[crowd clamoring]

We don't need a magic bean.

Man: We lost an airplane.

You don't need a magic bean! We got a beanstalk right here. 

What was cool and what we liked about the scene, that's when we cracked it, was when we had Steve be the one who has the epiphany. 

It's a really fun last hurrah, so I think we all knew not to take it for granted. 

Joe and Gaten have this similar superpower of delivering the information with a self-assurance that makes it super watchable. Gaten, to me, embodies kind of, like, the spirit of the show.

Matt Duffer: This was the most massive brainstorm sequence in Stranger Things, with the most number of characters and the most complex "puzzle pieces." 

Game, set, match.

[theme music playing]

[clicks] Okay, this is Hawkins, and this is the Upside Down. The group brainstorm scene, it's sort of a pillar of Stranger Things franchise DNA. Every season, you've got these disparate, separate storylines. And eventually, usually around episode six or seven, everyone comes together. 

We're in the Squawk. We're all debriefing all together. This is our meetup before the big battle. 

I feel personally like I've gotten to really interact with some amazing sets over the past ten years that I've been doing this. The Squawk particularly is just, like, a special design. It's integral to the season, and you just forget that you're on a set. You feel like you really are in this building. 

It feels like a home, in a sense, where you can walk around this whole space and find a different part you haven't seen yet.

Man: The look book I initially put together for the Squawk was a very comprehensive book of all of my different ideas and inspirations for what our radio station might wanna look like, interior and exterior. And one of my favorite pictures of an exterior radio station was taken in North Carolina. When the Duffers were flipping through my book, this particular image they saw, they were like, that is literally the radio station that we remember seeing as kids. I was able to get in touch with the station, and we went there and measured it and photographed it, and we used it to help inform the architecture.

Shawn Levy: Because I was a teen of the '80s, I noticed the set deck on Stranger Things in a very granular way. I always have. There's thousands of decisions that Jess Royal and the set decorating team make that create the texture of the '80s. If you open a drawer, if you look at a shelf, whether it's in Mike Wheeler's basement or the Squawk kitchen, it's taking me back to a moment in time. 

The Squawk is wonderful from every angle. You can really feel the kind of, just the history of the space. Some of the older framed stuff on the walls are the top 40 hits from 1958. And then you kind of see some of the, like, Bon Jovi stuff later on. 

We've always assumed the Upside Down was another dimension opened by Brenner, but it turns out it's actually a bridge. 

I think probably my favorite element of the set is the centrality of that DJ booth and the way it sort of divides the space, but doesn't block the views. The Squawk this season was definitely the one we were most conscious about making large enough and interesting enough to accommodate those multi-character scenes.

Woman: This is actually one of our favorite days because it was a long day with all of this cast. You see remnants of what has happened everywhere.

Brynn Berg: I love this. It shows from where we started in the beginning to where we are. They all look so correct of where they should be 'cause so many shows don't let you go there. And we got to go make them really disgusting this year. And it's fun.

[chuckles] I was very conscious of each color that I was putting the actors in or if we were gonna have too many stripes or patterns. You've got somebody in a hospital gown. Eleven's got a wetsuit. Joyce has her coat back on, that original coat from seasons one and two. Dustin's in a new hat. I'm very pleased with how many people there are and how many colors complement and go well together. 

You up for a tour?

Man: Starting with 17 cast members in a scene is immediately a daunting task. One of the first things we did with Shawn was we got 17 stand-ins for our actors, and we brought them into the space.

[laughs] We had all the stand-ins, and that's so fun. Oh, great. That is a packed house right there. 

So I'm gonna have you start. Let's lose that stool. Let's lean you against that back counter. 

I just moved people and furniture around like a chessboard until I felt I had the right configuration. For instance, here's a moment where I said, "You know what, Maya, let me have you pacing and 'conveniently' walk by Finn." 

Another kidnapping plot. Love it. 

How is this pilot gonna fly a chopper into the rift? 

So there's an example of rather than do it in edit, do it in a camera move that transitions one speaker to the next speaker, because in a classic ST brainstorm scene, you're looking for a variety of tempo.

Brett Jutkiewicz: It was just about finding the angles that were the most dynamic. One that we found that we really liked was a tracking shot behind the big group, looking at Dustin on the board, and we're kind of dollying left and right. Almost every single shot has a little bit of camera movement, and that gives the scene a layer of visual elegance that static frames don't.

They call this type of bridge…

[both] A wormhole. 

It was challenging to write. There's a lot of information, a lot of complicated information and a lot of voices. We've slowly been peeling back the layers over the seasons, but this being our final season, we wanted to explain finally what the Upside Down was. And specifically that the Upside Down is not another dimension, but a bridge to another dimension. 

This wormhole connects Hawkins to here. Another world that I've coined. The Abyss. When the Duffers first pitched season five, they drew this diagram. They knew intuitively, before they'd even written a word of a script, that we, as an audience, would need an access point. And sometimes a simple, elemental diagram is the best way for a listener to understand. 

At least now we know what we're up against and what we need to do. We just need a plan.

Matt Duffer: What was cool and what we liked about the scene, and that's when we cracked it, was when we had Steve be the one who has the epiphany.

[crowd clamoring]

Magic bean. 

My character is usually an observer in these scenes and is usually kind of a piece of the puzzle, but not necessarily the person who's coming up with the plan. So I thought it was kind of fun that I got to have the spark of the idea. 

Okay, this flashlight is the Squawk radio tower. And this Slinky… is the bridge. 

Steve as a character has never once been stupid. And I think it's just something that's been pushed onto him, even by the people who love him. Even by Dustin, who teases him quite a lot for, um, the fact that he isn't studying physics.

Hold on. I'm a little lost.

Shocking. 

So for him to kind of come out of the gate and be like, boom, I got this. And he's right. He's absolutely right. 

When it's close and the radio tower is poking through one of the rifts, bam, El makes her move, enters Vecna's sick mind and ambushes him. 

Joe and Gaten have this similar superpower of delivering the information with a self-assurance and with an enthusiasm that makes it just super watchable. There's a reason people love Dustin and Steve. Those guys deliver. 

We kicked Vecna's ass last year.

Gaten Matarazzo: I remember what lines would resonate with what characters. When it comes to, like, talking about what this implies scientifically, I would look over to Finn to Caleb to Priah to Randy, 'cause these are characters who are very, very invested in science and in physics. 

One final thing. Cherry on top. On the way out, we drop a bomb near the exotic matter. 

Gaten does it with such a specific style and tone, and it really feels like the show when he is doing that. 

The demos, the mind flayer, all of it. Gone. Game, set, match.

[dramatic music playing] Great. And just a slight push-in, please. 'Cause why not?

[chuckles] You know, it's my thing.

[man] It's all good!

And split the difference on this one.

[laughing]

Woman: Splitting. 

This is the last time in the series that all these characters are gonna be together in the same room, having a shared scene and a shared experience. 

It was kind of like, "Listen, we're gonna do this one last time." "This is it. We're never gonna do this again, so let's just make it as big as possible." And I don't think we could put another character in. The whole thing would break.

Matarazzo: I just remember, like, how much of a reminder it was that we just loved working with each other 'cause we hadn't been able to in so long.

Joe Keery: I really like watching Gaten work. You know, when we started, he was a little kid, and now he's a young man. He's 22. He, to me, embodies kind of, like, the spirit of the show.

Levy: There's no way to bring the entire cast of Stranger Things into a room and not have it devolve in some ways into a family reunion. I recently did a rewatch of all four seasons with the youngest of my four daughters, and she exclaims in the middle of, I think it was, episode 406 or 407. She goes, "I love it when all the characters come together!" And it was such a pure expression of what I know we all feel. Everyone loves to talk about the monsters, the mythology, the darkness, but it's the warmth that defines this group and the connections between them and the connections between them and us as fans that I think is the really special sauce.

Matarazzo: I think people are gonna watch. It's kind of gonna feel like home. At least it did for us filming it. It's a really fun last hurrah of a scene like that… [laughs] …before we get into the action that is episode eight.

[explosion booms]