Stranger Things 2 dialed things up to Eleven, unleashing new monsters like the Demodogs and raising the stakes for our favorite Hawkins crew. With the Upside Down’s shadow growing larger, so did the personal stories and fun facts from the cast — making your rewatch feel like a new adventure. 

Series cast members, including Finn Wolfhard, Noah Schnapp, Caleb McLaughlin, Gaten Matarazzo, Sadie Sink, and Joe Keery, have dropped new behind-the-scenes anecdotes about their unique experience filming the second season.

These stories are perfect for Stranger Things fans — they include fun improvised moments and inside jokes that made it into the show. Keep scrolling for illuminating facts and trivia straight from the cast. 

Sink clicked instantly with Matarazzo and McLaughlin during her audition for Max. 

Max’s natural rapport with Dustin and Lucas in the second chapter of Season 2, when they invite her to go trick-or-treating, signaled the start of an epic friendship. Sink also found an instant connection with future co-stars Matarazzo and McLaughlin when they performed a chemistry read of that same scene during Sink’s audition. 

“We just got to talking, and I was like, ‘Oh, we’re just kids at the end of the day.’ It felt right,” Sink said. “I remember walking away from that and thinking, ‘This might work. I think I might be doing this scene again.’ ” 

Wolfhard requested a weapon for Mike and was handed a candlestick. 

At the end of Chapter 8, “The Mind Flayer,” the gang arms themselves in anticipation of a fight with a Demogorgon — and there’s a reason Mike is holding a candlestick as his weapon of choice. 

“In this scene, I was like, ‘Everyone has a weapon. Can I have a weapon?’ ” Wolfhard recounted. 

He was given a candlestick from a nearby table, and that became a running joke on set. “Even this year when we were talking about weapons, the Duffers were like, ‘Don’t you just want the candlestick again?’ ” he shared.

Winona Ryder tried to convince the Duffers to not kill Bob in the series. 

Bob’s (Sean Astin) brutal death in Chapter 8 was devastating to everyone, including Astin’s co-star Winona Ryder, who campaigned behind the scenes for the character to live. 

“I remember Winona marching around base camp yelling at the Duffers that they cannot kill Sean [off] because she loved him so much, and she loved working with him,” Schnapp said. “I echo that same thought. I’m so heartbroken that they killed him. He was such a good dad for Will.”

 Keery improvised the line where Steve calls Mike “Nancy” in Chapter 9. 

After taking a serious beating from Billy for lying about Max’s whereabouts, a groggy Steve wakes up in the back of Billy’s car with Max behind the wheel. Still out of it, he mistakes Mike for his sister, Nancy, in an amusing moment that was improvised by Keery. 

“I was really kind of beat-up at that point in the show,” Keery said, “The moment of me calling him Nancy [was] an improv on set that we ended up keeping because it was kinda funny.”

Lucas’s unforgettable high-pitched scream in Chapter 9 started out as a set joke. 

“It was an iconic scream. I used to do it a lot on set just to have fun,” McLaughlin explained. When his production colleagues caught wind of his unique yell, they decided to make good use of it. 

“I’m like, ‘I can scream that loud. No one can do it,’ ” he said. “They put it in [the show], and it was great.”

Feeling prepared to continue your rewatch journey? Jump back into Seasons 1–4 of Stranger Things, which are currently streaming on Netflix. 

Stranger Things 5 releases with the first four episodes on Nov. 26, followed by three episodes
on Christmas, and the finale episode
on New Year’s Eve. Find out when new episodes arrive in your part of the world here.