The beloved science fiction show “Stranger Things” came to an end after 10 long years, leaving fans with mixed feelings about the finale, which aired on Dec. 31.
Amidst the fan banter and theories, Netflix also dropped a behind-the-scenes documentary that revealed why the finale felt chaotic.
“One Last Adventure: The Making of Stranger Things 5,” directed by Martina Radwan, was released on Netflix on Jan. 12, giving viewers the chance to see the ins and outs of production.
The creators of the show, Ross and Matt Duffer, start the documentary by saying they had yet to write the finale, which marks the beginning of two hours of nonsense.
The documentary shows how each production department worked together and how, without the final script, everything got pushed back. The crew said that the script wasn’t done even halfway through filming the season. The set designers, costume department and special effects team all said they had no idea what was happening in the show and had to either wait to create or rely on verbal plans from the Duffers.
The only redeeming parts of this documentary were seeing how the actors knew their characters better than the creators and seeing how the designers pulled everything together. Maya Hawke (“Fear Street”), who played Robin Buckley in the show, had to remind guest director Sean Levy (“Deadpool and Wolverine,” “Night at the Museum”) that the other characters in the scene did not know her character was dating a woman and could not be openly intimate with her girlfriend in a scene where the couple came close to their final moments.
The Duffer Brothers expressed that they never wanted to write and wanted to focus more on producing and directing, but with this show, they had to take a step back from directing and rely on guest directors to help as they finished the script. Along with Levy, they had guest director Frank Darabont (“Shawshank Redemption,” “The Green Mile”) come in to help.
Darabont brought older film techniques in with him, including wanting to make as much of the set as practical as he could. Chris Trujillo, the production designer, also focused on practical sets and took inspiration from 80’s horror films, mentioning his main inspiration was “Poltergeist.”
There were many scenes in the documentary where Radwan took the viewers into the writers room and showed how the Duffers and other writers bounced ideas off of one another. One writer says that the final battle should bring back the demogorgon and the demobats, but the Duffers decided not to. The Duffers even went so far as to say they had a few more battles planned in the finale, but deleted them because they “tried not to go too crazy.”
The filming of season 5 was as chaotic as its end result. Various subplots and debates on what is real and what is not real were never resolved, but when asked about the finale, the Duffer Brothers kept saying “I guess,” “we’re leaving it up to the viewers,” and insinuating that some moments happened off-screen as stated in their post-finale interviews, including one they did with Collider.
Though the Duffers continuously said they knew what was going to happen from the beginning, this documentary shows that they, in fact, like the fans and everyone else involved, had no idea what was going on.
Just like the series finale, the documentary ended in tears, but it raises the question: are the waterworks due to an impactful ending, a bittersweet goodbye to a decade of work, or frustration from how unsatisfactory the story was wrapped up? As the Duffers would say, that’s left up for interpretation.