It’s been a long, scary, freaky, monster and Upside Down-filled road, but after nearly a decade the end of Stranger Things (which you can catch up on with your Netflix subscription) will come to the 2025 TV schedule later this year. The fifth and final season of the supernatural hit will see Eleven, Will, Lucas, Mike, Dustin, Max and all their friends face down the incredibly powerful Vecna and his creepy minions for the last time. Obviously, El’s gruff but loving adoptive father, Jim Hopper, will be along for that dangerous ride once again. His portrayer, David Harbour, has opened up about how friends gave him a warning about starring in the series that he didn’t believe for many years.
What Did David Harbour’s Friends Tell Him About Starring In Stranger Things That It Took Him Years To Believe?
David Harbour had certainly landed notable roles in TV and movies prior to beginning his run as Chief Hopper on Stranger Things, which debuted in 2016, but the show catapulted him and its many child actors to definite stardom very quickly. For all his previous success, the current Marvel movies superhero (who’s filming the upcoming Avengers: Doomsday now) hadn’t yet landed a long-term role on a major hit series. Apparently, as he recently told erstwhile Black Widow Scarlett Johansson for Interview Magazine, some of his friends had warned him about what would happen if he stayed on one series for a long time. As he said:
When I started I loved it so much. Buddies of mine who’d done TV shows for many years said, ‘By season three or four you’ll be running.’ And I was like, ‘Never! I love all these guys so much.’ And then you get to a certain point where you’re like, ‘How much more story is there?’ You’re having to play a lot of the same beat, and there’s a feeling where you’re like, ‘I want to take a risk. I want to do something that people haven’t seen me do before.’ So yeah, after 10 years, it’s like, ‘Okay.’
It’s been very clear over the years that the cast of Stranger Things is pretty close, which is the kind of thing that can easily happen when you literally grow up together/watch kids grow up/spend so much time working on something that’s made everyone famous. Season 5 finally finished filming in December 2024, and several stars spoke about how emotional those last days were. Finn Wolfhard said he had an “emotional hangover” after wrapping on the show, while Millie Bobby Brown admitted to bursting into tears on her penultimate day on set, and by this April, Joe Keery was already talking about being “nostalgic” for his time on the horror series.
With all of that emotion around their last days on set, it makes sense that the closeness of the bunch would lead the Red Guardian actor to thinking, early on anyway, that he would never be tired of the work he got to do with all his ST buddies as Hopper. But, it turns out that his friends who had been in his position before were accurate in their assessment. It took a while (likely because most series don’t take basically a decade to complete only five seasons), but Harbour is now definitely ready to move on.
Luckily, the fans don’t have to move beyond our Hawkins crew just yet, as Stranger Things Season 5 will debut on November 26. And, while David Harbour is ready to leave this chapter behind, it does sound like everyone will be able to do so after a “satisfying” ending.
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