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Stranger Things still has "movie touch points" in season 5, but its creators were more concerned with doing justice to the story it began almost a decade ago
The final season of Stranger Things is just a few short weeks away. As the hype for the last ever episodes of the beloved adventure show builds, the Duffer Brothers have been talking up the new episodes and why, this time around, the new season is not specifically inspired by a classic horror movie.
"We talked a lot for season four about Nightmare On Elm Street and Hellraiser for the fact that the really psychological '80s horror was our touch point," said Ross Duffer in the latest issue of SFX magazine.
For Stranger Things 5, however, things were a little bit different. "We didn't have one specific touch point that's easy to point to. It was more looking at all the seasons that we had made of Stranger Things and asking, 'How do we bring this full circle?' A lot of it was looking back at season one and making sure that, when this all ended, it felt like one singular story, it felt like a whole."
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That doesn't mean that there are no movie references in the new episodes, of course. "There are film touch points throughout, but it's less of a definitive this year," he continues.
The new season was, according to Matt Duffer, an exercise in looking to the show's past to find its future. "We've been making the show forever, so we have a pretty good idea of what has worked really well and what hasn't worked as well," he says. "So we lean into what's working well, and just try to take all the lessons we've learned to make, hopefully, the best season yet. We're really proud of the season and so that was really the goal, to take all the learnings, everything we know about the show and the characters, and make the best Stranger Things season ever. That was the ambition."
Stranger Things season 5 premieres on November 26, with Volume 2 arriving on Christmas Day and the finale dropping on December 31. For more, check out our picks of the best Netflix shows for some viewing inspiration.
Will Salmon is the Streaming Editor for GamesRadar+. He has been writing about film, TV, comics, and music for more than 15 years, which is quite a long time if you stop and think about it. At Future he launched the scary movie magazine Horrorville, relaunched Comic Heroes, and has written for every issue of SFX magazine for well over a decade. His music writing has appeared in The Quietus, MOJO, Electronic Sound, Clash, and loads of other places too.
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