[synth theme music playing]

[Ross] The MAC-Z is, without a doubt, the most complicated sequence we’ve ever done on this show.

Whoa!

That looked so dope. 

MAC-Z was massive.

[Bower] All of a sudden, everything just went dead quiet, and it just slapped.

[Heymann] You’d have to nail that exact frame on the next one as well as the timing. It was incredible. 

Me and the Duffers looked at each other like, “Ah!” We just hugged and jumped, and then we were like, “OK. We’re not touching that.” 

We put on different hats. So when we’re writing, we’re just writers. We’re not thinking about how to execute anything. Because it would be overwhelming. We would never end up writing a sequence like this. To do the sequences, we had to rebuild downtown Hawkins at our studio lot. We had to build what has ultimately been our biggest set to date. Our biggest single set. It’s massive. There were over 600 lighting instruments and then another 400 practical fixtures that were built by our fixtures team.

[Trujillo] It took us the better part of a year to really get it completely dialed. We completely recreated, down to the detail, including the interior of our Radio Shack, that whole block of Melvald’s we’ve all come to know and love.

[banging]

[roaring]

[intriguing music playing] When I read the script, it was daunting. Because the amount of scenes, you’re just going through pages and pages. I started, really, with very rough sketches, and then the storyboards get more and more fleshed out. Then we go into pre-vis and work with proof on coming up with camera angles and all the exciting action and how it would take place. Then we had to bring in stunts. And Hiro and his team worked together closely with us, and they rehearsed the heck out of all those scenes.

[man 1] Kill five, kill six.

[man 2] Go! Die! 

It was a lot of fun, putting this sequence together. It was a lot of work and a lot of people. All the sequences that I choreograph, I end up doing a stunt pre-vis, and I shoot the entire sequence out, cut it, edit it. I even throw visual effects in to kinda give the whole picture to present to everybody and say, “Here’s what we are going to do.” The MAC-Z is supposed to be in the center of a destroyed Hawkins, so we’re extending out the town. The destroyed library is all visual effects. We’re adding in the Demogorgons. We’re adding in muzzle flashes on every round of every bullet that’s getting fired. And when you have 75 soldiers running around, it’s a lot of bullets. 

Hey, we’re getting out of here. Eyes on me. Stay close.

[Ross] What was really complicated is when the Demos come in and start attacking, we wanted to go into a single shot. We really wanted it to feel like a war zone. And our thought was the best way to do that is to really be with the characters from beginning to end. Don’t chop it up into a bunch of pieces. Follow them as if you’re like a documentary crew, through this war zone, seeing these horrors. It was wider than we normally shoot. You can actually see what’s happening, not just in the foreground, but in the middle ground and in the background. It made it that much harder for Nick ’cause our scenes that were connecting these shots were all done physically, handheld, while he’s running around. He’d have to run up a hill and tilt up, but then he’d have to nail that exact frame on the next one, as well as the timing, as he came into the next piece of the shot. We played it back and spliced them together, and it was incredible.

[kids screaming] Is everybody OK? You guys OK?

[Koda] Look at that shot!

MAC-Z was massive. We had some of the best stunt performers in Atlanta.

[Koda] There’s still Demogorgons attacking guys in the background, so we had to see bodies flying in the background. Those pieces had to be in.

[Curfman] I would have to just shadow behind Nick and know we’re gonna get ready to see background fly over here, so I had to count down for my riggers to either hop the ratchet or do the hand pull. Nick was so consistent that I knew once he adjusted his camera move, I knew my timing would work out perfectly. It was such a dance.

Go! Come on.

[Müller] I have a dance background. My mom is a choreographer, so I grew up in a dance school, doing ballet. I take that world, and I implement it with operating. I will memorize the choreography of the stunt, and then I will choreograph my footwork and the camera’s movement to the stunt choreography so that it’s exact every time. I will do a pas de bourrée and a rond de jambe, and I’ll feel the mat with my toe, and then I’ll make my way through that little window that I have to move through.

[Demogorgon roaring]

[kids screaming]

[Garcia] There was so much action in this scene, and the funny thing was there was more than one Demogorgon. There were three Demogorgons.

[Paterson] We have stunt people dressed up in just gray suits, with tennis balls on their heads to make sure everyone has the right eyeline. It helps the cameraman a huge amount ’cause they have a lot of trouble framing for something that’s not there.

[Garcia] We had Lance and Alex, who are two other amazing creature performers, and sometimes we would just have fun on set saying, “Hey, how many kills did you get?” “I got six kills.” “Yeah? I got 10.” 

We’re all gonna die! Stay behind me!

[man] Get down!

[Mekash] There’s tons and tons of backgrounders. There’s 100 people working every day. We put this kind of cream on the actors to make them look like they’re wet. And people are dirty, and they’re getting injured. That’s our biggest challenge, the amount of people and that everybody looks the way I want it to look. We are very mindful that everybody has a place to go and nobody’s overloaded.

It was technical till the very end.

Until the very end.

[Ross] We had the initial flashback to Vecna 1.0, as we call him. But we had not seen Vecna 2.0, and we knew that when he arrived, we wanted it to feel like this huge moment. We referenced the Darth Vader scene in Rogue One. When he comes in, it just feels like an unstoppable force.

[Bower] Coming through the portal, the intention is very much, “All right, you’re now in my way. Just move. I’ve got a job to do.”

[Ross] Jamie just crushed it the minute he walked out of that gate. You felt the power of Vecna. He is not scared of these soldiers. He’s not scared of Will, and he brought that gravitas.

[shouting]

[Bower] There are certainly more moments of kind of cockiness, I feel like, in this season than there were before. It’s like, with the pins of the grenade, I pull the pins out and tilt my head, and I’m like, “It’s bye time,” and throw them.

[soldiers screaming]

[Maher] Vecna’s new body is more monster and less human, but he’s been through a lot. He was torched last season, body was fully on fire, then he was shot up-close and personal with a sawed-off shotgun and tossed out of the Creel house. So all those things had to also be a part of his new design. There are burnt textures that are placed into the vines to make it look like the vines were trying to grow over and heal over some of that trauma, and that it is a part of his character now. He’s vengeful.

[Gower] It’s just this extreme version of Vecna we haven’t seen before. Everything gets mutated to the point you can see through vines and all the roots in his body, which we can’t create practically. So we kind of fell on this middle ground where we did a head and shoulders on Jamie. We had a Lycra skintight catsuit, which was covered in tracking markers for visual effects. Vecna 2.0, this season, takes close to three and a half hours. The makeup is reduced significantly from last year, which took close to six and a half hours. It was the imposing size of him that I wanted to make sure that we had. And so I emailed Barrie Gower, and I was like “Barrie, can we try and maybe put something on the shoulders, the chest?” ’Cause I still have to be thin for Henry too. So it’s not like I could fully bulk up. So he put in football pads, basically, and then in the sides, these grenade packs that I call ’em, my ammo packs. They just helped me keep my arms in a good posture, where I’m not having to walk around too much, like a rugby player, where it’s normal and natural.

[Gower] It’s a perfect marriage of practical and digital effects. But I think it’s very important that we can see Jamie’s performance drive through that.

[growling softly]

[groaning]

[Curfman] It’s almost harder to get someone to be still on a wire than to yank ’em through the air and get ’em to land where you need. It’s such a huge acting moment, I didn’t want Noah thinking about the harness. I didn’t want him thinking about wires.

[Bower] When we’re face to face, that was when the mentality shifted a little bit more. That was when something else took over. Those are those moments that I always hope for, and you can’t plan for them. They just happen.

[Matt] Every once in a while with an actor, you see them lose sight of themselves entirely and become that character. This is one of those moments where Jamie seemingly lost complete sight of who he was, and the kind person that he was and truly became 100% Vecna, and it was powerful to watch. And fortunately, we caught it on camera. Can you see them, William? Can you see the children? All of a sudden, on take three, everything just went dead quiet, and it just slapped.

[Schnapp] There’s definitely a feeling when you just get lost in it, not thinking about anything else. And when you find that feeling, it’s like, don’t mess with that. It’s like stepping away from the mind. That’s kind of like how I was… 

Like, out of your body.

Totally. Some minds, it turns out, simply do not belong in this world.

[Schnapp] I’m only looking in your eyes, and all I see is that mask, and it’s horrifying.

[growling softly]

[Matt] If you look back at Season 1, Noah was not in Season 1 very much. In Season 2, we gave him a large role, and at that point, we did not know if he was gonna be able to pull it off or not. And he did. We know we were putting a lot on him for the final season. He’s a fantastic actor, and we knew he had a lot to show that he hadn’t had an opportunity to show. It was just exciting to watch him hit a home run.

[dark music playing]

[distorted shrieking]

[hopeful music playing]

[Schnapp] For this, I was playing two different feelings. I tried to just think of a big animal.

Like a 6,000-pound gorilla beast.

Awesome. That just is inside of me, and I pound on my chest, and I huff and puff. I want to outwardly feel that, but I also wanna feel that Will is still in there.

Yeah.

[director] And lift.

[yelling]

[Schnapp] Whoa.

[Bower] That looked so dope. Wiping blood shots is cool.

Right? And it’s in slo-mo.

Yeah. Nothing looks bad in slo-mo. We did it in one take, and we ran to the monitors, and me and the Duffers looked at each other like, “Ah!” We just hugged and jumped, and we were like, “OK. We're not touching that.”

[Maher] Everyone really contributes. There’s just so much to do that it pulls the most out of every department, and it’s a beast.

[Suhre] I would consider MAC-Z the real pinnacle. It showed we’re not afraid to put ourselves out there in complicated situations where you’d rather you wouldn’t be.

[Matt] We’re hoping that Episode 4 leads to a lot of discussion and a lot of excitement for the next part. We knew it was gonna be in two parts, and so we wanted it to function like two big movies. We wanted to build to a big climax that would hopefully leave people exhilarated and dying to see what happens next.