{"id":316372,"date":"2025-11-27T08:13:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-27T08:13:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/316372\/"},"modified":"2025-11-27T08:13:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-27T08:13:10","slug":"wills-powers-return-of-eight-vecnas-plan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/316372\/","title":{"rendered":"Will’s Powers, Return of Eight, Vecna’s Plan"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tSPOILER ALERT:\u00a0This story contains spoilers from Season 5, Volume 1 of \u201cStranger Things<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the battle that concludes Volume 1 of \u201cStranger Things 5\u201d \u2014 in \u201cSorcerer,\u201d written and directed by Matt and Ross Duffer \u2014 it appears at first that all is lost. The murderous creatures of the Upside Down have breached the military zone, and begin a mass slaughter of the soldiers, who\u2019ve underestimated their foes. Elsewhere, Robin (Maya Hawke) and Murray (Brett Gelman) try to bring some of the endangered school children of Hawkins to safety in a truck, as they\u2019re chased by Demogorgons. Meanwhile, the good guys\u2019 biggest assets, Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) and Hopper (David Harbour), are in the base in the Upside Down, where they\u2019ve made an important discovery: Eight (Linnea Berthelsen), one of the other telekinetic kids from the Hawkins Lab experiments, with whom Eleven bonded in Season 2, is alive and being held there. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tDuring a lull in the battle,\u00a0Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower) steps through the membrane of the Upside Down\u00a0to survey his quarry, where Joyce (Winona Ryder), Mike (Finn Wolfhard) and his original prey, Will (Noah Schnapp)\u00a0\u2014\u00a0along with the remaining military officers and soldiers\u00a0\u2014\u00a0seem to be\u00a0no match for him. Vecna effortlessly\u00a0extends his arms\u00a0to\u00a0turn their weapons against them, pushing fire back on the\u00a0soldiers\u00a0and pulling a pin on a grenade. He\u00a0then\u00a0levitates\u00a0Will,\u00a0and brings\u00a0him\u00a0to him, face to face. \u201cCan you see them, William? Can you see the children?\u201d\u00a0he\u00a0asks. \u201cDo you know why I chose them to reshape the world?\u00a0It\u2019s\u00a0because they are weak. Weak in body and mind.\u201d He says this as the\u00a0Demogorgons\u00a0drag the\u00a0kids\u00a0Will and his friends had been trying to save\u00a0into the Upside Down, where\u00a0he\u2019s\u00a0already taken Holly Wheeler (Nell Fisher). Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin) helplessly watches from the escape tunnel\u00a0as\u00a0one\u00a0child\u00a0is sucked into the Upside Down through a wall, and Robin sees that all the kids in the\u00a0truck are gone.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tVecna, taunting, calls the children \u201cperfect vessels,\u201d\u00a0as he touches Will\u2019s face almost gently. \u201cAnd you, Will, you were the first,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd you broke so easily.\u00a0You showed me what was possible, what I could achieve. Some minds, it turns out, simply do not\u00a0belong in this world.\u00a0They belong in mine.\u201d He lets Will drop, and strides back into the Upside Down, confident that the Demogorgons will finish the job. But just as the massacre is set to recommence, Will remembers what Robin \u2014 to whom he\u2019s felt bonded since\u00a0realizing that she, too, is queer\u00a0\u2014 had said to him earlier: that she\u2019d always had all the answers within her, and she just needed to stop being scared\u00a0of who she was\u00a0Home movies begin to play in his mind. He remembers the first time he met Mike, who asked if he wanted to be friends; he remembers drawing things with crayons\u00a0and\u00a0showing them\u00a0to a\u00a0loving\u00a0Joyce; he remembers building Castle Byers with\u00a0Jonathan in\u00a0woods\u00a0near their home.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tNoah Schnapp and Jamie Campbell Bower<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Netflix<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s\u00a0then that Will\u00a0accesses\u00a0the\u00a0powers\u00a0he (and we!)\u00a0didn\u2019t\u00a0know he has,\u00a0stopping each Demogorgon in place before they kill Mike,\u00a0Lucas\u00a0and Robin.\u00a0Will\u00a0can\u00a0see through their eyes, he realizes,\u00a0and\u00a0\u2014 as\u00a0indicated\u00a0through\u00a0arm gestures\u00a0\u2014\u00a0he\u00a0snaps the Demos\u2019\u00a0limbs, killing\u00a0all of\u00a0them. The final image of Volume\u00a01\u00a0is Will\u00a0raising\u00a0his head,\u00a0and\u00a0wiping his nosebleed with his sleeve, as\u00a0we\u2019ve\u00a0seen Eleven do a thousand times on \u201cStranger Things\u201d \u2014\u00a0as\u00a0he stares\u00a0with purpose into the distance.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIn\u00a0a long\u00a0interview with the Duffer brothers<\/a>\u00a0for\u00a0Variety\u2019s Oct. 15 cover story<\/a>, Ross Duffer said,\u00a0\u201cWe\u2019ve been talking about Will having powers for as long as I can really remember.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tBelow, the Duffers delve into what those powers are, the season\u2019s opening\u00a0flashback\u00a0sequence,\u00a0why the\u00a0climax of \u201cSorcerer\u201d (and that oner!) was\u00a0\u201clogistically\u00a0the most difficult thing we ever did,\u201d how they deployed Max,\u00a0the return of Eight, the attack on the Wheeler house\u00a0\u2014 and much, much more.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\tWe have to start with Will. Will! Does he have Eleven\u2019s powers? Or is it something different?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tRoss Duffer: It\u2019s different in that he\u2019s able to channel Vecna\u2019s powers. But they\u2019re all related. Vecna and Eleven, their powers are similar. The powers aren\u2019t within him. He\u2019s able to channel these powers from Vecna and use it, sort of puppeteering.<\/p>\n

\n\tMatt Duffer: He taps into the hive mind, and then he can manipulate anything within the hive. You\u2019ll see how far he can take it as you continue to watch. But that\u2019s how he\u2019s able to manipulate the monster. So he can\u2019t open a door, because the door is not part of the hive mind.<\/p>\n

\t\tIs this something that he always had that Vecna identified, or did he get it because Vecna grabbed him?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tMatt Duffer: He got it because he got hooked into the hive mind.<\/p>\n

\n\tRoss Duffer: If he\u2019s not close to the hive mind, he\u2019s not able to access or tap it.<\/p>\n

\n\tMatt Duffer: It\u2019s proximity based.<\/p>\n

\t\tHad he not been taken to the Upside Down\u2026\t<\/p>\n

\n\tMatt Duffer: Never would\u2019ve happened. So it\u2019s very different from Eleven in that regard.<\/p>\n

\t\tAnd how long have you known that this was something that Will had within him that you were going to build to?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tRoss Duffer: We\u2019ve been talking about Will having powers for as long as I can really remember.<\/p>\n

\n\tMatt Duffer: He had a dark version of it in Season 2 \u2014 he was connected to Vecna. He could see what he saw, but he didn\u2019t realize that at the time he was able to tap into it in a way and use it against Vecna. That\u2019s something he doesn\u2019t learn till this season. It took us a while to build there, but it was something we always intended to do. The details of it were a little rough until we started working on it.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tNoah Schnapp and Maya Hawke <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Netflix<\/p>\n

\t\tWhat do you think came together for him after the gay pep talk from Robin and what Mike said to him about being a sorcerer? Do you have that thought out, or was it just a feeling?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tRoss Duffer: We knew we wanted him to access these powers this season. Then we began talking about why now, and why is he able to do it now. Some of it is mythology-based in terms of the hive mind\u2019s closer than it\u2019s ever been for him. But most of what we were talking about was how has Will changed. Throughout the seasons, he\u2019s been a little more fearful than the others. He hasn\u2019t been a leader. He hasn\u2019t accepted himself in the way that some of our characters have. So I think it was really talking about if he really is able to at least start to accept himself for who he is, will that give him the kind of strength that he needs in order to access these powers? That\u2019s really where Episode 4 \u2014 and really the arc of the first four episodes \u2014 led for him.<\/p>\n

\t\tWhy doesn\u2019t Vecna kidnap or kill Will in that moment?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tMatt Duffer: You\u2019ll see as it goes on, but he completely underestimates Will. He perceives him in the way that so many others have in his life, which is as weak, as nothing, as incapable of achieving anything great. So he completely underestimates him in that moment. Whether that\u2019s going to happen again, you\u2019ll have to watch Volume 2.<\/p>\n

\t\tThe home movie that goes through Will\u2019s mind: How long were you planning to do that sequence?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tRoss Duffer: The original draft of Chapter 4 did not have the flashback footage in it. When we read it through, it\u2019s the same exact storyline with Robin, but because it\u2019s such an internal shift for Will, we needed to be able to show that visually. That\u2019s when we came up with the idea of Robin mentioning that she\u2019d found these old tapes. So that was the only different thing that we changed about her monologue, but it allowed us to visually represent what was going through Will\u2019s mind. Once we did that, we felt like the ending finally had the emotional kick that we wanted.<\/p>\n

\t\tHow much work was it to find the super young Will, Mike and Jonathan?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tMatt Duffer: I know we were really scared about whether we were going to be able to find someone or not. I mean, initially, obviously there were conversations about, Do we do face replacement? Do we do what we did with Will at the beginning of the season? Budgetarily, it was impossible. It\u2019s just very expensive.<\/p>\n

\n\tRoss Duffer: The beginning scene he\u2019s referencing, we were able to model it after Noah at that age, but this is even a younger age. So you start to get into uncanny valley world. It would\u2019ve been extremely expensive, and also look creepy.<\/p>\n

\n\tMatt Duffer: It was really fun, too, to film that with those kids.<\/p>\n

\t\tSo let\u2019s talk about that opening of the season. Did young Eleven in Season 4 give you the confidence to make young Will in that opening sequence for Season 5? How did you pull that off?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tMatt Duffer: We\u2019re so proud of it. That\u2019s all Weta. We\u2019ve never worked with Weta before, but Betsy [Patterson], our visual effects supervisor, when she brought them on, she was confident that they would be able to do it. Usually when we\u2019re writing this stuff, we don\u2019t worry too much, sometimes to our detriment, about how we\u2019re going to pull certain things off. It just felt absolutely right to start with a flashback of Will, and then you just turn to Betsy and then ultimately Weta to do it.<\/p>\n

\n\tWe did take a lot of learnings from the Eleven stuff last year, but this was more challenging, because we\u2019ve all seen Will or Noah at this exact age before. We saw this scene, the very beginning of it, in Season 1. So it was very important that it was hyper-real. It\u2019s the first visual effects work that was done on the show. They just did incredibly detailed work and then just kept honing and honing and honing. Sometimes you can\u2019t figure out what\u2019s wrong. You\u2019re just like, \u201cThat\u2019s not quite\u2026\u201d\u00a0\u2014 usually it\u2019s the lighting \u2014\u00a0and just work on every shot to death.<\/p>\n

\t\tHow long had you known that that had happened to Will in the Upside Down, that he and Vecna had actually crossed paths?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tRoss Duffer: That\u2019s an idea we\u2019ve had for a while. I can\u2019t remember exactly when, but when we first had that thought, immediately we started talking about Season 5: \u201cThat\u2019s where we have to start. We have to bring it back full circle.\u201d It sets up the season the way we want it to, which is everything is going back to Season 1, and everything is coming full circle. We thought there wasn\u2019t really a better way to do that than to go back and see what Will had experienced.<\/p>\n

\t\tIn some ways, Dustin seems like the only character who\u2019s having a natural trauma response to everything they went through in Season 4. How\u2019d you decide that he\u2019s the one who\u2019s going to be carrying this stuff for them?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tMatt Duffer: Well, he was the closest to Eddie. So the two who are most impacted by the events of Season 4 would be him and Lucas. But at least Lucas is trying, desperately, to keep hope alive [about Max], because it hasn\u2019t been extinguished at this point, although he\u2019s sort of losing it when we see him at the top of Episode 1. But Dustin has lost Eddie, so he\u2019s struggling to remain optimistic because of their friendship and because of what he feels is a need to continue carrying that torch. It felt like the most interesting way to explore grief was through him.<\/p>\n

\n\tRoss Duffer: When we talked about it with the writers, even in Season 1 when Mike and Lucas get in a fight, Dustin\u2019s the one that pulls everything together. He in a lot of ways is the heart of that group. So it immediately puts all of our characters on edge, and the audience hopefully, too.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tNell Fisher<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Netflix<\/p>\n

\t\tHow long have you known that Holly Wheeler would be a major character this season?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tMatt Duffer: That was a new idea. We did not know until we started working on Season 5, probably pretty early in the process.<\/p>\n

\n\tRoss Duffer: I don\u2019t even think it was in the pandemic. Because we had so long [of a break] that we had time to not only finish [writing] Season 4, but pitch a version of Season 5. I don\u2019t think she was even in that. That was the big breakthrough, having shot Season 4, coming back and realizing the drive of these kids getting taken. Once we realized that, we got really excited about making Holly the focus of that new group of kids.<\/p>\n

\t\tHow did you approach casting Holly Wheeler?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tRoss Duffer: If you watch the previous seasons, Holly barely talks at all. So we didn\u2019t really have much of a character there. She was just a little kid. Even Season 1, when we\u2019re filming her, it was basically whatever one of the young twins would do, we would just try to capture it in real time. So we didn\u2019t really have a voice for her.In the initial scripts, Holly was a little shyer and a little more withdrawn. And then as we found Nell, who\u2019s such a character\u2026<\/p>\n

\n\tMatt Duffer: And more of an extrovert.<\/p>\n

\n\tRoss Duffer: \u2026we started infusing Nell\u2019s personality into Holly.<\/p>\n

\n\tMatt Duffer: We were really nervous about it. It is not like she had to look identical to the twins who were playing Holly in the past, but she had to resemble them enough that you weren\u2019t totally confused. But more important than that, they have to be an incredible actor.<\/p>\n

\n\tI remember seeing the \u201cEvil Dead Rise\u201d trailer and seeing her. I had not seen the movie. I just saw her in the trailer and I was like, \u201cThat\u2019s Holly.\u201d But then I didn\u2019t remember that. [Our casting director] Carmen [Cuba] found her, brought her to us, and I was like, \u201cI knew this like six months ago.\u201d That would\u2019ve saved us a lot of time.<\/p>\n

\n\tRoss Duffer: Carmen\u2019s going to get annoyed you\u2019re taking credit for this.<\/p>\n

\n\tMatt Duffer: She always thinks I take too much credit for the casting.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tNell Fisher and Cara Buono <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Netflix<\/p>\n

\t\tSpeaking of the Wheelers, with the mauling of Karen and Ted in Episode 2, when they\u2019re trying to protect Holly, how did you decide to bring these characters to the front who have been just around since moment one, but have been oblivious?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tMatt Duffer: Oblivious! One of the early ideas was we finally had to bring them into the fold. It was easy, because we could bring anybody in the fold. It was the final season. Karen would\u2019ve moved them out of Hawkins, had she learned any of this earlier. Finally, none of that mattered.<\/p>\n

\n\tWe\u2019ve always wanted an attack on the Wheeler house, and to give Karen a killer badass moment, have her face down one of these monsters. Cara and Nell bonded. They got really close, and we just had an incredibly fun time shooting what is a very violent sequence. And yeah, Karen\u2019s tough. She miraculously survives.<\/p>\n

\t\tHow did you decide when and how to reveal where Max is, and what\u2019s going on with her?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tMatt Duffer: We knew we wanted to keep her out of it for the first couple episodes, and we knew she was going to end an episode. At some point, we thought Episode 3 felt like the right time.<\/p>\n

\n\tRoss Duffer: From the end of Season 4 when we kept her in the coma, we knew she was trapped in Vecna\u2019s mindscape, and we knew that was going to be part of her journey, at least for Season 5. But it finally clicked when we realized that Holly could be there as well, and then the other kids. That\u2019s when her storyline really came to life.<\/p>\n

\n\tMatt Duffer: I can\u2019t tell you how many hours are spent in the writers\u2019 room discussing the movie \u201cThe Cell,\u201d the Jennifer Lopez\/Tarsem movie. It\u2019s such a great concept, because they enter the mind of a serial killer. It was the closest thing we could think of that parallels what we were doing. Our serial killer mindscape ends up being pretty different, but it\u2019s probably why we ended up having a desert in there. A lot of desert sequences in \u201cThe Cell.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\tSo Vecna\u2019s mindscape is that in-between world?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tRoss Duffer: Yeah. Holly\u2019s nicknamed it Camazotz.<\/p>\n

\n\tMatt Duffer: The boys are always referencing Dungeons & Dragons, and Holly doesn\u2019t play Dungeons & Dragons, so we thought it\u2019d be interesting if she\u2019s referencing something she\u2019s into.<\/p>\n

\t\tThe wall: Do we find out what created it?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tMatt Duffer: You find out pretty much everything, is what I\u2019ll say.I mean, there are still some mysteries. We don\u2019t explain everything, but the wall, certainly, you understand.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tLinnea Berthelsen and Millie Bobby Brown in Season 2 of \u201cStranger Things\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tNetflix\/Courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n

\t\tThe reveal that Eight (Linnea Berthelsen) has been kept captive by the military was a big surprise, in part because you were bringing back a storyline that seemed to have been dropped and set on fire and run away from. What was your thinking there?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tRoss Duffer:\u00a0Yeah, that\u2019s two-fold. We want when someone watches through the entire show, it doesn\u2019t feel like we dropped a storyline or a thread. That it all connects. You see how everything fits together. And that was definitely a loose plot strand.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut also, we really like\u00a0Linnea and we felt that that episode [in Season 2] just didn\u2019t give her a chance to do what we know she\u2019s capable of doing. So part of it was to put her back in and give her a moment. But we didn\u2019t want to just do it to do it. As we were breaking the season, we realized that bringing her back really helped us with the Eleven storyline and how we wanted to wrap her story up. So there was a real reason to do it beyond just to not leave this dangling plot thread.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tMatt Duffer:\u00a0We were shooting Season 2 really, really fast, because we were trying to hit this Halloween deadline. And the first script we wrote just flat out didn\u2019t work, and then we had one week left to rewrite. I just don\u2019t think we ever nailed it, obviously. I always felt bad that we didn\u2019t figure that out for Linnea. But we felt we had something special with Linnea, so we wanted to bring her back. I think she\u2019s awesome in the season, so I\u2019m pretty excited about that.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\tThe long battle sequence at the end of Episode 4: How long did it take to plan the extended oner shot in the battle?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tMatt Duffer: Forever. It wasn\u2019t originally written that way. We wanted it to feel very immersive, like you were in the middle of it. Ross and I hadn\u2019t done anything like that before. The finale\u2019s insane, but that sequence was logistically the most difficult thing we ever did.<\/p>\n

\t\tThe whole battle?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tMatt Duffer: The whole battle, but specifically that oner, because it involved obviously a lot of stunts and visual effects and actors, but then also children. It is stitched together [from several shots]. I don\u2019t want people to get mad at us when we call it a \u201coner,\u201d because it\u2019s at night and you\u2019re working with children and stunts. We could only shoot about two hours a night. So we divided it up into, I think, four chunks, and we thought we could accomplish within the time that we had one chunk per night.<\/p>\n

\n\tRoss Duffer: It was definitely the hardest thing we\u2019ve ever done ever in terms of filmmaking.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tFinn Wolfhard<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCOURTESY OF NETFLIX \u00a9 2025<\/p>\n

\t\tNo one dies in Volume 1, not even Ted and Karen, who seemed like goners for a second there. Did you contemplate having any kind of big death in this part of the season?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tRoss Duffer: Once we decided we knew we wanted to do the Will power stuff this season, we knew that that\u2019s how we had to end Volume 1. So there\u2019s the low point of all the kids being taken, but the high point of Will has these powers. That was always the discussion. Vecna taking these children was the low point we needed for the end of Volume 1.<\/p>\n

\t\tWill Volume 2 get bloodier?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tMatt Duffer: I\u2019ve said this before: The show is not \u201cGame of Thrones.\u201d I\u2019m hoping it surprises people. But there\u2019s no Red Wedding, if that\u2019s what you\u2019re asking. That would be depressing.<\/p>\n

\t\tWhen Will gets that image of the temple that Vecna doesn\u2019t want him to see, he sees Holly trapped inside that structure. Is that where Holly is actually physically located in that moment, or is he seeing something in the future?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tRoss Duffer: Do we answer this?<\/p>\n

\n\tMatt Duffer: I think this is OK.<\/p>\n

\n\tRoss Duffer: Yes. That\u2019s where Holly is at the present moment.<\/p>\n

\t\tVecna gets a real glow up.\t<\/p>\n

\n\tRoss Duffer: That\u2019s one way to put it!<\/p>\n

\t\tWell, he\u2019s looking good after almost being killed at the end of Season 4. Will we find out where he went after that?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tMatt Duffer: Yeah, there\u2019s a backstory to all of that that is actually never revealed in the show. The idea of it was based a little bit on the original \u201cHellraiser,\u201d although it\u2019s different than that. But yeah, he retreated to lick his wounds. Nancy blew holes all through his body, so he more or less rebuilt his body into something stronger and hopefully cooler. But it was a challenge because we also wanted his new design to reflect the fact that he had been injured. That\u2019s why we ultimately had to go full CG on his body was because you see holes throughout his body. It was figuring out that balance took a long time.<\/p>\n

\t\tSo Jamie Campbell Bower is in a motion-capture suit?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tMatt Duffer: He was just in a leotard, basically. But the important thing is they match his movement. And his face is completely him in makeup. We don\u2019t touch that at all. That\u2019s fully Jamie.<\/p>\n

\t\tDo we know yet what Vecna wants?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tRoss Duffer: No.<\/p>\n

\n\tMatt Duffer: Nothing good.<\/p>\n

\t\tHe says that the kids are the way he\u2019s going to remake the world.\t<\/p>\n

\n\tMatt Duffer: Right. What does that mean?<\/p>\n

\t\tIt\u2019s safe to assume it\u2019s not a nice world that he wants.\t<\/p>\n

\n\tMatt Duffer: I mean, depends on your perspective, you know?<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tSadie Sink and Caleb McLaughlin <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Netflix<\/p>\n

\t\tWill we be seeing more of Vecna\u2019s memories in Volume 2?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tMatt Duffer: Yes, that\u2019s what we call our new Russia storyline, because it\u2019s very few characters. They\u2019re kind of isolated off on their own, Max and Holly. We\u2019re very happy with how it integrates with the other storylines.<\/p>\n

\t\tHow much of all of that is real vs. a set?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tRoss Duffer: The forest is real.<\/p>\n

\n\tMatt Duffer: And the desert\u2019s real. We went out to New Mexico to shoot any of the desert sequences. You\u2019ll see more of them. The inside of the interior of the cave is a set build. That main outside of the cave is a set build right outside the forest. And the forest is the summertime set. That\u2019s why we had to shoot some finale there when the leaves were green.<\/p>\n

\t\tIn \u201cThe First Shadow,\u201d the prequel play that\u2019s on Broadway and in the West End, there\u2019s a reference to a cave in Nevada near an army base where a young Henry Creel first encountered something connected to the Upside Down. Is that the same cave?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tMatt Duffer: Yeah. When we were working on the play with Kate Trefry, we had Henry\u2019s backstory worked out. There was always a balance that we had to find in terms of how much we were going to put in the play. [The director] Stephen [Daldry] and [the produce] Sonia [Friedman] were always pushing for more and we were pushing back and saying, \u201cWell, we have to wait to reveal that in the show.\u201d You\u2019ll see, especially as you reach the final episode, there\u2019s more overlap with the play.<\/p>\n

\n\tRoss Duffer: And, like, Max finds that \u201cOklahoma\u201d poster, which people who haven\u2019t seen the play are maybe like, \u201cWhy is Henry in \u2018Oklahoma\u2019?\u201d But I think it\u2019s nice for us to start to tie those two together.<\/p>\n

\n\tMatt Duffer: But you absolutely do not have to have seen the play to understand. They\u2019re Easter eggs more than anything.<\/p>\n

\t\tFinally \u2014\u00a0and you may not want to touch this, so just going dive in \u2014\u00a0in the play, it felt like the real evil is the Mind Flayer. It\u2019s what seduces Henry to accept what\u2019s in the Upside Down into himself and ultimately what seems to have transformed him into Vecna once Eleven pushes him into the Upside Down. Are we barking up the right tree here?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tMatt Duffer: You\u2019re asking a question that will be answered in the final episode. The next spoiler talk we do, I\u2019ll address it.<\/p>\n

\n\tThis interview has been edited and condensed.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u2022 Linda Hamilton<\/a> on Being Millie Bobby Brown\u2019s \u2018Biggest Fan\u2019
\u2022 Shawn Levy<\/a> on \u2018Sticking the Landing\u2019 for Season 5
\u2022 David Harbour<\/a> on How \u2018Stranger Things\u2019 Has Changed Him
\u2022 The Cast of \u2018Stranger Things\u2019<\/a> on the Show\u2019s Final Days
\u2022 The Duffer Brothers<\/a> on the \u2018Stranger Things\u2019 Spinoff<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SPOILER ALERT:\u00a0This story contains spoilers from Season 5, Volume 1 of \u201cStranger Things.\u201d In the battle that concludes…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":316373,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[64321,88,13671],"class_list":{"0":"post-316372","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-duffer-brothers","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-stranger-things"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=316372"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316372\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/316373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=316372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=316372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=316372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}