Netflix's 'Stranger Things' cast and creators give us an exclusive look at Season 5

It's all come down to this. 3 years after the finale for Season 4, Netflix is back with Season 5 of Stranger Things, an ending nearly a decade in the making. Since premiering in 2016, mentally many of us reside in Hawkins, where the stage is set for one final battle with the fate of the world hanging in the balance.

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Ahead of the Netflix premiere of Volume 1 on November 26, with Volume 2 arriving on Christmas, and "The Finale" set for New Year’s Eve, we had a chance to talk with the creators and cast of the worldwide phenomenon, as Audacy's Megan Holiday, Julia Leipidi, and Johnny Mingione stepped to the edge of The Upside Down to learn more about the final season of Stranger Things.

After discussing some the initial inspiration for Stranger Things rooted in The Montauk Project and The Philadelphia Experiment, The Duffer Brothers went on talk about the path of the show and finding a north star for its finish. "The truth is, season one, we weren't sure we're gonna get a season two, so we were so stressed out we were just focused on making it a good season, so not a whole lot was mapped out at a certain point. Netflix did go, 'you know, do you actually understand this mythology?' We're like, 'yes.' So we spent a little while, we wrote a 20 page mythology document, a lot of the stuff in there were revealing in this season. Like it hasn't been revealed till now."

"Once we got a season two and the show was successful and we realized it might go on, we really took some time to figure out what we wanted to do, how it would work as an ongoing series. Then it evolved as it was going, so we had all these ideas, but then the actors surprise you, the story surprises you. You learn what works and what doesn't. Season 5 is certainly different than I would have imagined it was going to be like 7 years ago. The one thing we knew was the final scene of the show. So we always knew, or at least for the past 7 years or so, we knew what the final scene, which was great. It was like a huge relief that we had a North Star. So we're like, 'OK, we know we're building to this.'

"What they're really good about is, kind of building upon the lore that they've already established," Gaten Matarazzo says of The Duffer Brothers. "Which has grown, I think, quite a bit more so than most shows have the ability to do in the span of just four seasons."

"It kind of goes from like this great unknown in the first season to pretty much a fully fledged villain arc by the end of the fourth, and then going into the fifth, so we knew it was gonna really try to jump in head first in that department so it's cool to see what they developed there."

"I mean, really, when you're thinking about the way it ends, it's hard not to think selfishly about it and be like, 'what's gonna happen to me?'" he laughs.

After nearly a decade of working on the series together, Charlie Heaton was asked about the emotions on the final day of filming. "It was like being hit by a train," he admits. "It was beautiful, without giving anything away, but the way we got to end it and the way the brothers planned for it to end for us. I think they were very, they were really thoughtful about how they wanted to close it out for a story. But for us people who have been working on it for 10 years, they set it up in such a way that we got to have this, we shot this scene and there are scenes, I won't specifically talk about it, but it just allowed us to really, feel all the things and get a proper goodbye."

"It's cool to think about the character's life and how maybe your own life sort of mirrors it in a way and how it's different and how that can maybe just bring new depth to what the character's experiencing in the season," shares Joe Keery. "You kind of can't help but just incorporate your own life into it because it is your life really. Last year, 2024 for me, if I look back on that year in my phone in my account, whatever, it's like 'Stranger Things' all year. That's kind of cool that we had that."

On a lighter note, Jamie Campbell Bower who plays Vecna in the final two seasons, shared the constraints of his costume when asked by Julia if it's tough to use the bathroom when you're in full costume. "Yeah, it's a f***ing nightmare. It's the worst thing in the whole world," he shares as the room erupts in laughter. "Not only do I have this like ginormous hand on one end, I've also got f***ing stick on nails on the other."

"Then I have like a flap that has to be undone and I have to get someone else to undo the flap. So, an ordeal is putting it mildly. Yes, I'm either going to pierce myself or lose a nail in the process. So yes, it's pretty rough. It's pretty grim."

For much more check out all the interviews above. Season 5 of Stranger Things premieres on November 26, only on Netflix.