Maya Hawke Gives ‘Stranger Things’ Season 5 Filming Update: “We’re Making, Basically, Eight Movies”
Maya Hawke is sharing an update on filming for Stranger Things’s fifth and final season.
The Netflix series has been plagued by setbacks in the best. Production for Season 4 of the sci-fi series was paused in March 2020 due to the pandemic, and Season 5 was pushed due to the writers and actors strike in 2023. Filming for Season 5 began in January 2024, with Hawke joking on Podcrushed, “This show has been a little bit cursed.”
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“Our showrunners, Matt and Ross, take a lot of responsibility. They have an amazing team of writers, but they’re very involved,” she said. “They write a lot and they are very intense and serious about the quality of the continued writing, and it takes a long time to write each season, and it takes a long time to shoot them.”
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Hawke continued, “We’re making, basically, eight movies. The episodes are very long.”
The fifth and final season of Stranger Things will consist of eight episodes, and Hawke noted that it will take about a year to shoot this final chapter of the show.
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In 2022, Hawke shared her hopes for the final season of Stranger Things, saying she wanted Robin to have a “hero’s moment.”
“I would love to die and get my hero’s moment,” she told Rolling Stone. “I’d love to die with honor, as any actor would. But I love the way that the Duffer Brothers love their actors. The reason that they write so beautifully for me and for everyone else is because they fall in love with their actors and their characters, and they don’t want to kill them. I think that’s a beautiful quality that they have, and I wouldn’t wish it away.”
When Stranger Things Season 4 ended, Robin had a girlfriend going into the final season, which made Hawke have “mixed” emotions about that storyline.
“It’s both a great thing, and I also love characters where their love life is not the center of their existence,” Hawke told Yahoo! Entertainment in June 2023.
Hawke explained that Robin having a girlfriend would take screentime away from on-screen scenes with Joe Keery’s Steve.
“That friendship with Steve is so special,” Hawke added. “And friendships have been carrying me through my life. I think they’re really important, and they deserve their airtime.”
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