Netflix’s Stranger Things has been the subject of a long-running joke. The ‘80s-set series started in 2016 and followed tweens on a supernatural adventure, but in the eight years since it debuted, only four seasons have been made, and the cast has grown from upstart kids into adults who have sung on Broadway, starred in Taylor Swift’s short film, and married into the Bon Jovi family, all the while becoming less and less convincing as teenage characters.
With the show in production for its fifth and final season, the ever-nostalgic series is doubling down by revisiting its own past, including the tragic backstory of one of its main characters. And to do that, it’s actually going to mess with its cast list.
In the Season 1 finale of Stranger Things, we saw what made Hopper so hesitant about taking in Eleven as an adopted daughter; he’d once had a daughter, but she passed away after a cancer diagnosis. That daughter, Sara, is shown in that finale, and then again in a brief Season 4 flashback.
Season 5 will bring the character back again. According to a report by Knife Edge Media, a casting call went out seeking a new actress for five-year-old Sara, as the original actor, Elle Graham, has, of course, grown-up like the rest of the Stranger Things kids. We’ll have to wait and see how large of a role Sara will play, but the casting call specified that the character would only be seen in flashbacks, so there’s no time travel tomfoolery or fantasy sequences afoot.
This comes after director Shawn Levy shared set images, including the Christmas light alphabet wall Joyce used to communicate with her son Will when he was trapped in the Upside Down. It looks like the last season of Stranger Things will spend a good amount of time revisiting what happened in Season 1, which could be a handy refresher, considering it will have been almost a decade between the show’s debut and conclusion.
Stranger Things has only grown bigger with each passing season, but these are reminders the show hasn’t forgotten its roots as a plucky story about a small town thrust into a supernatural situation. Before it was about Vecna, demogorgons, and Kate Bush, Stranger Things was about a lost boy and a found girl. That emotional core has always been present, and in the show’s last gasp, it looks like those parts will take center stage once again.
