going on, but you’re in it for the performances and you have a general idea of things. Max has been in her own world for two years. I felt the same way as Sadie, stepping into these big group scenes where they’re planning everything out. I was like, I’m so lost right now, please help. I had to watch the episodes again. Now I have a better understanding of where we’re at.
You’ve now had two songs by female performers strongly associated with your body of work: Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill” for Stranger Things and Lorde’s “Green Light” for John Proctor Is the Villain. Do they achieve a similar feeling of catharsis for you?
I don’t know how that happened, but I love my little playlist. I’ll add “All Too Well” too. I feel these songs are parts of my identity now.
On a lighter note, can you tell me a bit about your Camazotz hair and the vision behind your untamed locks?
That was a wig because my hair was quite short at the time, and they wanted it really long and messy. In the script, it described Max’s hair as “down and a bit feral,” and I was picturing something quite beautiful, so when I saw the wig at first, I was like, You’re joking. This is insane. But I got used to seeing it and I really loved it. It made sense, so sun-damaged and tangled. There were still moments when I was like, You have all this stuff in your cave, and you couldn’t find a hair tie or a hairbrush? It was a huge jump scare when I was watching the season for the first time and I had forgotten what I looked like.
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