:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():format(jpeg)/STRANGERTHINGSSEASON5-103025-10-e15ce5c1bfb8454ba1ab5768add6b3fe.jpg)
- According to Noah Schnapp, the cast won’t see the Stranger Things series finale in advance.
- Millie Bobby Brown wants ‘popcorn being thrown’ when the last episode hits theaters: ‘Chicken jockey.’
- ‘The volume gets turned up all the way right from the beginning,’ Maya Hawke says as the cast teases the back half of the season.
Stranger Things and secrecy go hand in hand — even, it seems, for the cast.
According to Noah Schnapp, who plays Will Byers on the hit Netflix series, he and his fellow stars won’t be seeing the series finale episode in advance of its debut on New Year’s Eve.
Teasing the back half of the fifth and final season, Schnapp tells Entertainment Weekly the post-Volume I episodes keep “getting more emotional and more spectacle, but still even more intimate.”
He continues, “The stakes just keep getting higher and higher, and the show — you are not ready. I just watched 5 and 6, and I was sobbing. It’s so good. And then the finale, they’re not gonna show any of us, so I won’t see it until the world sees it and I’m just as excited as you guys are.”
Courtesy of Netflix
Volume I of the fifth and final season, consisting of the first four episodes, will arrive on Netflix Nov. 26. Volume II, bringing episodes 5-7, will premiere on the streaming platform on Christmas Day. The series finale, running around 2 hours in length, will drop simultaneously in select theaters and on Netflix on New Year’s Day.
It may sound like a small thing for the series finale to be withheld from the cast, though talent typically pre-screen specific episodes in advance of any press interviews to both refresh their memory of the work and to more confidently speak to the subject matter. At the very least, this brings up the question: If the cast aren’t getting to see it in advance, will anyone?
The plot of Stranger Things 5 picks up in the fall of 1987, which is more than a year after the events of season 4 and near to the fourth anniversary of Will’s disappearance in the Upside Down. Eleven is back in hiding from a U.S. government that wants to acquire her as a weapon, but she’s honing her powers to be strong enough to face Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower) for a final showdown.
Vecna, however, has receded into obscurity. The gang in Hawkins are trying to find his location, but it’s difficult when they have to dodge the military occupation that has taken over the town since the rifts opened up.
Courtesy of Netflix
The cast — including Millie Bobby Brown, Joe Keery, Natalia Dyer, Maya Hawke, and Charlie Heaton — further tease what’s in store for viewers. Keery calls the later episodes a “big swing,” while Brown says she wants “popcorn being thrown” at screenings of the series finale.
The actress behind Eleven exclaims, “Chicken jockey,” referring to that raucous viral trend that played out around showings of A Minecraft Movie.
For Heaton, “I feel like the end of this Volume [I] is like a finale in itself.”
Hawke adds, “This whole season is big all the way. Most seasons work where we introduce you to a small world: Everyone’s bounced back, everyone’s got a new job, everyone’s doing their best with their normal life and worrying about girls and school…. This season, the volume gets turned up all the way right from the beginning. The stakes are gonna feel high from the very beginning to the very end.”
