Introduction
It’s hard to believe, but after ten years of working on this show, we have reached the end.
These characters are now a part of us, and we could have written them for the rest of our lives. But all good things must come to an end, as they say, and we knew our story had reached its natural end.
Stranger Things is a coming-of-age story, and, well, our cast had come of age.
Time had caught up to us. It was time to say goodbye.
The challenge, of course, was to say goodbye in a way that would feel truthful to our characters, that would feel both unexpected and inevitable. It was scary, but whenever we felt overwhelmed, we looked to our north star: the final scene of the show.
Since season two, we’ve known the last scene of the show would be our “kids,” now grown, playing D&D one last time. We knew that Eleven, sadly, would not be there. We knew that Holly and her friends would race down the steps, taking their places. We knew that Mike would look down from the top of the steps at this new generation, feeling melancholy but also happiness that Holly would now get to experience the rush of childhood, with all its joy, excitement, and pain. And then the final shot: Mike closing the basement door—closing the door on his childhood.
What we didn’t know was that Holly and her friends would play an important role in the season.
We first broke season five during the pandemic. Our original pitch contained most of the big ideas: Vecna moving the Abyss, the wormhole reveal, Max trapped in Vecna’s mindscape, exploding “The Bridge,” Will’s powers. But the vanishing of Holly Wheeler did not exist.
After the release of season four, we revisited our pitch with our writers, and we all felt that something was missing. For one, Max was drifting around Vecna’s mindscape with no one to talk to and no direct connection to the plot, but most worryingly, it didn’t quite evoke the feeling of season one. For answers, we turned to our final scene, to the image of Holly and her friends—the next generation—pounding down those basement steps. Then, an idea: What if Holly became a major character and was taken by Vecna just like Will in season one?
At last, everything began to click. Holly, Derek, and their friends brought a youthful energy to the show that harkened back to the first season. Will’s emotional journey and lingering questions—why was he taken all those years ago?—suddenly had more resonance. Max had someone to talk to, and her journey was now directly connected to the main plot.
But even with the puzzle pieces in place, we can’t say writing any of it was easy. Every scene carried a heavy weight; every line brought us closer to the end, to having to say farewell to these characters we had grown to love like family. It made us sad but also terribly anxious. We felt a duty to do right by each of them, to leave them in a place that felt earned and right.
Everything that we wanted to do—with both story and character—we had to get to. There was no can-kicking.
Moments we had been building up to for years took the longest to write: Nancy and Jonathan’s break-up and Will’s coming out. Without a doubt, these were the most challenging scenes we had ever written. There were so many layers and years of backstory to each of these scenes; how do you say everything you want in a few pages of dialogue?
Well, for starters, we took more than a few pages. Luckily, thanks to the show’s success, we had the luxury of slowing down, to really spend time with these characters and dig deeper. We then continued working on the scenes, rewriting them over and over until, at last, they made us cry.
As we moved on to the final script, there were more tears. Every scene was a “last”: the last time Joyce and Hopper would share a loving look; the last time Eleven would use her powers; the last time Dustin banters with Steve; the last time Lucas and Max hold hands.
But nothing hit us harder than the last words we wrote: END SERIES.
Suddenly, we were overwhelmed with memories. Walking down Avocado Street in Los Feliz, spitballing this new idea for a show about a supernatural kidnapping; getting the call that Netflix wanted to make it; meeting with Winona Ryder (Winona Ryder!) over lunch; watching our kids perform the basement scene and realizing, hey, this might work.
But sadness soon gave way to gratitude. Gratitude for our adopted family: our writers, our actors, our crew—and to our fans, like you, for supporting us and the show throughout the years. Without you, this story would have ended at season one, with the Byer family eating dinner on a cold Christmas night. Your passion allowed us to keep going, to tell this story the way we always dreamed, from beginning to end.
So, thank you, from the bottom of our hearts, for going on this journey with us. And remember, even though the story of Mike, Eleven, Will, Lucas, Dustin, and the others is now over, their adventures are still there, ready to experience again—or discover for the first time.
And who knows, perhaps there will be more stories to tell in the world of Stranger Things.
But until then . . .
Over and out,
Matt and Ross Duffer
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