An Oral History of the Cast’s Last Day on Set

When “Stranger Things” premiered on Netflix on July 15, 2016, the show’s cast was made up almost entirely of young people at the starts of their professional lives. The show’s creators, Matt and Ross Duffer, have told a decidedly grown-up adventure story filled with ferocious monsters and equally terrifying adult authority figures. But they built “Stranger Things” on a foundation of pre-teen innocence and adolescent angst, as vividly reflected in the youthful faces of the dozen or so actors who would eventually come to populate its cast.

Alongside veteran actors Winona Ryder, David Harbour, Cara Buono and Matthew Modine, the core “kid” group first consisted of children sitting on either side of 13 (Millie Bobby Brown, Finn Wolfhard, Gaten Matarazzo, Caleb McLaughlin and Noah Schnapp), while the “teens” were comprised of young adults barely over 20 (Natalia Dyer, Charlie Heaton and Joe Keery). As the show exploded in popularity, the cast expanded to include new kids played by Sadie Sink and Priah Ferguson (in Season 2), and a new teen played by Maya Hawke (in Season 3) — as well as a few other characters who, by and large, were killed off along the way. (R.I.P. Bob, Billy, Eddie.)

While some of the “Stranger Things” series regulars had worked before, none of them — except Ryder — had experienced anything close to the phenomenon that the show became. Practically overnight, they transformed from unknowns into global household names, and as the story of Hawkins, Indiana progressed through its first four seasons, audiences got to “grow with the show in the same way that I got to grow with the ‘Harry Potter’ movies,” says Wolfhard. “I felt like I really knew those people, knew those characters. The way that you relate to them is so special.”

As with the “Harry Potter” films, “Stranger Things” is coming to an end almost a decade after it began, the first four episodes premiering Nov. 26, the next three at Christmas, and the finale on New Year’s Eve. Its original stars — all of them now adults, yes, even Ferguson — spent the entirety of 2024 in Atlanta filming the final eight episodes of the show, culminating with the feature length series finale that the Duffers, who wrote and directed the episode, have promised will provide a definitive end to every character’s story. (That includes young Holly Wheeler, now played by Nell Fisher, who takes a more central role in Season 5.)

In a series of interviews conducted by Variety from July through November, the Duffers and the cast of “Stranger Things” relayed the experience of concluding the show that has defined the most formative decade of their lives — and how, even as they knew the end was coming, none of them were quite prepared for how intense those last days would be for them. Here, in their own lightly edited — and spoiler-free — words, is the story of the final days of “Stranger Things.”

The final table read took place on Sept. 8, 2024, on Stage 16 of the Atlanta production facility that was the home of “Stranger Things” for the majority of its five-season run. The occasion — attended by just a few people outside of the Duffers and the cast, including executive producer Shawn Levy — was unique in many ways, first and foremost because none of the actors had seen the finished script for the finale until that day.

Matt Duffer (creator, writer, director): Ross and I don’t share anything with anybody. The actors poke around, especially Millie. She’s pretty good at guessing things, too. But everybody was reading it cold for the first time. Ross and I were nervous, because no one aside from us and maybe two other people had read the script.

Ross Duffer (creator, writer, director): I know the actors are so protective of those characters, too. Some people knew some broad beats of the stuff that was going to happen, but generally, they didn’t know how they were going to end up.

Sadie Sink (Max Mayfield): I always get really nervous for table reads, but that was the most nerve-racking of them all. Usually, we get to look at it on our own time, and then come together and read it. But that was the first time it was just a completely cold read.

Charlie Heaton (Jonathan Byers): It was really intimate. It was with Matt and Ross, the cast, and Shawn. In the past, we did these really big table reads for 50 or 60 people.

Nell Fisher (Holly Wheeler): For the first six episodes, we were on quite long, menacing tables with microphones in, like, an all-black room. But for the final episode, we were just kind of sitting around. Some people were on couches, some people were on bean bags, and it was all very relaxed.

Charlie Heaton: The table read for us is our version of watching and experiencing it for the first time. And then there’s the heightened element of this is the last time we’re all going to sit together and read it and experience it.

Priah Ferguson (Erica Sinclair): I was sad, but I was also excited to see how the story will end and how it all comes together.

Natalia Dyer (Nancy Wheeler): The scripts are always very fun to read. They kind of jump off the page. So the table reads generally have always been something you look forward to. It’s like reading a book that you really enjoy. Often, it’s the first time you’ve seen each other for a while, and it’s for the first of the episodes, so there’s a lot of new beginning energy. I don’t think we normally would read the last ones together so much. So there’s definitely a different energy in that last one.

In truth, a few of the actors had already shot part of the finale script before the table read.

Nell Fisher: I had actually filmed some scenes from Episode 8, without having read the script, which was quite funny.

Matt Duffer: There were certain scenes in the finale that took place in a summer setting that we had to shoot before we had completed the script. That was unusual, in that we did feed some pages completely out of context to our actors, and we had to shoot scenes from Episode 8 part way through production. It’s a horrible thing to do. You don’t want to be establishing continuity in that way, but it was necessary. It ended up working totally fine, thank God.

One crucial member of the cast — who plays the show’s main villain — couldn’t attend the table read.

Jamie Campbell Bower (Vecna/Henry Creel): I’ve discussed Henry and Vecna, and this idea of isolation and loneliness. There are lots of coincidences — well, seeming coincidences — that happen in life in general, and one of those for me was upon being asked to come in to read the final episode of “Stranger Things,” I decided to get COVID. So my read through for that final episode was done on Zoom in isolation whilst everybody else was in the room. I thought it quite a fitting end.

Before the table read began, the Duffers were called upon to commemorate the occasion.

Matt Duffer: Everybody started yelling, “Speech! Speech! Speech!” First of all, we give really bad speeches. Last time we gave one, Millie was like, “What was that?”

Charlie Heaton: It was very beautiful. It was just this culmination of the whole thing.

Matt Duffer: I said, “Everything we wanted to say about the show, the experience of making the show, you as actors, and your characters — we tried to put all of that into the script. I’m not going to be able to say anything better than that. We write much better than we speak. Let’s just read the script.”

Natalia Dyer: It felt very reverent. Everybody’s really anticipating this moment, and it also felt like a turning point, when you have it in your hands, and you finally have all these answers. It’s so complex and layered, all the things that you feel: You’re so grateful, you’re so happy, you’re so, so sad.

Charlie Heaton: I was sitting in front of Noah and Finn. I assumed it might get emotional. But 20 minutes in — and we’re not even a third into the script — Noah is bawling his eyes out, like deep sobs. And then Finn was crying. That really set everyone off.

Finn Wolfhard (Mike Wheeler): It’s going to be interesting if that ever comes out, because it’ll be pretty embarrassing. The whole thing is just crying. I was like, “I’m not going to cry. I’m going to feel very normal, and it’s going to be great.” And then halfway through, I just started totally bawling my eyes out.

Noah Schnapp (Will Byers): I can only imagine how that’s going to feel on screen, with scoring and real faces and not just words on a page, but it hit a lot of us. It felt like they were writing the end of our real people lives — it went beyond just the screenplay. I can’t spoil it, but like, I always connect my life to some of the beats that they wrote in the script.

Finn Wolfhard: A lot of our dialogue was echoing stuff — like, the whole thing is about the end, it’s also final season for us. We all had dialogue in the final episode that we had said in some way or another in real life.

Ross Duffer: Honestly, as we were writing that last script, which is the longest we’ve ever spent on a script before, what they’re talking about wasn’t really a conscious thing. We were just talking about these characters. It really was once we did the final table read that it was like, “Oh, of course.” That is when I saw how much it was mirroring their real-life experience.

Charlie Heaton: Joe, Natalia and Maya and I were sitting together, and there was a little moment at the end where we all just looked at each other and were like “Wow.” You feel so bonded to these people and have worked with them for 10 years. They’re like family. We all hugged at the end afterwards. It was a lot more emotional than I expected it to be.

Jamie Campbell Bower: We finished doing the read through, and then Matt and Ross came up (to my Zoom screen), and they were almost like, “Oh my gosh, you’re still here. Hi!” Just because I’ve been watching these people go through this emotional experience and thinking about how much this show has been there for people, I started to cry. All I could say to Matt and Ross was, “Thank you. Thank you for making this such a huge part of so many people’s lives.”

David Harbour (Jim Hopper): The events that happen in that script pay off a lot of things that we started in the first season. The series begins with kids in the basement, and then when we leave the series, they’re not kids anymore. They’ve grown up. The passage of time is often just very moving in and of itself.

Paul Dichter (writer): I remember going up to Ross and I was like, “I’m done. I just heard the final script of the final episode of ‘Stranger Things’ read out loud, and it’s perfect. I’m a writer on the show, and I just now, just now, realize that I’m done after 10 years, and it feels crazy.” And he was like, “Uh huh.” He was not crying. I was like, “You don’t feel done, do you?” He’s like, “No, I got months of shooting, I got a year of post, I got editing.” I was like, “Yeah, you’re not taking this moment in. You’re not done. I’m done. And it feels crazy. And when you have that same moment” — which is honestly coming up very, very soon for them — “you’re going to feel this way too, times 10 or a million.”

Finn Wolfhard: And it was on Gaten’s birthday, so we threw a little party for him afterwards, and went to Medieval Times. It was a great day.

What actually happens in the finale remains a tightly guarded secret that will be revealed when the episode debuts on Netflix and in select movie theaters at 5pm PT / 8pm ET on Dec. 31. But speaking with Variety, the actors did share their experience of their final days on set. Thanks to some savvy work by the show’s production staff…

Matt Duffer: We were actually able to structure it so every actor’s last day was their last scene.

Natalia Dyer: There are so many ways that that could not work out. You have so many moving pieces: There’s schedules and filming and weather. The fact that they were able to pull that off, and they made a point of doing that, was really touching. Getting to do that with your character is really, really lovely. It really amps up the emotion of the moment and that day. It almost felt a little masochistic and indulgent — but in the best way possible.

Maya Hawke (Robin Buckley): I will be forever grateful to them for allowing our last moment not to be like, “OK, and now throw a grenade at the monster again. Cut! That’s a wrap on Maya!” It was a monumental day, and they allowed it to really be that — and feel like that. 

Carmen Cuba (casting director): I hadn’t visited the set since the first season. It was outside. It was freezing. I was overwhelmed with how gigantic it was. I’ve worked on, I don’t know, four Ridley Scott movies. It was bigger. And the guys are just sort of the same in every part of their job. They’re calm, they’re direct, they’re articulate. I was like, “How are they doing that, with this epicness around?”

Matt Duffer: There was a sense at the end of those days that this experience that we all had is something that none of us will likely ever have again. It was really hard. Each day was saying goodbye. Now, each of those actors only had to say goodbye once. Ross and I had to do it four different times.

Each actor’s final day took on an even greater sense of occasion.

Noah Schnapp: I went to every single person on that call sheet’s last day. I did not want to say goodbye to anybody. Every single goodbye hit me so much more than I expected. Like, I was at Winona’s last day, and I was like, “Oh, this is a work goodbye, we’ll see each other soon.” And then I was in her trailer, and I was like, “No! You can’t leave!” I was holding on to her, just sobbing. I didn’t want to say goodbye. I did not expect it to hit me so hard. I realized after that how important that relationship was to me. She really was a second mother to me growing up, and not having this show to keep us together was really hard, especially with her, because she’s hard to keep track of. I’m not always seeing Winona Ryder. So it was a hard goodbye.

Millie Bobby Brown (Eleven/Jane Hopper): I bawled more than I expected I would. While I was at the point personally and professionally for the show to come to an end, I realized in that moment the finality was so real and I was maybe not emotionally prepared.

Natalia Dyer: People came to my last day, and you just feel that: It’s really nice. There’s a family element to it. At the end, there was a lot of people supporting each other emotionally. Crew, as well. I think we really felt it all in a big way.

Joe Keery (Steve Harrington): A lot of people came who weren’t working that day, and everyone was just sort of hanging out. The scene itself was really fun to work on, “fun” being sort of a loose word. It is kind of heavy. I think everybody was feeling the fatigue of shooting for a year. I mean, the amount of material that they got in one year is truly incredible. Everyone was looking forward to being done, but then once you get to the finish line, you look back and think, “Oh, man, can I just have one more?”

Charlie Heaton: Me, Joe and Maya drove a VW van to work. You’re just going through everything for the last time, and you’re very aware of that. It’s the last time in hair and makeup. It’s the last time you get your mic on.

Maya Hawke: They did such a beautiful job of choosing a last scene that mirrored the emotional experience that we were going through as people in ending the show. And that’s not a spoiler, because you don’t know my experience! But it was such a gift, because it allowed the feelings that we were working through with each other on that day to become a part of the scene, and to be this integrated emotional experience.

Ross Duffer: At a certain point, these characters have become so enmeshed with the actors. Matt and I were just thinking about Robin, but, of course, Maya is Robin. She’s made Robin into who she is. It makes sense that that happened.

Maya Hawke: I think it changed me as an actor forever. I am a different actor today, and I think a better actor, because of that opportunity to do a scene that was on such a high-stakes emotional day of my life that was also a high stakes emotional scene. I felt like I got to connect a red wire and a blue wire, and all of a sudden, I understood how to be present as an actor. I feel forever changed, and like I have access to a part of my emotional experience when I’m working that I didn’t used to have access to. It was just this extraordinary gift.

Millie Bobby Brown: It felt like a massive milestone in reaching this achievement that was finally coming to an end, like, “We did it!” But also the weight of this being the end was so heavy.

Maya Hawke: I did spend 12 hours in a rolling cycle of weeping. I would start weeping, and then I’d have to pull myself together to go back to the beginning of a scene. And then in the middle of the scene, I would start weeping again. And then I would weep after it was over. It was a weepy, weepy day.

Ross Duffer: It was hard to even get through take after take. You’re just going, “They’re feeling every moment of this.” Occasionally, they were actually too emotional when it was a little too early in the scene. We’re like, “You’re not supposed to be upset!”

Priah Ferguson: I cried more at home. I tried to keep my composure around my castmates. But at home, I did cry.

Jamie Campbell Bower: On my final day, they called final checks, and my incredible team of hair and makeup people who I work with came over. I remember turning around to our first (assistant director) and just going, “No final checks here. This is not it. This can’t be the last time that we’re doing this.” So often that when you’re working on a film or a TV show, there’s always like, well, maybe we’ll come back. This, it was like, “No, this is it.” There is a finality to what we’re doing in this moment, which is quite a difficult thing to think about.

Sadie Sink: They did a really good job of giving us all the ending that we wanted and that the show really deserved. And I think that’s so important when dealing with something as special as the show was for all of us, when it’s a decade of our lives. It was important to give it the proper closure it deserved, and I think we all definitely got that.

Jamie Campbell Bower: Sadie was there on my last day — not in the scene that I was doing, but she just went, “Is this how it feels?” And I was like, “I don’t know. I don’t know how it’s going to feel for you, but this is how it feels for me right now.” She’s like, “You look like you’re in shock.” I was a bit. Somebody took a photograph of me. I looked like I’d come in from a world tour carrying all these bags, and I just dropped them. I just let go of the weight.

Maya Hawke: If you’d asked me three years ago, I would have said that I thought it would have been bittersweet, and it was — only in that it’s so sweet to love people so much. But the ending really was just bitter. It was just really sad to say goodbye to everybody. And not that it’s goodbye forever, but it will never be the same. You know, my first two seasons, I couldn’t ditch my “new kid” syndrome. I felt like a friend who’d been invited to Thanksgiving, you know? In the last season, I really felt like a part of the family. Which was sad in its own way, because it’s like, “Oh, I just got to be a part of the family, and now the family’s breaking up!”

David Harbour: It’s like you’re asking me to talk about my family. All I can say is, there’s a lot of love in this entire thing, and there was a lot of love on that day.

Occasionally, the warm and fuzzy vibes were splashed with a spot of vinegar.

Brett Gelman (Murray Bauman): I gave two speeches, actually. I gave a speech that was very heartfelt. I was maybe not full-on crying, but on the verge. Everybody crowded around. I hugged everybody. I thought I was wrapped. And then Matt and Ross walked up to me and were like, “Hey man, we messed up. We need you for one more shot.” So then we did it and then I was wrapped again. And then I gave a funny speech where, like a real jerk, I said they should all be grateful, and that I’m sorry if I mistreated anyone. I don’t totally remember it.

For many of the show’s actors, their final day had the culminating feeling of a graduation: a day of elation and exhaustion, nostalgia and heartache.

Ross Duffer: The hardest was just saying goodbye to the young cast. They were so young when they started, and we’ve seen them grow a lot. Finishing the scenes with their characters, and saying goodbye and seeing them emotionally process it, I think that was where it really hit us.

Caleb McLaughlin (Lucas Sinclair): I knew I was gonna cry because I kept asking everyone the last week, “You gonna cry tomorrow? I want to know if you’re gonna cry! Because I’m not.” I was probably the first person to cry, and didn’t stop crying.

Noah Schnapp: Every minute was, like, counting down, “No, not another minute!” Like, I was standing in the bathroom, saying goodbye to every piece of this set. It felt really reminiscent of Season 1 childhood, all of us on set. Like, there was an ice cream truck and we were rolling around in the grass and playing tag, just being like kids again. All our moms showed up to set. They haven’t obviously come to set for us since, like, Season 2 and 3. They got a cute picture together.

Gaten Matarazzo (Dustin Henderson): It’s almost like a last day of school, when you’re not really hunkered down and doing your work, you’re just buzzing and zipping around and hugs and lots of sentimental conversations. And everybody who had worked on the show at any point, seemingly, was in the room at that time. It was probably a fire hazard.

Caleb McLaughlin: It was an emotional roller coaster. All of the memories and all the moments that we’ve had on set just started up in my heart. I’m like, “Wow, you remember this happened? Remember when we did this?” I was like, Oh man, does it really have to end now?

The final day of production was on Dec. 20, 2024. No one wanted it to end.

Nell Fisher: My scene was actually the last scene that was shot. It was on the very last day. It was running a bit behind schedule, and so I had about three hours of just hanging around with the rest of the cast who were in my scene. I finished slightly earlier, but I waited until the final wrap, which was — I mean, it was incredible. I cried. Everyone cried! There were a lot of tears. I’m surprised Atlanta didn’t flood, to be honest.

Noah Schnapp: I can’t get into real details of the scene, but when they yelled, “This is the last one,” we were in our set, and we just didn’t want to walk out.

Finn Wolfhard: I remember looking at everyone and saying, “Let’s not go out. Let’s just be with each other as long as we possibly can in this moment before we go out.” Because then it becomes about everyone. It’s not just our thing anymore. It’s not just us.

Noah Schnapp: We were just sitting there, kind of huddled up, hugging and crying for a solid 10 minutes of just silence — all these people outside waiting for us. I’ve never experienced anything like it.

Finn Wolfhard: It was less than 10 minutes. I think it was probably like three or four minutes, just sitting there, just so we could feel like we’re doing it in our own way, and processing it together. It was really special to just be sitting around everyone and just taking it all in together. It was the most real feeling “Stranger Things” episode ever.

Noah Schnapp: And then we left this set to our parents and all the actors and all the crew members that we’ve grown up with all just waiting there, clapping. It felt like a dream. And then there was balloons coming down, and then we all went around giving speeches and thank yous to everyone for being there for us and growing up with us. I could barely get through my speech.

Gaten Matarazzo: As many tears as there were — certainly on my part, on a day like that — it really did feel like a big party to celebrate the accomplishment that was this show in its entirety. And being able to be there from start to finish is a really cool perspective that I share with only a few members of the cast. They gave us a family in that show.

Even Netflix chief creative officer Bela Bajaria attended the last day.

Bela Bajaria: It was really about seeing everybody and looking them into the eye and saying thank you for this incredible run, and how creative it was — just to be able to do that in person. It was really being there to witness all of these people together that have worked on this show for 10 years. There was a lot of gratitude and emotion for each other and what they had built. Every time they wrapped a character — just the applause and the tears and the hugs. I mean, they’ve been together for so long! Growing up, coming of age — literally coming of age on screen.

Matt Duffer: I’m never going to spend 10 years on something again, I don’t think, where you become this much of a family with the people who are working on it, get to know them as well as you do, and have them influence the show and the characters to the degree that these actors did.

Maya Hawke: I should probably lie about this, but I’m at a loss without the show. I miss it so much? I think about being in Atlanta with everybody every day. 

Charlie Heaton: Everyone’s been like “What’s it like now that you finished?” And in my opinion, it ended so perfectly. It doesn’t feel like anything was left, and I wouldn’t change anything about how it ended. We wrapped and then we got to be with the kids when they wrapped, and we got to see them go through it and support them. It’s like a little death and you’re mourning, and then you wake up the next day and you feel a sense of loss. It was a really unique experience.

Finn Wolfhard: I don’t think I’ll ever truly feel like it’s the end. The show will live on in so many ways that I hope it still feels relevant to people years down the line. As far as the actual end of the story goes, I don’t know. I mean, there’s a reason why we ended it, and it’s done. But who’s to say that the Duffers, in 10 years, when they get another idea, they do it? It’s up to them. I think it’s good that it’s the end, but part of me hopes it’s not.

Noah Schnapp: It still doesn’t feel like the end yet. I mean, obviously, I’ll never forget that last day for the rest of my life, and that definitely felt like closing not just a chapter, but an era of my life. But still, I mean, we’re gearing up with so much to look forward to. Regardless of the hype and attention, just the fact that we all get to be together doing this for another few months is what I really look forward to, because that’s what really matters to me — all the people. So it doesn’t feel over yet. I’d say when the show’s out, the promotional tour is done, and there’s nothing really keeping us all together again, then it’s going to be like, “Oh wow, I really have to sit with this.” But for now, there’s still lots to come.

Jennifer Maas, Marc Malkin, Andrew McGowan and Leia Mendoza contributed to this story.