The wait for Stranger Things Season 5 began after the Season 4, Volume 2 ending back in the summer of 2022. With a return in the 2024 TV schedule extremely unlikely, the wait continues for the foreseeable future... and the actors are getting older. For the adult characters, like Winona Ryder's Joyce and David Harbour's Hopper, a few extra years between seasons doesn't make a difference. For the young adults who are meant to be playing characters in their early teens, it's a different story. Stranger Things costume designer Amy Parris spoke with CinemaBlend about the show's approach to aging the actors down.
When the show kicked off back in 2016, Finn Wolfhard (Mike), Millie Bobby Brown (Eleven), Gaten Matarazzo (Dustin), Caleb McLaughlin (Lucas), and Noah Schnapp (Will) were all fairly close to their characters' ages of 12(ish). By Season 4, which arrived in 2022, there was a pretty significant age disparity between the characters starting high school and the young adult actors. The age disparity is only going to be greater in Season 5 unless there's a massive time jump, and an executive producer has addressed the situation.
EP Shawn Levy also credited the show's hair, costume, and wig teams for helping to age the young actors down to match their characters. So, when I spoke with costume designer Amy Parris at SCAD TVfest in Atlanta, she confirmed that the costume department is facing challenges with the cast getting older, and elaborated:
They're getting older, so it's showing in their faces and their bodies. What I think we've done a good job [with] between hair, makeup, and costume is that we've tried to maintain a usual look without overdoing it, because if you go too juvenile, if you do too much of a bright color on the wrong person, it just doesn't read authentic. I think we're doing a good job of keeping them looking young in a serious tone that feels particular to the show in a good way. We're not really juvenile-ing the actors with crazy fabrics or anything. We're maintaining the silhouette of the show and the style and color of the show, but just not overdoing it. If you overdo it, it's gonna look funky.
The costume department is working to keep the characters' ages consistent, but not by dressing the older actors in crazy fabrics designed for 14-year-old kids, which would visually stick out in the wrong way. The characters still exist in the '80s, and the show has largely kept the same tone from the beginning, arguably with the exception of the more blockbuster Season 3.
When speaking with Amy Parris – who is also the costume designer on shows including Yellowjackets, Insatiable, and Making History – I noted that they couldn't just keep dressing Millie Bobby Brown in the same iconic pink dress from Season 1, and she responded:
No way! Exactly. So it is a challenge as you're working with older actors, but it's been done in TV forever. Right? Like Saved by the Bell, those kids were older too. You're just used to it because you want to see what happens at the end.
At the end of the day, if Stranger Things fans with Netflix subscriptions can suspend their disbelief about telekinetic Eleven, Vecna in the Upside Down, and Max's fate at the end of Season 4 (to name just a few wild elements of the show), then I think we can safely suspend our disbelief that the younger cast members don't look 100% the same age as their characters. There aren't too many ways that Saved by the Bell and Stranger Things are similar, but this is one of them!
We also can't rule out a longer time jump than usual between the end of Season 4 and the fifth and final season. The cliffhanger at the very end of the fourth season seemed like one that the show would need to pick up on immediately, but a lot – including the WGA writers strike and SAG-AFTRA actors strike – has happened since that released on Netflix in 2022.
For now, fans can always watch and rewatch the four seasons of Stranger Things so far on Netflix.
