Fans might be divided on how the final season of Stranger Things and its finale played out and its impact on the show’s series run, overall, but according to the Duffer Brothers, everything went exactly as intended. In fact, the show ran with such clockwork precision that the creators of the Upside Down recently revealed that through the show’s ten-year lifespan, only one scene that was shot initially got deleted from the final cut, and it happened way back when the heroes of Hawkins were just getting started.
In an interview with Collider, Matt and Ross Duffer addressed rumors circulating online about lengthy alternate scenes and sequences planned for season 5. Fans suspected these mystery moments had been removed from the final chapter of the show in favor of what we ended up with. Thankfully, it turned out that wasn’t the case at all.
“I mean, the only thing that got trimmed down a little bit was the teens on the rooftop scene, because there was so much kind of improvising going on,” Matt Duffer revealed. “It was one of my favorite scenes, but I think it was five minutes longer, so that got [cut] down. So there's an extended version of that.”
Leading up to the finale of the show, fans had gone online with heavy discussions of ditched romances (sorry, Byler theorists) and expectations that Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) would get more screen time than what she ended up with. However, according to Matt Duffer, the only scene cut was back in 2016 and shot at the request of higher-ups.
“But no, throughout the course of Stranger Things, there's been only one scene that's been deleted, all the way back in Season 1,” recalled Matt Duffer. “Which was a scene Netflix had us write that we didn't want to write, so we just shot it and deleted it, and they forgot we shot it. It was kind of amazing.”
While fans might be pining for resolutions to some areas of the show’s last hurrah, whether they like it or not, the final draft for the Stranger Things finale really is up there on the screen to be seen. The only sensible thing for die-hard fans to do now is roll the dice again and start over. Then again, if you want something new to start the year, check out our list of the best new TV shows coming in 2026.
