‘Stranger Things’ Creators Break Down the Final Season’s Biggest Twists So Far

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[Thisstorycontainsmajorspoilersfrom[ThisstorycontainsmajorspoilersfromStranger Things season five, episodes one through four.]

Within the first four episodes of their final season, Stranger Things creators Matt and Ross Duffer have already turned things upside down.

The first batch of the Netflix hit’s final season has arrived, with four more episodes still to come (three arriving on Dec. 25, and the grand finale hitting Dec. 31). Already, the wait for the second half feels agonizing, thanks to the Duffers putting the Hawkins gang through their paces and then some. Thus far, some long percolating twists have already unfolded, such as Will (Noah Schnapp) finally channeling the Upside Down and gaining some sorcerous powers of his own. In the Upside Down itself, a familiar face resurfaced, although it’s one no one really expected to see again: Kali (Linnea Berthelsen), the central figure of season two’s “The Lost Sister,” easily the most polarizing episode of the whole series. Not only is she back, but she’s seemingly empowering the army’s ability to navigate the Upside Down — though now that she’s reunited with Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown), the power dynamics are certain to flip.

Will’s sorcerer turn and Kali’s return aren’t the only big surprises of the final season so far, with Lord Vecna ​​(Jamie Campbell Bower) showing up to abduct as many Hawkins’ children as possible in the closing moments of episode four, among other brutal developments. (The Wheelers! Somebody think of the Wheelers!) Below, the Duffer brothers break down some of their boldest swings of the final season thus far, and share insight into the work done to bring this last stretch to a satisfying close.

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The world’s finally getting their first look at the beginning of the end. How do you guys feel?

ROSS DUFFER We’re good. We’re good. We’re excited. I mean, nervous to show it to the world, but we’re excited to finally be near the end, but also sad… very confused emotions over here! We’ll see how we feel when it’s all done. Right now, we still have some work to do, but we’re getting close to the end.

MATT DUFFER We’re still working on it, which allows us to remain in denial. But it’s very weird. When I was in school, I was always the last person working on a test, so I hate that someone has to force me to put pencils down, which is inevitably going to happen.

Before we dig into the big beats from these first four episodes, I just want to say, how dare you end this show just as soon as you introduce us to Derek (Jake Connelly, the series’ latest breakout young actor).

ROSS (Laughs.) Jake is a special kid. He had only been in a local Chicago furniture commercial [before this]. We found him and it’s different than how we imagined Derek originally, but that’s how it was with most of the actors we found. Gaten [Matarazzo] was very different than the Dustin we originally imagined, but what you want to find is someone who you think is special, and then you just write the role to them.

With finding this young actor right here at the end, was it at all nostalgic for the way you originally cast the series?

MATT Yes. That was one of the reasons we [created this character]and why we made Holly (played by Nell Fisher, in a recasting decision) a big part of the storyline, and her friends. A big part of the story was to recapture some of the feeling of season one. Obviously our “kids” are not kids anymore, so we’ve lost that element of the show and because we wanted this season to harken back a little bit more to season one, we felt it was very natural to bring in the next generation. The timing worked out in the sense that Holly is very close to the age our boys were in season one.

It’s not Stranger Things without extraordinary amounts of reckless child endangerment! And where we leave things at the end of the first half of the year, the kids are very much in danger, with mass abductions… the vanishing of Will Byers writ large. How long did you know that this was a direction that the show was going in?

ROSS There are definitely elements, like Will’s powers and where the show’s ultimately going, that we’ve known for a while. But the Holly and Derek storyline involving all these kids was really formed once we sat down with our writers and started breaking season five. That’s really what clicked it all into place, once we realized that and it felt like we brought things full circle. So that was a later idea, but once we had that, that’s when season five started to click into writing itself.

We’ve had years to prepare for the end, and you’ve had years to plan it. But now, the ending isn’t just theoretical; it’s here. How much did the reality of ending the show match up with your initial visions? In other words, how much did you stay close to your original plan, versus how much did you allow yourself to add in here along the way with these final episodes?

MATT Ross and I started out wanting to make movies, and it surprised us that we ended up in television. But one of the things we’ve fallen in love with is that it is so alive. It is constantly evolving. You’re able to shift the story, even mid-production, based on what you’re seeing and what’s working. The actors have enormous influence on the story, so it’s constantly evolving. So did we have some rough ideas of where we wanted to go? Yes, especially as we started out season two — we’ve known for a really long time what the final scene of the show was going to be, which is nice because that gave us a north star. 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.

ROSS The way we approached every season, but I think ultimately was the right way to do this — and occasionally it’s gotten us into trouble — but it’s as if there’s a movie every season. Let’s not leave anything on the table. Let’s not hold this back. We wanted every season to have not only its own identity, but to swing for the fences, and that’s what we tried to do season by season. It wasn’t really until four and five were broken together that it really became of a piece. And like Matt said, we always knew the ultimate destination, but there was so much room for discovery. We just tried our best every season to make the best season we possibly can as opposed to stressing about it. It’s very hard when people are planning three movies ahead… it’s like, try making one good movie!

MATT The fact that we grew up watching almost no television and only watching movies is why we called it Stranger Things 2 and Stranger Things 3rather than seasons two and three. We wanted each season to have its own identity and feel very different. For one of the reasons, obviously, it keeps us from getting bored. The second we got bored, we knew we’d have to end the show because then the creative is going to suffer. We wanted each season almost to feel like its own massive, standalone movie and we love the idea — and you see this happening now — where people are arguing over what is the best season. Our goal was that none of it melds together and each season has very much its own identity, and you can yell at your friends about it.

Back to some of the season’s biggest surprises: Kali returns! Talk about big swings; her introduction back in season two was a big swing, and it didn’t land for everyone.

MATT Really? (Laughs.) I don’t know what you’re talking about…

Listen, there was certainly a world where you tried something, but it didn’t work out. So I was really surprised and delighted to see her turn up in the finale.

MATT People can say whatever they want about that episode, it’s fine. It’s not going to hurt my feelings. But when people said it was designed as a backdoor pilot for a spinoff, no. Not the case. We loved the character of Kali. We loved Linnea. I think she’s fantastic, and we wanted to bring that character back and we wanted to do that character justice.

ROSS Not doing that would be a disservice to the entire story. Because then that episode does look like a mistake. We’ve always wanted to bring her back and do justice to Linnea and Kali, but we didn’t want to just do it for shock value. We wanted to bring her back in a way that she was really going to impact the narrative and arc of Eleven’s journey. Now as we go into volume two, she plays a really important role moving forward. We’re really excited for people to see more of Kali and how she impacts Eleven’s journey.

It was a big “holy shit” moment for me. I didn’t think they were about to come across Vecna, but I wasn’t sure who they would find.

MATT Oh, great! I think that might surprise people more than Will having powers.

Speaking of which, Will has powers! That’s been in the hopper, so to speak, for a while, right?

MATT We started to plant the seeds all the way back in season two, building his connection to the Mind Flayer, which eventually we learn is very much connected to Vecna. So it just is something like Kali where every season thereafter it never felt like the right time. Season five felt perfect because the story began with Will and his vanishing, so it felt very natural to update the story on Will for this final season. We wanted everything to go full circle. It was something we knew we were going to do that we settled on pretty immediately. But it was important to us that he wasn’t a second Eleven. He doesn’t exactly have his own powers. Obviously, it’s a little bit more complicated than that.

Right, it seems like he’s channeling Vecna’s powers.

MATT We liked that. It feels different. We liked giving Will, who’s been a little bit more in the background, especially for the last two seasons, a very powerful moment that tied into his character growth and development. That’s important for me and Ross and the other writers on the show, especially when you have these big climactic set pieces, that there’s something big or emotional or powerful happening with one of the characters at the same time. “Dear Billy” in season three being a good reference for the best the show gets, which is when we have the special effects and spectacle climaxing at the same time as a character’s emotional journey. That was the goal with the end of episode four.

Can you talk about figuring out the character pairings for the final season? Some of it feels very classic, with Eleven and Hopper together, while other pairings feel newer, like Will and Robin. How did you strike that balance between keeping things both nostalgic and new?

ROSS Part of the fun is shuffling people around and playing with those dynamics, but a lot of it goes back to not the narrative specifically, but where we wanted our characters to be by the end of the season and how they were going to get there. We started there and that’s how the pairings come about. Then, for example, Will and Robin being the perfect instance of putting them together was a way for Will to discover more about himself and have her as a mentor. Suddenly, once we did that, his journey clicked into place. So we did that with everyone: Eleven and Hopper, all of it.

MATT More than any other season, this season we talked about the characters, and how since this is the last time we’re going to be with them, we can’t kick the can down the road anymore. We have to resolve these people. So we started there and l looked at everything that was unresolved with each of the characters and talked about where we wanted to end up, and we worked backwards from there. We knew we needed to resolve a lot between Jonathan and Nancy, and Hopper and Eleven had a lot to be resolved. Then you’re looking for new dynamics, and sometimes that involves characters who’ve been together for a long time, like Dustin and Steve. It was important not to be repetitive.

But even with a combination like Steve and Dustin, there’s a knot to tie, right? You want to connect those cables and close the loop.

MATT Exactly. You want to shake up their dynamic. It’s a matter of looking at what’s going to be interesting, which pairings are going to be interesting, and also what will allow them to grow and arc and reach the point where we want them to reach. But sometimes they surprise you as you’re writing it. Television is so alive. Sometimes the characters do things that you’re not anticipating, which is always fun.

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Season five of Stranger Things is being released in three parts: Volume 1 is now streaming (consisting of four episodes), Volume 2 on Christmas (three episodes) and The Finale on New Year’s Eve. Find everything we know about Stranger Things’ final season here.