“Stranger Things” comes to an end with the series finale on New Year’s Eve but the creators behind the show have known what the last shot would be for several years …
With the final season of “Stranger Things” now less than a week away — the first four episodes drop on November 26 — the anticipation and expectation is growing for the series finale.
Considering the time most fans have invested in the show, there’s obviously a hope that the series ends with a satisfying conclusion. The huge popularity surrounding any TV show only ratchets up the pressure on a series finale, which is why people are still buzzing about how “The Sopranos,” “Breaking Bad” or “Lost” ended.
But Matt and Ross Duffer knew very early on that nailing the final scene in “Stranger Things” was going to be crucial, although they had no idea the show would be as popular as it was until after the first season arrived. So that’s why as far back as season 2, the Duffer brothers already had the final scene for the show set up and then it was just a matter of arriving there in a way that made sense.
“We’ve known for a really long time what the final scene of the show was going to be, which gave us a North Star,” Matt Duffer told The Hollywood Reporter. “But as far as a lot of the details, that was us and our writers following the story and the characters in ways that often surprised us. Really the way we approach every season — and occasionally, it’s gotten us into trouble, but I think, ultimately, it was the right way to do this — was as if every season was a movie.
“Let’s not leave anything on the table. Let’s not hold this back because maybe it’ll be better for later. No. We want every season to not only have its own identity, but we wanted to swing for the fences. And that’s what we tried to do, season by season.”
While most people refer to “Stranger Things” by seasons, the Duffer brothers have purposely always called each installment “Stranger Things 2” or “Stranger Things 3” because they’ve always approached every collection of episodes as one big movie.
That’s helped them to put anything and everything into making those episodes as good as possible without getting obsessed about what comes next.
“We always tried every season to make it the best one we possibly can, as opposed to stressing about the end,” Ross Duffer said. “It’s very hard when people have to plan three movies ahead. You have to make one good movie first. And the fact that we grew up watching almost no television, and only watching movies, is why we ended up calling them Stranger Things 2 and Stranger Things 3, rather than seasons two and three.
“We wanted them each to have their own identity and feel very different. It kept us from getting bored. The second we’d get bored, we knew we’d have to end the show because the creative would suffer.”
Now all the work is done with the final season of “Stranger Things” — or “Stranger Things 5” if you will — set to debut on Nov. 26 followed by three more episodes on Christmas Day and then it all leads to the series finale on New Year’s Eve.
The show debuts on Netflix but the series finale is also set to play in movie theaters around the world.
