‘Stranger Things’ cast just dropped Season 1 secrets we never knew
All hail, as we are finally just a month away from the first volume of the final season of Stranger Things. Everybody is getting excited, and most have already begun the rewatch.
But rewatching Stranger Things season one feels a little bit like opening a time capsule. Remember when the kids were small and Hawkins hadn’t yet become a monster magnet? Now, years later, the cast has revisited those early days, and the stories they are sharing are pure gold.
The very first scene they ever filmed together was that iconic Dungeons & Dragons game from episode one. The energy was a bit awkward and a little nervous, which somehow made it perfect. Caleb McLaughlin revealed that even after all these years, he still hasn’t played D&D in real life. Meanwhile, Finn Wolfhard and Gaten Matarazzo have played a couple of short campaigns and insist it’s just as fun as it looks… as long as someone else is the Dungeon Master.
Between takes, the cast acted exactly like the middle schoolers they were pretending to be. Matarazzo laughed while recalling how he and McLaughlin used to smack each other on the face before filming. “They had to tell us to stop because our faces were getting red,” he said. You can practically picture these two kids goofing around in between scenes about missing friends and terrifying monsters.
Then there’s Millie Bobby Brown’s big Eleven moment. Do you remember when Eleven crushes the Coke can through her mind? You’d think it was a CGI trick, but nope. A small pipe under the can sucked the air out to crush it. Millie recalled it and said that it was the coolest effect she had ever seen. It was the first time her character really felt powerful, and it didn’t even need computer magic to sell it.
Of course, not everything went as planned. In chapter seven, Papa and his goons were chasing the kids, and the van flipped. Total mess. The entire cast was excited to watch the stunt, but they weren’t allowed on set for safety reasons. Then someone on the walkie announced that it had gone wrong. Instead of soaring into the air, the van skidded across the road and smashed into a mailbox. It even broke a camera and took out a prop car. A real Hawkins-level disaster, basically.
And Millie’s fear during that classroom Demogorgon scene was completely real by the way. The crew secretly placed a speaker behind the cabinet and blasted a terrifying shriek. Apparently it was the velociraptor noise from Jurassic Park. Matarazzo said Millie screamed, jumped off the table, and bolted straight for the door. Eleven might be brave, but teenage Millie was just a kid trying to escape whatever monster sound effect they’d conjured up that day.
To make the nostalgia hit even harder, Netflix has released a set of new season one profile icons, like Will’s bowl cut, Eleven’s pink dress, and Dustin’s hat – you know, the works. It’s their way of letting fans wear Hawkins pride right on their home screen.
All that said, the rewatch is arriving at the perfect time. Stranger Things 5 drops its first four episodes on November 26th, followed by three more on Christmas, and the finale on New Year’s Eve. The end of the story is finally near, but revisiting season one reminds everyone why this show became such a phenomenon in the first place.
It was never because of the monsters, but because of those kids, their friendship, and all the behind-the-scenes stories that made Hawkins feel real.