Stranger Things is back with the first part of its fifth and final season, with the Hawkins kids back for more supernatural adventures in the ’80s. But one of them has a new face, as Nell Fisher now plays Holly Wheeler.
The character was previously portrayed by twin sisters Anniston and Tinsley Price, but the recast isn’t down to that or even necessarily the latest one-year time-jump.
As the Duffer brothers explained to ScreenRant, it’s due to the character’s increased importance for the fifth season.
“Once you see the full season, you’ll have a better understanding of why it was so important to add her to the cast,” Matt said.
“One of the reasons was, we just wanted to recapture some of the feeling of season 1, and some of that you can’t recapture unless you have kids, because our kids are not kids anymore.
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“They’re not close to being kids anymore. So it was really fun to add Holly and her classmates into the show, because it allowed us to recapture some of that feeling.”
Fisher isn’t a stranger to horror-adjacent projects, as she previously starred in the film Evil Dead Rise as one of the kids of one of the main characters.
Matt added that Holly’s increased importance wasn’t something that was initially planned for season 5, but came in the development process.
“Something like Holly being a centerpiece of this season, that was a discovery as we were breaking season 5,” he said.
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Holly has already been a major part of Stranger Things season 5, as she was targeted by the Demogorgon and kidnapped,
Her supposed imaginary friend ‘Mr Whatsit’, who is really Vecna, has been trying to get inside her head, but Max has managed to find her. Just how big a role will she continue to play in the final few episodes?
Stranger Things seasons 5 part 1 is now streaming on Netflix. Part 2 is set for Christmas Day and part 3 is set for New Year’s Eve (slightly later in the UK).
Read more Stranger Things news on our dedicated homepage
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Joe Anderton is a freelance news writer at Digital Spy, having worked there since 2016. In his time, he’s covered a host of live events and interviewed celebrities big and small. A big fan of TV and movies both mainstream and obscure, Joe also enjoys video games and in particular PlayStation. Joe currently does not use Twitter, but he only ever used it to tell people to watch the film Help! I’m a Fish.