Stranger Things Creators Have Had the Ending Locked for Years — Down to the Final 40 Minutes
After years of meticulous plotting, the Duffer brothers are steering Stranger Things toward a finale they’ve been building since day one.
Stranger Things is finally coming in for a landing. Nearly a decade since the kids biked out of Hawkins for the first time, season 5 is about to roll out, and the Duffer brothers say this ending is not something they cooked up last minute. They’ve basically had it in their back pocket for years.
They locked the ending years ago
Speaking on a panel at Italy’s Lucca Comics and Games Festival, Ross and Matt Duffer sat down with cast members Gaten Matarazzo (Dustin), Noah Schnapp (Will), Caleb McLaughlin (Lucas), and Finn Wolfhard (Mike) and looked back on how the finale came together. The short version: they figured out the finish line a long time ago and have been steering toward it ever since.
"Luckily, it was about six or seven years ago that we knew at least what the final scene is. We always knew what the last 40 minutes were going to be."
That’s a very specific flex, and it tracks with how meticulously this show has been plotted. Ending a giant, era-defining series is a stress test for any creator, but the Duffers made it clear they’ve been writing to this destination, not scrambling to find one.
Chasing a finale that actually feels like a finale
They also talked about studying some all-time-great TV goodbyes while shaping their own, aiming for something big and emotional without the usual finale whiplash. Matt Duffer said that while they weren’t consciously writing it as a farewell, doing a read-through with the cast made the parallels hit: their characters saying goodbye and the team itself getting ready to let go. The goal is straightforward — if it hit them in the room and on set, it should land for the audience at home.
Release plan (yes, it’s three drops)
Netflix is slicing the final run into three chunks across the holidays — a slightly unusual move, but it does set up a neat little end-of-year binge calendar:
- Stranger Things season 5, Volume 1: November 26
- Volume 2: December 25
- Volume 3: December 31
So if you’ve been waiting since the Upside Down first cracked open, the finish line is finally in sight — and, apparently, it’s the same one the Duffers picked out six or seven years ago.