Stranger Things may be coming to a close soon, with its season 5 set to premiere sometime this year, but the bonds among the cast are as strong as ever. (Spending literal years upon years battling Vecna and traveling through the Upside Down will do that to ya.) Some of the Stranger Things cast just proved that Hawkins lives on, as stars Finn Wolfhard (Mike), Maya Hawke (Robin), Gaten Matarazzo (Dustin), and Natalia Dyer (Nancy) got together to support Sadie Sink, a.k.a. Max, at the opening night of her Broadway play, John Proctor is the Villain.
The play features a group of high school students in Appalachia reading The Crucible during the #MeToo movement and reckoning with its themes and portrayals of women on the page and off. Sink plays a character named Shelby and is getting rave reviews for her performance; Variety said she gives “a spellbinding performance as a girl who is deeply pained but shielded with thick armor.”
The Stranger Things cast has spent pivotal years growing up in the spotlight together, and saying goodbye wasn't easy. Sink told Teen Vogue that she initially began season five “in denial” about what was to come. “And then towards the end… there was this numbness, like, 'Oh God, what's gonna happen? What am I gonna do?' That final day, it was one of the most emotional days in my life. I'm really grateful that it was. To be on a show for that long, then get to the final day, and to get to break down in that way. And be like, I don't want it to end. That was so special. But saying goodbye to, like, childhood literally... It was a lot. It was heavy.”
She also reflected on the friendship she shared with her castmates, and how she carries that into her post-Stranger Things life. “It was easy to forget how much these people really knew me and saw me. We speak the same language,” Sink told Teen Vogue. “But in this last season I really came to terms with that. That's why it was so emotional, but also so beautiful, knowing that now it's up to us — that responsibility is on us to [sustain] the friendship. It was really nice to have that reckoning. Like, ‘I don't have to explain anything to you guys. You just get it. You know who I am.’”
But the Netflix series isn't over yet. We know the final episode of Stranger Things will be a tearjerker, as David Harbour, who plays Hopper, told People that pretty much everyone was crying after the table read. “The end of this episode when we were reading it — just us reading it — about halfway through, people started crying,” he explained. “Then about the last 20 minutes, it was just uncontrollably crying, waves of different people."
Though it's sad to say goodbye to their characters, the Stranger Things cast definitely proves that friendship is forever.
