As Stranger Things comes to an end, the stakes for Hawkins—and for Netflix— couldn’t be higher
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Matt and Ross Duffer have been dying to destroy Hawkins for a decade.
Their show Stranger Things became a phenomenon when it debuted in 2016 and has achieved unrivaled popularity in a fractured TV landscape. But the identical twin showrunners knew it would stretch credulity if the citizens of their ’80s-era Spielbergian hamlet continued to live in a town overrun by extradimensional threats. So for years, they kept the series’ supernatural showdowns to abandoned malls and far-flung Soviet prisons. But now, in the fifth and final season of Netflix’s biggest show, the brothers can finally unleash hell on Main Street.
I step onto the Atlanta set in July 2024, ready to watch the mayhem unfold. It’s day 135, about halfway through filming, and somewhere between 400 and 500 cast and crew members are ...



