’Stranger Things’ Star Reveals Series Ending, Says Show Comes “Full Circle”

Stranger Things will end with its upcoming Season 5, and one beloved cast member has zero problem with that. We may not know when season 5 will hit Netflix, but the franchise has become a series of “big-budget” movies that need to end.

Few TV shows have had the impact of Stranger Things on pop culture in recent years. The show (created by Matt and Ross Duffer, professionally referred to as the Duffer Brothers) hit the streaming airwaves in 2019 and was a near-immediate hit. Reportedly, the second episode of the series (“Chapter Two: The Weirdo on Maple Street”) pushed a huge percentage of viewing audiences to watch the entire season, with the Washington Post calling it “the first installment that led at least 70 percent of viewers who watched that episode to complete the entire first season of a show.”

Stranger Things has moved past simply being a television show that mines 1980s nostalgia, Spielbergian fantasy, and Stephen King horror to become a global brand. Netflix has licensed the brand to everything from frozen pizza to Dungeons & Dragons (itself a primary influence on the series) and is currently developing permanent theme park attractions based around the many supernatural troubles of Hawkins, Indiana.

Related: New Developments: ‘Stranger Things’ To Keep Original Series Alive After Season 5

The series also made stars of unknown young actors like Finn Wolfhard, Gaten Matarazzo, Caleb McLaughlin, Noah Schnapp, and Millie Bobby Brown, who form the original core quintet of the story. At this point, Stranger Things is something of an incubator for emerging Hollywood talent, prepping actors like Sadie Sink, Joe Keery, Natalia Dyer, Charlie Heaton, Dacre Montgomery, Jamie Campbell Bower, Eduardo Franco, Joseph Quinn, and Maya Hawke.

It has also boosted older actors into new heights of millennial visibility, like Winona Ryder, David Harbour, Sean Astin, and Matthew Modine. Among these elder actors is Paul Reiser, best known for his roles in Beverly Hills Cop (1984) and Aliens (1986), as well as his popular 1990s sitcom Mad About You and career as a standup comedian.

In a new interview with Decider, Paul Reiser admitted that he was sometimes annoyed by being recognized more for his Stranger Things role as Dr. Sam Owens than his decades-long body of work. He said, “It’s a fool’s errand to try and pretend that you’re not what you are…Wait, the doctor from Stranger Things is going to try to be funny?”

Paul Reiser has portrayed Dr. Owens since Stranger Things Season 2, when he was introduced as a morally ambiguous potential danger to Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) and representative of the shadowy powers that be behind the Hawkins National Laboratory.

Even the actor did not know where his character was going, and apparently, neither did the Duffer Brothers. Reiser told E! Online, “When I first met them four years ago, I said, ‘Am I a good guy or a bad guy?’ They go, ‘We don’t know.’ And I went, ‘You don’t know or you just don’t want to tell me?’ They go, ‘No, we don’t know.’ And so they don’t tell me.”

Reiser is also uncertain whether he will be returning for Stranger Things Season 5, saying:

“I literally don’t know. The Stranger Things writers’ room tweeted out, ‘Hey, everybody, send us your thoughts for next season. What would you like to see?’ And I wrote in, ‘Can Dr. Owens live? Would that be possible…I’d appreciate it if Dr. Owens comes in, in like a superhero cape, and saves the day.”

However, he is certain about one thing: it’s time for Stranger Things to wrap up, and he has no sadness for one of his biggest projects in years coming to a close. Reiser told Decider:

“From the beginning, the brothers said it’s going to be five years. So it’s not sad, it makes sense. The artistic vision was: We know what we want to do for five years. And that’s a lot. Especially towards Seasons 2 and 3—they were movies. They were big-budget movies for each episode. To do 10, 15 of them? Those are 15 movies! It deserves to come full circle and move on.”

He is not alone in referring to the last several seasons (and the upcoming one) as “movies” rather than TV episodes. Maya Hawke told Podcrushed that Season 5 of Stranger Things was basically a series of huge feature movies, saying, “It takes a long time to write each season and a long time to shoot them. We’re making basically 8 movies.”

Related: ‘Stranger Things’: Beloved Actor Comments on Eddie Munson’s Surprising Season 5 Return

Stranger Things Season 5 has been delayed numerous times in production. Despite what Reiser says, the original plan for the show was four seasons, which was apparently extended to a fifth run of mega-long episodes by Netflix. The last season was originally announced in 2022, but it has been pushed back by the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes of 2023 and various scheduling conflicts from increasingly busy stars like Millie Bobby Brown and Finn Wolfhard.

The fifth season of the show will apparently delve much more into the backstory of Vecna/Henry Creel (Jamie Campbell Bower), as well as the enigmatic nature of the parallel dimension known as the Upside Down. Bower has gone on record to describe the ongoing West End stage production Stranger Things: The First Shadow as directly connected to his character in season 5, saying, “to have a lot of the questions or a lot of the thoughts that I had about that character kind of answered by watching the play and also discover more, was really interesting for me.”

As to the Upside Down itself, Ross Duffer has been playing things predictably coy, but did reveal:

“Season 4 Volume 2 primarily avoids delving into the lore of the Upside Down, though we do offer hints. While some astute fans on platforms like Reddit might be able to piece together certain elements, Season 5 serves as the true exploration of the Upside Down’s enigmatic nature.”

Stranger Things Season 5 will likely be released sometime in 2025 at the earliest, though it does not yet have an official release date. While the episodes have been described as “movies,” there is also not yet a confirmation of their runtimes. However, a number of episode titles have leaked; reportedly, they include “The Crawl,” “The Vanishing of [Spoiler] Wheeler,” “The Turbow Trap (or possibly The Turnbow Trap),” “Sorcerer,” “Shock Jock,” and “Escape From Camazotz.”

Will you be saddened by Stranger Things coming to a close? Tell us in the comments below!