All things must pass

After a decade, Stranger Things is bowing out with an epic final season. Its creators and stars talk about big 80s hair, recruiting a Terminator killer-and the gift that Kate Bush sent them

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How do you finish one of the biggest and most popular TV series of the last decade? Three years after season four came out, the fifth and final season of Stranger Things is about to make its way into the world. Millions of viewers are getting ready to find out what happens to the Upside Down and whether the plucky teens of Hawkins, Indiana, can fight off Vecna for good, but it is early November 2025, and its creators Matt and Ross Duffer are finding it difficult to talk about. It's not just because they're feeling the pressure, or because the risk of spoilers and leaks is so dangerously high. It's because the identical twin brothers from North Carolina are just not ready. “It makes me sad,” says Ross. “Because it’s easier to not think about the show actually ending.”

A decade ago, hardly anyone knew what the Upside Down was. Few had heard of Vecna, Mind Flayers or Demogorgons. In 2015, the brothers - self-professed nerds and movie obsessives - were about to begin shooting their first TV series. Stranger Things was to be a supernatural adventure steeped in 80s nostalgia, paying tribute to Steven Spielberg and Stephen King.

Part of their pitch to Netflix was that it would be “John Carpenter mashed up with ET”. Winona Ryder and Matthew Modine were in it, so it wasn’t exactly low-key, but it was by no means a dead-cert for success, not least because it was led by a cast of young unknowns. The first season came out in the summer of 2016, smashed Netflix viewing records and became a TV phenomenon.