Stranger Things 4 tested our Hawkins crew like never before. Eleven moved to California and lost her powers, Joyce and Murray rescued Hopper from a Russian labor camp, and Vecna unleashed fresh nightmares on the small town. 

Along with newfound terrors, unforgettable moments like Max levitating above Billy’s grave made the season feel bigger than ever. Now is the perfect time to rewatch it, with Stranger Things 5, Volume 1, debuting on Nov. 26. 

You can make your Season 4 rewatch feel like a thrilling new adventure with these fresh insights from the cast. Keep scrolling for stories from some of your favorites, including Sadie Sink, Caleb McLaughlin, Gaten Matarazzo, Joe Keery, and Vecna himself, Jamie Campbell Bower. 

The skate scene in Chapter 2 was originally set on a mini-golf course. 

The moment Eleven angrily strikes her rival Angela with a roller skate at Rink-O-Mania played out differently in earlier drafts of the scene. 

“It was originally written at a mini-golf [course],” Brown said. “I was meant to get a golf club and whack her on the head with it.” 

Steve’s getting pulled into Lovers Lake was partially filmed backwards. 

Filming the Chapter 6 scene at Lovers Lake, in which Steve is pulled through a gate into the Upside Down, was an “intense challenge,” Keery said. 

It took some movie magic to pull off seeing the character dragged through the water by invisible forces. In addition to filming Keery being yanked under, they also flipped the scene and employed creative camera angles to complete the shot.

“They moved the rift to the top of the surface, and they actually pulled me backwards, [making] the surface of the water [look like] the bottom of the water and moving the camera,” Keery explained. “I will look back on these three days of filming as definitely one of the coolest things I’ve ever gotten to do.”

Sink and Bower kept unique props for Max and Vecna as souvenirs. 

Bower, who plays Vecna, took home a special piece of his villainous character: one of his prosthetic hands. “I have one, but it doesn’t have the mechanism in it [to make it move], so it just kind of flops around,” he said. 

Sink held onto Max’s Walkman — a portable tape player — which included the cassette of the Kate Bush song “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God).” 

“I kept one of them. There were several,” she said. “So I would listen to it.” 

Matarazzo was initially afraid of Dustin and Eddie’s onscreen dynamic. 

“People grew to love the dynamic between Dustin and Steve so much that when they had the choice to bring in a new character and relationship, that challenged that bond,” Matarazzo said. “I think the only way it works is if you have an actor like Joe [Quinn].” 

Max’s near-death experience, depicted in the Creel house attic and in the Void, were filmed on separate days. 

In a devastating moment in Chapter 9, Max almost succumbs to Vecna’s curse in the attic of the dilapidated Creel house with a distraught Lucas at her side, unable to stop it. She survives, but she ends the season in a coma. 

Eleven also witnesses Max’s near death from the Void — a scene that Sink and McLaughlin shot separately with Brown a week after filming in the Creel home. 

“You give your performance, you feel good about it, and it’s like, ‘Wait, we have to re-create that in the Void,’ ” Sink said. 

McLaughlin found it challenging to perform the emotional scene again in a different setting. “I’m like, ‘How do I get back to this same feeling?’ Just having to cry a lot in different takes was very draining,” he said. 

“What was great,” McLaughlin added, “was that the Duffers allowed me to improv. ‘We want the audience to feel this scene, so we want you to improv it, have fun, go with the flow.’ ”

Ready to slip back into the Upside Down? Seasons 1–4 of Stranger Things are currently streaming on Netflix. 

Stranger Things 5’s first four episodes will be released 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. 

Watch the Stranger Things Season 5 Teaser