The Duffer brothers talked extensively with Entertainment Weekly about this trailer and what to expect in the final season, and there are a lot of great teases...
Will's role in the season and how it all ties back to the beginning:
According to Ross, the key to understanding Vecna’s line to Will lies in season 2, episode 6, “The Spy,” when the Byers boy was brought to Hawkins Laboratory for evaluation. He calls it “the most important episode,” teasing, “Will was really working, in a way, for the Mind Flayer.”
Now in season 5, Ross adds, “We start to learn more about what happened and what the connection is to all of this and Vecna.”
The trailer reaffirms that Will is crucial to the conclusion of this story that began nine years ago when the show premiered on Netflix. “Because the story really began with Will and his disappearance, it felt, in order to go full circle, it needed to really end with him in so many ways," Matt says. "In the last couple seasons, we hadn’t really centered much of the show on Will. So there was so much to explore with him from a character perspective and plot perspective."
Stranger Things first introduced Vecna/Henry Creel/One in season 4, while Will was off in California, but the character returned to Hawkins in the finale — a distinction that yielded “really rich territory to explore their connection and relationship,” Matt adds.
It’s also why the final season begins in the fall of 1987, near the anniversary of Will’s disappearance in the Upside Down. “So much of the season was built around the idea of coming full circle, answering many of the questions that were posed all the way back in season 1,” Matt continues. “I think the two biggest questions that we didn’t really answer in season 1 that we do answer this season is ‘what is the Upside Down, truly?’ and ‘why was Will taken?’”
Seeing a lot more of the Upside Down:
“These gates have opened up. We have a full military present in Hawkins and it’s under quarantine,” Ross comments. “I will say, of course the military is doing stuff in the Upside Down, but it really is a mystery to our characters and the audience for the beginning of the show.”
Matt chimes in: “A lot of the season takes place in the Upside Down. If I have to look at one more visual effects shot, I don’t know what I’m gonna do. We will never make anything else with floating anything. Snow, spores, ash, I’m done with all that.”
And what about floating islands? Another snippet from the trailer shows someone falling from the sky in the Upside Down as hovering masses of land bob around the clouds. That’s another piece the Duffers decline to talk much about. “As you start to discover more about the Upside Down, that’s when that imagery comes into play,” Ross says.
“We reveal really everything about the Upside Down, all of which was planned out in season 1,” Matt adds. “It was fun to finally pull back the curtain on all of that.”
How much of each episode is seen in the trailer:
Among the shots the Duffers don’t want to say much about just yet is that red energy pulse emanating from a giant antenna. “It plays a very important role on the show,” Matt comments. “You're not gonna see that in Volume 1, either. It’s in Volume 2.”
The first four episodes of the final season will be released as Volume 1 on Netflix on Nov. 26, while the next batch of three will release as Volume 2 on Christmas Day. Then on New Year’s Eve, the series finale will screen simultaneously in movie theaters and on Netflix.
From the trailers released so far, Matt confirms the footage has mostly been from Vol. 1. However, “There are shots from every single episode, including the finale.” This new one in particular “has something from [episodes] 7 and 8. So I think every episode is accounted for,” Ross says. “The marketing team actually hasn't seen the finale, but we did send them a couple shots that we thought could work. They're in there, but I'm not gonna tell you which shots.”
Not taking death lightly:
Ross does concede, however, “It’s a brutal season, I will say that.”
“Yeah, it's very brutal,” Matt continues. “It's violent. The stakes are higher than ever. Because you're hurtling through the end, a lot more is on the table, I will say. Hopefully it's surprising and earned, what's happened. We weren't going for shock value.”
The Duffers don’t take death lightly. Exploring the death of a main character often felt "so heavy," Matt admits. "It feels like it completely changes what the show is. So we're just very careful about when we do it and who dies.”
For example, the loss of Eddie, who died from Demobats in the season 4 finale, “affects the entirety of season 5," Matt notes. “There is no season 6, so we need to make sure, if and when there are deaths, that it makes sense in terms of where we want our characters to end up at the end of the show. That was a lot of the discussion this year.”
Those are the biggest highlights but the whole article is worth reading.
Damn, I'm super excited. Just a few more weeks!
