Stranger Things star Finn Wolfhard has said that, as the cast of the series has grown older, the show has become darker, in much the same way as the Harry Potter franchise did.
The fourth season of Stranger Things, which will be split into two parts, is out on 27 May and will follow a displaced Hawkins gang split across the Soviet Union and the USA.
Speaking to Polygon as part of a virtual set visit, Wolfhard said that the show “inherently becomes darker every season”.
“It gets funnier, gets scarier, gets more dramatic. And I think that just comes with all of us growing up and getting older,” he said. “We’re not all going to be in like mop top wigs, and we’re like, 40 years old, like screaming about like, demogorgons and stuff.”
Wolfhard praised the show’s creators, brothers Matt and Ross Duffer, for “treating our characters like their ages”.
“I like to compare it to Harry Potter,” the actor said. “With Harry Potter, as those movies went on, the darker they went. And that’s kind of where we’re at now. It’s a perfect progression in my opinion.”
The new season’s official trailer dropped last week (13 April) and introduced a horrifying new humanoid creature hanging in the Upside Down.