Unseen Stranger Things art and secrets revealed in new official guide

Stranger Things season 5 may have ended the ultimate sci-fi saga that’s ensnared audiences since 2016, but that doesn’t mean the Duffer Brothers are finished with new material about the show and franchise. Straight off the heels of an animated spinoff series, Stranger Things: Tales from 85, comes the Target-exclusive companion guide, Stranger Things: The Official Story behind the Legendary Series by Gina McIntyre.

Featuring commentary from the creators of the Netflix hit, Matt and Ross Duffer, Stranger Things: The Official Story behind the Legendary Series includes never-before-seen content, such as creature concept art, costume photography, in-world ephemera, script snippets, maps and blueprints, exclusive cast interviews, and even a secret code hidden among its pages that leads to bonus content. If you’re a fan of Stranger Things and want to experience the show in full, from its inception and beyond its conclusion, this book is the guide you’re looking for.

Read below to find out more about what you can expect from Stranger Things: The Official Story behind the Legendary Series, in the following excerpt featuring four pages from Chapter 5 of the guide.

Image: Netflix/Target/Gina McIntyre

Season 5. One Last Adventure.

The fall of 1987. Hawkins is scared by the opening of the Rifts, and our heroes are united by a single goal: find and kill Vecna. But he has vanished — his whereabouts and plans unknown.

As the anniversary of Will’s disappearance approaches, so does a heavy, familiar dread. The final battle is looming — and with it, a darkness more powerful and more deadly than anything they’ve faced before. To end this nightmare, they’ll need everyone — the full party — standing together, one last time.

With the show’s final eight episodes, Matt and Ross Duffer chose to revisit the inciting event of Stranger Things — Will’s fateful disappearance on November 6, 1983. Specifically, the siblings wanted to finally reveal what Will himself experienced during the seven days he struggled to survive in the Upside Down and the myriad ways that those events would shape the course of his life. For the writer-directors, it was a key jumping-off point that helped frame their approach to the pivotal fifth season, which was designed to illuminate the many shadowy mysteries of the drama’s overarching mythology.

“We always knew that this season was going to revolve around Will in many ways because we felt that it should come full circle,” Matt Duffer says. “Stranger Things started with Will’s disappearance, and ultimately, it did need to end with him overcoming everything he’s dealt with and coming face to face with Vecna and the Mind Flayer.” Adds Ross Duffer: “Will’s so off-screen in season one; we’ve always been curious about what exactly happened to him. Now, we can dramatize that and then tie it directly into Vecna and the events of season five.”

The revelations were worth waiting for. In an appropriately epic fifth season set primarily during the latter months of 1987, the Duffers pulled off an incredibly difficult creative high-wire act. Not only did they craft a compelling new adventure for the protagonists, but they continued to develop the characters’ rich inner lives and their connections to one another. Working collaboratively with the rest of the writing team, the Duffers answered some of the show’s biggest questions. And, as if that weren’t enough, they gifted the characters with sincere yet somewhat bittersweet endings — no trace of maudlin sentimentality to be found.

But for the series’s beleaguered heroes, the path toward a bright future is tremendously fraught, with difficult truths coming to light and painful sacrifices proving necessary. Although the season kicks off by revisiting the past, it quickly plunges audiences right back into a harrowing present in which downtown Hawkins has been ripped apart by the rifts Vecna created. Now under military control, the Military Access Control Zone, or “MAC-Z,” as the region has become known, is off-limits to locals. However, that doesn’t stop Hopper and the gang from planning risky incursions into the forbidden territory as they continue their hunt for Vecna.

At the same time, the government forces, including the enigmatic Dr. Kay (The Terminator’s Linda Hamilton), are searching for Eleven, who has honed her powers under Hopper and Joyce’s tutelage. Vecna, too, has set his own plans into motion. By harnessing the psychic energy of the Hawkins children — including young Holly Wheeler (Nell Fisher stepping into the role originated by twins Anniston and Tinsley Price) — the villain intends to amplify his own formidable abilities. His ultimate goal is to draw the dimension known as the Abyss, which lies beyond the Upside Down, into our world — forever reshaping reality and ending human civilization.

As the central gang works together to stop Vecna, Will becomes an invaluable asset, as his journey toward self-acceptance enables him to harness his inner power. Indeed, it is only by repairing fractured relationships, reuniting with old friends, and forging new alliances that the group can take down the inhuman threats they face — though their eventual victory doesn’t come without cost, and plenty of mistakes are made along the way.

“We’re not very interested in exploring characters who are static,” says Matt Duffer. “We want them to have ups and downs and to come out on the other side having learned from what they’ve done wrong and be better people because of it. There’s this expectation now that you have to perfect all the time, that you can’t slip up. It’s important for younger people to know that that’s not normal — that’s part of what it means to grow up.”

Recreating Young Will

Although Matt and Ross Duffer knew they wanted to return to the origins of the series to make clear Vecna’s role in Will’s abduction, those narrative aspirations required them to somehow recreate an eleven-year-old Noah Schnapp. So, they turned to Weta FX to determine how best to turn back the clock.

The team there created a computer-generated digital double of Schnapp’s face by combining the expressions of Luke Kokotek, who was hired to play Will in the season’s opening sequence, with Schnapp’s own performance. “The Duffers were directing me, and basically all I was moving was my face,” Schnapp says. “I couldn’t move the rest of my body. I had to act like I was running through the woods and looking behind me super scared and out of breath. It was a weird acting challenge, but it was cool working one-on-one with the Duffers. Doing that range of emotions was hard though.”

Schnapp had the opportunity to see how the scenes were coming together during the production, and he was astonished by the results: “Just seeing the VFX team build this recreation of me — it’s the weirdest thing. When they showed me the video, it looked so real, but it’s not a real video. It’s crazy what technology can do.”

Stranger Things: The Official Story behind the Legendary Series by Gina McIntyre is available now, exclusively at Target. The 304-page hardcover book costs $50.