Stranger Things Creators Reveal the One Production Headache They Won’t Miss
Countdown is on: the fifth and final season premieres in mere weeks, setting the stage for high-stakes twists, long-awaited reckonings, and a last act you won’t want to miss.
Stranger Things is finally winding down, and the Duffer brothers are getting honest about what they will not miss. Spores. So many spores.
The one thing they will not miss
In a new SFX magazine interview, Ross and Matt Duffer ran through the highs and lows of spending a decade in Hawkins. Writing the Upside Down? Fun. Making the Upside Down? Cold, muddy, and apparently full of airborne junk you have to stare at for weeks.
"If I ever have to look at another spore visual effects shot again... I won't miss that about the show. I won't miss evaluating spore shots, 'That spore across Mike's face, get it out of his eye.' It's endless."
Matt put it even more bluntly: dreaming up the Upside Down is great; filming it is a nightmare. Those sequences are mostly night shoots, outdoors, and the trees have to be bare, which means freezing conditions. According to him, one director got the worst of it.
Frank Darabont got tossed in the deep end
Yes, that Frank Darabont — the filmmaker behind The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile. After 11 years away from directing, he came back to shoot two episodes of the fifth and final season: episodes 3 and 5. The Duffers call him a hero, and they were thrilled he said yes. Then they handed him... the most Upside Down scenes of any director this season. The twist? Darabont does not like night shoots. The brothers admit they kind of lured him in and then loaded him up. They joke that he got a little screwed and they hope they did not send him straight back into retirement. Very them.
So when do we get it?
Netflix is rolling the last season out over the holidays, essentially from Thanksgiving to New Year’s Eve, split into three drops:
- Volume 1: November 26
- Volume 2: December 25
- Finale: December 31
It has been a long road for the Duffers, and if you have ever wondered why every Upside Down scene looks like a damp pollen bomb at midnight, now you know: it is because it is, and they are very ready to be done staring at each individual speck.