{"id":381687,"date":"2026-01-01T13:42:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-01T13:42:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/381687\/"},"modified":"2026-01-01T13:42:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-01T13:42:08","slug":"stranger-things-pays-homage-to-origins-in-emotional-series-finale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/381687\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Stranger Things’ Pays Homage To Origins In Emotional Series Finale"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tSPOILER ALERT: The story includes details about the series finale of Netflix<\/a>\u2018s Stranger Things<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tNetflix\u2019s first blockbuster series, Stranger Things, closed out its five-season run with a nostalgic look back in a finale featuring footage from the early seasons and wrapping the story of Mike (Finn Wolfhard), Will (Noah Schnapp), Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo) and Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin) the way it started in the very first episode \u2014 with a game of Dungeons & Dragons in the Wheelers\u2019 basement.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe two-hour closer<\/a> also snuck in a nod to Stranger Things\u2018 origins.<\/p>\n

\n\tAlmost 11 years ago, on April 2, 2015, Netflix announced a series green light<\/a> to Montauk, a supernatural drama series written and directed by young genre filmmakers Matt Duffer and Ross Duffer and executive produced by Shawn Levy, to debut in 2016.<\/p>\n

\n\tDescribed as a love letter to the \u201980s classics that captivated a generation, the series was to be set in 1980 Montauk, Long Island, where a young boy vanishes into thin air. As friends, family and local police search for answers, they are drawn into an extraordinary mystery involving top-secret government experiments, terrifying supernatural forces and one very strange little girl.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile the premise never changed, the drama became untitled for awhile until finally going with Stranger Things at the 11th hour, and its setting was moved to the fictional town of Hawkins, Indiana.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe original title and location were at the core of a 2018 lawsuit filed against the Duffer Brothers<\/a> by a filmmaker Charles Kessler who accused them of plagiarizing the series from his short film Montauk before withdrawing the complaint<\/a>, admitting that \u201cmy work had nothing to do with the creation of Stranger Things.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter moving away from their original setting (and despite the legal headache it may have triggered), the Duffers opted to bring it back in the finale of Stranger Things as Hopper (David Habour) revealed in the epilogue that he was mulling a move to Montauk for a Chief of Police job. He wouldn\u2019t do it alone \u2014 he laid out his plan to Joyce (Winona Ryder<\/a>) at a dinner where he proposed to her.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile the series left the storyline open-ended as the duo\u2019s relocation was not confirmed, it went full circle, bringing Stranger Things to where it began with the Duffers\u2019 original idea.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SPOILER ALERT: The story includes details about the series finale of Netflix\u2018s Stranger Things. Netflix\u2019s first blockbuster series,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":381688,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[137270,64321,88,217,13671,145369,92,29040],"class_list":["post-381687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-david-harbour","tag-duffer-brothers","tag-entertainment","tag-netflix","tag-stranger-things","tag-stranger-things-5","tag-tv","tag-winona-ryder"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381687","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=381687"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381687\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/381688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=381687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=381687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=381687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}