Stranger Things has been a Netflix institution for almost a decade, meaning the story has only grown bigger and bigger. What started as a small-town Stephen King tribute has morphed into one of Netflix’s biggest hits, and the Hawkins gang is now saving the world over and over again. It’s all leading to the fifth and final season, slated for release next year, three years after the previous season.
With that much buildup, fans are understandably a bit nervous about how this series, known for upping the ante every time, will pull off a truly final adventure. Will it be able to wrap up the stories of the characters who have grown up before our very eyes? Thankfully, one of the series’ stars has words of reassurance for fans, promising Stranger Things will find a way to stick the landing.
In conversation with Inverse for his upcoming role in the DCU show Creature Commandos, Stranger Things star David Harbour gushes about what’s coming ahead in the show’s final season. “It's going to be huge,” he says. “We've been shooting it for a long time. We're tying up all the threads that we've laid, all the pipe that we've laid throughout 10 years of work, and they're really doing it on a grand scale.”
However, while the action and scale are getting bigger, that doesn’t mean there won’t be the small, simple character moments that made the world fall in love with Mike, Eleven, and Hopper in the first place. “We also have scenes in there that are very simple. The first season [was] really about these small Midwestern people in the ‘80s who had really good values, but we really struggled with a lot of emotional complexity. There's a lot of compassion and heart and love between these people and a lot of damage.”
There’s so much complexity in Stranger Things at this point — characters have grown, changed, fallen in love, fallen out, and grown up, but somehow, Harbour says, everything will come together at the end. “I think the Duffers have always had a very strong connection to the audience and what the audience wants to see, in terms of pairings or what they want. There are a lot of relationships that they know they need to tie up, and I think they're doing a very good job at that,” he says.” I think it'll be very satisfying when you see it. I don't want to say too much. I feel I've already said too much, but I think you'll be very satisfied when you watch it.”
When a big show like this ends, it all boils down to trust: fans trusting the showrunners, the Duffer brothers, to bring everything to a head in a way that makes saying goodbye to these characters in a way that feels natural instead of painful. If David Harbour, the father figure of Stranger Things, trusts the ending will be satisfying, so can we.
