Biggest Revelations From Stranger Things Documentary ‘One Last Adventure’

It’s the final goodbye. One Last Adventure: The Making of Stranger Things 5 is now streaming, offering a two-hour look at the production of the final season, which spanned nearly a year of filming and included many stressful days for all involved. Taking it episode by episode, the documentary looks into how the final season came to be. Here are the biggest revelations from the documentary that provide some insight into that final season. 

Right at the beginning of the documentary, the Duffers were acutely aware of what dealing with the backlash meant for going out with a bad ending. They said, “It’s terrifying because you see these shows that people love and adore, and the ending falters, and they discard the rest of the show. You can’t leave anything dangling, you have to wrap everything up.”

It also immediately sets the stage for the final season and the scale of ambition, consistently comparing it to earlier seasons, and we’re told most films are only half the size of a single episode of Stranger Things. The series not only uses real-world locations but, in season 5, also uses 12 soundstages full-time, and they had to scrap sets to build new ones. Furthermore, this is the first season they filmed with a backlot where the big sequence in episode 4 took place.

By the end of filming, Matt Duffer confirmed they’d had 237 days of filming, 6,725 setups, and 630 hours of footage (from the main unit), totaling a petabyte of data (1,000 terrabytes). 

It does not simply glaze over how good a job the team did; it goes into depth in areas you do not always get to see, including the most important place of all, the writers’ room. Importantly, those writers’ room sequences are spliced throughout the documentary. While the film is structured linearly, with each chapter covered separately, these writers’ room segments are not always clearly placed in time and instead show the team laying out their thinking as the process unfolds. It’s also refreshingly honest about how hard it is to put together this final season.

What this documentary does better than others is how much a work-in-progress everything for season 5, particularly in those latter episodes, was with the way that the series was being constructed, whether it’s from scripts not being finished, sets being designed, which is demonstrated quite nicely by that Wallace & Gromit train track section:

It’s also a pleasure to watch everyone from costume designers, sculptors, and production designers coming up with solutions and witnessing their artistry in real time, which all paid off to varying degrees throughout the series. Their passion is infectious, and their knowledge and can-do attitude are inspiring. 

They didn’t have the finale script before going into production, so they were rushed… 

Diving deeper into what we’ve already begun discussing, towards the beginning of the doc, the Duffers state, “We went into production without having a finished script for the finale. That was scary because we wanted to get it right. It’s the most important episode of the season.”

That’s evident throughout, with many of the production designers still having lingering questions because the script and sequences were not fully finalized even as the sets were being built, and they based many of their design decisions purely on concept art and conversations with the Duffers.

There’s even a segment during filming of episode 8 where we’re told the scripts STILL aren’t finished yet. “Today is a very interesting day. We are shooting episode 8, which isn’t completely written yet. Spoiler alert. So we don’t even fully know what’s going on. Everyone on set is walking around with red script pages,” Montana Maniscalco, a key set production assistant, said. They were filming episode 8 out of order because they needed a “summertime look” for the cave sections. “This is so weird jumping to eight,” Mat Duffer said on set, looking nervous, “Don’t love it.”

The Duffers looked stressed throughout filming this segment. “I’ve never done anything like this before,” said one of the Duffers, referring to the fact that they’d never read through episode 8 yet, and they were still shooting it.  

Picture Credit: Netflix

It’s come up again, with Matt Duffer saying they were being “hounded” by Netflix and production to finish the script for episode 8, calling it an unusual situation that made them uncomfortable. 

Moving purely over to speculation and opinion from myself, you can see why the second half of Stranger Things felt so different from the first. The first felt meticulously planned and prepared, something the sequences filmed for episode 4 showed. While it’s not fair to say the second half, especially the final episode, was thrown together, it certainly felt a bit rushed, without time to properly gestate and change. Not quite a first draft, but far from being a script that’s been sitting polished and ready to go for months. 

Throughout, I wondered why the Duffers didn’t delegate more. Sure, they wanted to wrap their arms around this final season, but a lot of it felt like it was completed with just hours to spare, with a production crew tasked with designing the final Abyss segment, somewhat clueless about specifications, with not much time to get it right because the scripts were still not finished. 

What really makes you think is what the series would’ve looked like and been like had they not had the year-long industry shutdown in 2023. 

Vecna Could’ve Been A Lot Scarier

Vecna is a pretty horrible-looking character, but it turns out that early concepts of him, revealed throughout the documentary, were also pretty gruesome, and honestly, he could’ve been a lot more terrifying. 

VFX Art Director Michael Maher Jr. explained that they went through maybe 100 different looks, experimenting with various looks, including one where he’s wearing a cloak of some kind. “Finally, we used some vines as a diseased aspect, and it clicked.” 

Handing Over The Baton To The Younger Generation

Another theme the Duffers and many of the other writers emphasized throughout the documentary is growing up and passing the baton. In this case, from Mike, Dustin, and the like to Holly and her friends, something that’s made plainly obvious in the last scene, given that it’s the boys hanging up their D&D books with Holly and her friends taking their seats. 

One analogy one of the writers used was “The door to Narnia closes for you, and then some other kids are gonna find another door later, but you’re never going back…”

The Duffers Used a Crude Drawing to Explain The Abyss to the Cast

It was one thing to introduce The Upside Down, a reflection of our world, but several layers were added on in season 5 after Dustin discovers that it’s essentially a wormhole. The Duffers were seen explaining the concept to a number of the cast members using a crude drawing that resembles a viral (albeit AI) recreation that explains it. Of course, Mr. Clarke introduced the concept of wormholes early in the season. 

Natalia Dyer asked whether the drawing and concept were based on real scientific theory, and the Duffers both joked, “It’s all very real.”

Picture Credit: Netflix

Why weren’t there more monsters in the Abyss?

During one of the many planning sessions of the finale spliced throughout the documentary, we could hear the team deliberating on who would be in the final Abyss battle, where they would all be, and what they’d be doing. 

One of the writers brought up that in the abyss, there should be demogorgons, demodogs, bats, and other creatures, one of the biggest criticisms of the finale, given that they only fought the Mindflayer and Vecna, ultimately, with all the other creatures being MIA. “It’s crazy if there’s nothing there, I think.”

The Duffers kind of waved that away by referring to the MAC-Z fight (the one at the end of volume 1), noting that six demogorgons were present, with another saying there could be “demo-fatigue” by the end. 

Hope Hynes Love Was The Duffers High School Drama Teacher

This was already discussed in interviews following the release of volume 1, but a bit more flesh was put on why the Duffers fought to get their high school drama teacher, Hope Hynes Love, to appear in the final season as Miss Harris. “Hope, immediately, even where we were so tiny freshmen, she saw something in us right away,” adding she was a big inspiration for the duo, “I don’t think we’d have survived high school without her.” 

Love also spoke to the camera about the two Duffers as high schoolers, saying, “Even in high school, they were both more fearless and more considered than their peers. The boys were really aware of how much they didn’t know and how much they had to learn, and they were never afraid of failing.”

Lots and lots of tears

Another takeaway is one the cast teased throughout the promotional tour for the final season: lots of tears.

Those were on full display here from the cast and crew throughout this documentary, given that they had the table read for episode 8, then multiple wraps for individuals during those final parts of filming, and then the final scene in the Wheelers’ basement. You can really tell that this show transcended from being a job or gig for everyone involved. 

Picture: Netflix

Picture: Netflix

Commitment to real-world sets and not VFX.

Throughout the documentary, you get to see some of the sets that were made and the Duffers inistence that everything looks real, and when VFX does have to do a bit more heavy lifting, like when the white goo with Jonathan and Nancy’s unproposal sequence was too watery, it pained Levy to say they’d need to rely a bit more on VFX. Towards the end of the documentary, one of the production designers said it’s exceedingly rare for a show of the scale of Stranger Things to be using real-life sets.  

With that, Stranger Things is at an end. It’s been a heck of a ride!

Picture Credit: Netflix