{"id":676326,"date":"2026-07-06T08:23:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-06T08:23:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/676326\/"},"modified":"2026-07-06T08:23:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-06T08:23:08","slug":"it-was-pretty-depressing-when-stranger-things-ended-finn-wolfhard-on-growing-up-on-tv-and-his-new-life-in-music-stranger-things","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/676326\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018It was pretty depressing when Stranger Things ended\u2019: Finn Wolfhard on growing up on TV \u2013 and his new life in music | Stranger Things"},"content":{"rendered":"

Finn Wolfhard is remembering his first experience of celebrity. It was 2016 and he was 13. The first season of Stranger Things<\/a> had aired that summer, and he returned to his high school in Vancouver as if nothing had changed. But things had changed. \u201cPeople didn\u2019t know how to treat me, especially the teachers. Kids that didn\u2019t even look at me before were paying attention to me or wanting to hang out.\u201d He remembers a girl in the year above who really wanted a photo with him. \u201cAnd I was like: \u2018Oh, I can\u2019t really take photos at school.\u2019 And she wasn\u2019t listening to me and pulled me into, like, a side hug. I remember thinking: \u2018Shit, man. I have no control over this. This seems crazy.\u2019 So, it was definitely weird at first, and something I still haven\u2019t totally grasped.\u201d<\/p>\n

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How strange it must be to have spent such a large part of your life playing a character that half the world knows, and has watched grow up on screen, turning from a wide-eyed, gawky, nerdy kid to a sharp-cheekboned (but still quite gawky) action hero. Nobody could have predicted how huge Stranger Things would become or how long it would last, fuelled by popular demand, then stalled by the pandemic. It concluded a decade later, at the end of last year, having reached the point where it was no longer sustainable for twentysomethings like Wolfhard to pass as high schoolers.<\/p>\n

Growing up in public \u2026 Wolfhard with his Stranger Things co-star Millie Bobby Brown in 2016. Photograph: Steve Zak Photography\/FilmMagic<\/p>\n

As a result, the kids from Stranger Things have become the benchmark teens of the era, navigating the trials of adolescence on screen and off, along with many of their viewers. Wolfhard\u2019s co-star Millie Bobby Brown has said that their on-screen kiss in season one was the first time she had ever kissed a boy, for example. It was pretty much the same for Wolfhard, he says. \u201cI\u2019d kissed a girl when I was maybe in second grade [when he would have been seven or eight], but it wasn\u2019t real at all.\u201d For Stranger Things, he was just focused on doing a good job: \u201cSo, weirdly, I was not nervous for the actual kiss. I just was like: \u2018Oh, it\u2019s part of the thing, part of character.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Now 23, Wolfhard is very much a young man, even if it is still disconcerting to see him in stylish, non-80s streetwear. It is a hot summer day and we meet in the empty upstairs of a London pub (he is drinking water). He has been taking some time off, he explains, holidaying in Europe with his family \u2013 and being recognised wherever he goes. It happens a lot in central London, he says, but generally people are \u201cpretty chill\u201d \u2013 as is Wolfhard, it seems. \u201cI was in Hackney yesterday and, like, no one came up to me and it was really nice. I could tell people were recognising me, but they weren\u2019t coming up for photos.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dark star \u2026 Wolfhard as Mike Wheeler in the fifth season of Stranger Things. Photograph: Courtesy of Netflix \u00a9 2025<\/p>\n

As child stars, the Stranger Things kids grew up in a particular online environment, where people write fan fiction about them (as the object of affection for Brown\u2019s Eleven and Noah Schnapp\u2019s Will, Wolfhard\u2019s Mike Wheeler has been fertile and often inappropriate territory for this). Etsy creators market bizarre merchandise plastered with their faces (kudos to the \u201cWolfin\u2019 hard or hardly Wolfin\u2019<\/a>?\u201d T-shirt); and there is a running online commentary about every development, from their voice breaking to their face looking different because they are no longer 12.<\/p>\n

Now that they are adults, they are even more in the crosshairs. Brown especially has been a target for celebrity stalking \u2013 and she named and shamed<\/a> journalists commenting on her appearance in an Instagram post last year: \u201cThis isn\u2019t journalism, it\u2019s bullying.\u201d Schnapp, meanwhile, was condemned for making pro-Israel comments a few years ago and had to clarify his position. Wolfhard avoids weighing in on political matters but still gets his share of celeb speculation. His trip last year to a London theatre to see Stranger Things co-star Sadie Sink in Romeo and Juliet<\/a> sparked speculation that they must be dating (they weren\u2019t). \u201cPeople have a really hard time seeing things in a way that isn\u2019t romanticised,\u201d he says casually. \u201cPeople like having stories for stuff that isn\u2019t there. But usually it\u2019s more boring than you think. A lot more boring.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moving on \u2026 with Willem Dafoe in The Legend of Ochi (2025). Photograph: THA\/Alamy<\/p>\n

Does all that stuff get to him?<\/p>\n

\u201cFor us, there was no choice because we had such public-facing jobs at such young ages,\u201d he says. \u201cI never totally \u2026\u201d He rubs his eyes, trying to articulate an answer. \u201c\u2026 got too wrapped up in what the internet was saying or doing. But yeah, developmentally, it\u2019s probably not a good thing to read things about yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n

But he considers himself relatively lucky. \u201cI still had a large chunk of my childhood that had nothing to do with technology or being judged by someone else or anything like that. But now I look at gen Alpha: even though most of them have normal school lives, all of them have Instagram, so they all kind of do have public personas in a weird way \u2013 being \u2018famous\u2019 isn\u2019t that far out of reach because it\u2019s normal for the younger generation to like get that kind of dopamine hit at such a young age.\u201d Few of them will have as many Instagram followers as Wolfhard, mind you: nearly 25 million.<\/p>\n

Perhaps that\u2019s part of the broad appeal of Stranger Things: it was a nostalgia trip for adults who remember the 80s, but for younger viewers it evoked a kind of \u201cphantom nostalgia\u201d for a pre-internet childhood they never knew, where you could innocently cycle around, play board games together and do goofy things without the threat of being virally shamed online. Your home town being ravaged by monsters from a parallel dimension might have felt like a small price to pay.<\/p>\n

Embracing comedy \u2026 with Alisha Boe in When You Finish Saving the World (2022). Photograph: Capital Pictures\/Alamy<\/p>\n

Wolfhard\u2019s early childhood really was riding bikes around the neighbourhood with his friends, he says. He grew up in an artsy household in a not particularly artsy neighbourhood of Vancouver. \u201cSo we were kind of the outliers a little bit when it came to just being into nerdier things.\u201d His mother was a visual artist; his father wrote screenplays and worked in human rights. \u201cThere was no shortage of film and music from a very young age in my house. It\u2019s the thing that we all talk about to each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

He was inspired to give acting a go after seeing his brother, Nick, who is five years older (and also an actor), on stage in a school play. He got a few bit parts in music videos and local TV productions, then, at 12, auditioned for Stranger Things. Like many of his co-stars, he wasn\u2019t an \u201cactor kid\u201d, he stresses. \u201cThat\u2019s maybe why we were cast in the first place, because we were closer to our characters at that time.\u201d<\/p>\n

It also helped that, thanks to his upbringing, he was up to speed with the series\u2019 80s reference points: \u201cI grew up with ET, Stand By Me, The Goonies, even a lot of the John Hughes films, so it was familiar territory for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Emotions were mixed about Stranger Things coming to an end, Wolfhard says. It had been such a regular part of his life for so long. \u201cThat\u2019s what was so great about it. Every year it was like, OK, I know I\u2019m going to be in Atlanta filming this thing with the same people for the next however long. It was like my school in a really odd way.\u201d They were shooting the final season for about a year. He shared a house with Gaten \u201cDustin\u201d Matarazzo. \u201cEveryone was having a great time, hanging out \u2026 All the cast lived in the same neighbourhood. We would go to each other\u2019s houses all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Grownup drama \u2026 In The Goldfinch (2019) with Sarah Paulson. Photograph: Everett Collection Inc\/Alamy<\/p>\n

There was a sense of denial, it seems. \u201cThe vibe was almost like, \u2018Oh, we\u2019ll back next year,\u2019\u201d he says, \u201cbut once we got about halfway through, everyone started to realise like, \u2018Oh. This is it.\u2019 And then everyone just really valued the time we all had together for that last half. It was pretty depressing for everyone when it ended \u2026 but it feels absolutely right that we\u2019ve ended at the time that we did.\u201d<\/p>\n

So does he feel liberated? \u201cFor sure, yeah. At first I felt really lost, because that\u2019s your life for so long and so many of the crew and cast were so integral to the person that you are and to your identity. You almost have a kind of withdrawal for a little while. Then you realise all those relationships, all those friendships, they\u2019re around for ever.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wolfhard has been preparing for life beyond Hawkins for some time, in fact. He has done several movies between seasons. Admittedly, he mined similar 80s nostalgia territory in the recent Ghostbusters reboots (Afterlife and Frozen Empire), and the two-part adaptation of Stephen King\u2019s smalltown horror story It, although in the latter Wolfhard played the clownish loudmouth of the ensemble, rather than the sensible \u201cMike\u201d figure. \u201cIt\u2019s fun sometimes to be the dick,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Making music \u2026 Wolfhard fronting the band Calpurnia at London\u2019s Koko club, 2018. Photograph: Wenn Rights Ltd\/Alamy<\/p>\n

He has also done more \u201cgrown-up\u201d drama, like 2019\u2019s The Goldfinch, adapted from Donna Tartt\u2019s bestseller and co-starring Nicole Kidman and Sarah Paulson. Even if the movie fell short, he was convincing as a sun-hating Ukrainian outsider in Las Vegas, thick accent and all. And in Jesse Eisenberg\u2019s mother-son drama When You Finish Saving the World, he held his own alongside Julianne Moore as a self-absorbed wannabe musician. Some of the songs were Wolfhard\u2019s own compositions.<\/p>\n

This is the other part of Wolfhard\u2019s strategy for life beyond Stranger Things: he has been making music longer than he\u2019s been acting. \u201cMy mom bought me my first guitar when I was four.\u201d He\u2019s about to release his second solo album, Fire From the Hip, having already been guitarist and singer with two Canadian bands, Calpurnia and the Aubreys. Wolfhard\u2019s solo music is generally tuneful rock in a Beatlesy, 90s indie vein, with playfully surreal lyrics and often deliberately lo-fi production. There is a retro analogue vibe to it all: strummed guitars, handmade album art, recording on physical tape rather than digitally. Again, it\u2019s that sense of phantom nostalgia, he says. \u201cMaybe that\u2019s why I\u2019m drawn to it, because I\u2019m longing for that time still.\u201d<\/p>\n

If Wolfhard needed to find liberation after Stranger Things, it looks like he\u2019s finding it here, recording and performing: \u201cI spent my whole childhood having to be on a certain mark, and listen to directors and having the pressure to be perfect all the time, and with music it\u2019s great because I can control my own thing, control my own life and destiny.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nostalgia territory \u2026 Wolfhard (left) with Mckenna Grace and Logan Kim in Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021). Photograph: FlixPix\/Alamy<\/p>\n

It helps to have a built-in fanbase, he admits, as he prepares for a US tour this month. The music route has become a fruitful post-Stranger Things sideline. Maya Hawke<\/a> is on her fourth album, Caleb \u201cLucas\u201d McLaughlin has released a few tracks, Jamie \u201cVecna\u201d Campbell Bower<\/a> has moved on from his punk band and appears to be headed for a more commercial solo career. Then there\u2019s Joe \u201cSteve Harrington\u201d Keery, AKA Djo, whose 2022 track End of Beginning<\/a> rode a wave of TikTok virality to become a global hit. Keery is currently supporting Tame Impala on their US tour. \u201cJoe was like a cool older brother on set,\u201d says Wolfhard. Keery introduced him to a lot of music and musicians, and they still have a close bond, he says. \u201cI\u2019ll get advice from him, and send him demos and stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n

But he has no huge ambitions for rock domination. \u201cThe goal for me in my music career is to have people find my music just from hearing the songs on a playlist, or seeing a show or at a festival and going: \u2018Oh, who\u2019s that?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Wolfhard during his Objection! tour in Brooklyn, New York, 2025. Photograph: Mike Coppola\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Nor is he giving up the day job. He is taking a break from his tour to shoot a new film in Toronto next month, he says \u2013 \u201ca movie that I\u2019ve been trying to make with a friend since before Covid\u201d. But he\u2019s not particularly looking for the next big thing in acting terms, either. \u201cI want to prove myself by being in things that people would maybe not expect me to be in. And however long it takes to find that perfect thing or that right thing, I\u2019m fine to wait.\u201d<\/p>\n

One way of handling the pressures of childhood celebrity has been to keep moving, he says. \u201cThat\u2019s a reason, maybe, why I try to work, because it\u2019s a way of dealing with the anxiety, just by throwing yourself into something else.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Wolfhard seems to have reached a stage where he can take his foot off the gas slightly. He has loved being back in Canada \u2013 \u201cit just seems more calm for me, for my personality\u201d \u2013 and having a bit more downtime: \u201cI really like being able to be at home, not having any plans, like not having any expectation on yourself to do anything. My favourite hobby is being bored.\u201d No one could say he hasn\u2019t earned it.<\/p>\n

Finn Wolfhard\u2019s album Fire From the Hip is released on 10 July.<\/p>\n