After three years of being away, the gang at Hawkins, Indiana are back for the fourth season of Stranger Things to tackle their biggest monster yet: high school.
But you might be hard-pressed to recognise the familiar faces of Mike, Will, Lucas, Dustin, Max and Eleven, as the Party have not only grown up, some have crossed puberty like a bat out of hell, much to the surprise of even the child actors themselves.
“I always think back to that first scene where we were listening to music just because you were so tiny,” said Charlie Heaton of Noah Schnapp, who play brothers Jonathan and Will Byers respectively in the hit Netflix series.
Sitting at a press conference that Geek Culture attended, the cast of Schnapp, Heaton, Caleb McLaughlin (Lucas), Sadie Sink (Max), Priah Ferguson (Erica), Gaten Matarazzo (Dustin) and newcomer Eduardo Franco, reflect upon how impactful Stranger Things has been, and what it was like growing up alongside each other throughout the years together with their on-screen characters.
“It’s crazy seeing the whole gang grow up on the show!” shared Matarazzo who plays the smart, goofy, and confident Dustin in the series. “What I don’t like is seeing videos and interviews of us at that age, because it’s just a plethora of cringe.”
After an intense and definitely strange season including Jazzercise gyms, neon-crazy colours, a brawl in a mall and the Mind Flayer, the Party have gone their separate ways to focus on the next chapter of their lives. Whilst the cast have teased that this season is definitely going to be bigger and darker, the biggest shock has to be seeing how the cast – once children – are now adults bringing partners to premieres, decked out in corsets, fishnets and three-piece silk suits.
Matarazzo and McLoughlan were just 14 years old when they appeared in the first season of Stranger Things. Finn Wolfhard was only 13 whilst Millie Bobby Brown was just 12. Now, the cast have hit their late teens, with the older of the bunch hitting the big two and zero.
Although plenty of the series’ focus was on the kids, the older cast, made up of Heaton, Joe Keery, Natalia Dyer, David Harbour and Winona Ryder, also played major roles, mainly impacting the relationships the children have with each other and the familial bond that has been created in the last three seasons.
After all, nothing brings people closer together, than a demon from another dimension.
“We all came on the show together and around the same age. We’ve all gone through this crazy trajectory together throughout every season, and having someone that’s kind of going through the same things really helps,” added Heaton. “Seeing the characters and how they’ve grown as well has been pretty impactful.”
And audiences have done the same, pushing the series that dropped without much fanfare in 2016 to greater heights. Within the first year, the cast won the Screen Actors Guild Awards for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series, as well as Emmy Awards for Outstanding Main Title Design, Outstanding Main Title Theme Music, Outstanding Casting for a Drama Series and Outstanding Sound Editing for a Comedy or Drama series. And as the seasons increased, so did the pile of awards, and it came to a point that one can’t help but think of Stranger Things when Netflix is mentioned.
Despite building a strong fanbase, viewers of Stranger Things haven’t yet hit that crescendo of geekdom yet though, as unlike Trekkies (Star Trek), Whovians (Doctor Who), Browncoats (Firefly) or X-Philes (The X-Files), fans of the series don’t exactly have a fan community nickname to call their own. On the other hand, few shows have generated a healthy number of memes, such that even the cast have become fans of the Stranger Things memes with them in it.
“My dad was like, ‘Hey, my friend at work told me you’re a meme,’ and it was one where it’s like me, Joe, and Natalia.” laughed Heaton. “Joe and Natalia are in a conversation and I’m behind them with this stupid grin on my face, it’s something like ‘When everyone’s buying the PS5 and you’ve got no money.”
“I actually have a fun one,” added Matarazzo. “A meme where they took my smile from season one with the pizza box, and they put it next to a leather couch and my face matched up really oddly perfectly with like the dents in the leather couch. I was a little upset about it, but it is hilarious.”
Alas, all is not fun and games in the new season, as the teasers have revealed a new big bad terrorising the Party – Vecna. As seen in the last season, defeating the creatures from Upside Down, including the Mind Flayer in the Season 3 finale, drained Eleven (Bobby Brown), and the season ended with plenty of unanswered questions.
“To me, [this season is] a lot darker. I just watched the first two episodes because they just sent us like the first four, and it just shocked me how crazy and scary it is because every season, when we do this press, I always say ‘It’s so much darker. It’s so much bigger.’ and it’s just like the classic thing you say with Stranger Things,” said Schnapp.
“But this season, like when I was watching it, I was terrified for some of the parts so it is definitely darker and scarier.”
A lot that was established in season three will definitely be brought over in the new season, which takes place six months after the destruction of Starcourt Mall. Erica and Robin (Maya Hawke) are now the latest members of the Party, while Eleven is now powerless and living in California with the Byers. Oh, and Jim Hopper (David Harbour) is somehow dead but also stuck in a Russian prison. There are plenty of reunions that fans can look forward to in the new season, as well as plenty of other changes.
“In the early episodes of the show, we’re starting high school without a good chunk of our friend group. We miss them very, very much obviously. It’s also a very transitional time for us and not only we’re struggling with dealing with regular things like fitting in in a new social climate, but also trying to cope with everything that has gone on in the past six months,” explained McLaughlin.
“Especially now because the town knows that something is up in a way. They know that there was a big tragedy in town because the mall burning down obviously took a toll on a lot of people, especially on those who know what really happened at that point. I think it affects some characters more than most considering who they lose and what they lose.”
While it might be great for fans that the show is finally making its return, the news comes with some bad news as this is the second last season before Stranger Things officially wraps up, though as hit shows go, there have been demands and rumours of spin-offs.
Whether audiences will see some of the characters in a spin-off series or in their own solo tv shows remains to be seen, but Ferguson hopes that viewers will continue to embrace the growth of the current pool of characters, especially newcomers like herself who were added to the main cast in season three.
“It would be really cool to star in a spin-off if that was an idea that Netflix or the writers of Stranger Things had, but I definitely think you see Erica’s character progress and really understand her personality,” said Ferguson.
“In season two, you kind of saw a little clip of her personality. In season three, you saw that she was very quick-witted and resourceful, and then in season four, you see how she contributes to the team.”
Season 4 of Stranger Things streams exclusively on Netflix from 27 May 2022.
Don’t judge a book by its cover, for behind all this makeup, is a geek just like you. To simply put it, superheroes, Star Wars, Harry Potter and all things gore and creepy makes this girly girl swoon.
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