Stranger Things' Crew Went To Epic Lengths To Prevent Season 5 Photo And Video Leaks

The rise of the internet came with many perks, but it also led to plenty of headaches for Hollywood. Leaks from movie and TV productions spread faster and easier, which means productions must find new ways to stop the fans from spoiling the story for themselves. "Stranger Things," a popular show that's heading into its final season, was not spared from this trend. In order to keep the plot under wraps, they had to keep an eye out not just for onlookers around the set but for onlookers in the sky. As Gaten Matarazzo explained in a recent interview with SFX Magazine:

"They had to stack shipping crates, like the ones you see on cargo ships, on the back of trucks along a freeway, and they had them stacked all the way up like a big wall around us. ... It was specifically there to block people from being able to see what we were doing, because we couldn't fit it inside a studio. They had to make it outside, and they wanted to keep it a secret for as long as they could. There were people looking out for drones to make sure that there weren't drones coming in to try to snap pictures." 

You might think the crew was being paranoid here, but it seems like their fears were validated: as we've learned from viral posts on social media, fans were indeed using drones to spy on the production:

Behind the scenes vs. what you see on screen... 😳 #StrangerThings5 pic.twitter.com/kN1G3hJGxw

— Stranger Things Spoilers (@SThingsSpoilers) October 30, 2025

The account that shared this photo has over 240,000 followers on X, and even has a website that offers to leak spoilers to fans for $4 a month. Why would anyone want to spoil the new season for themselves? I don't know, but clearly there's a market for this sort of thing.

While it may be frustrating for shows to deal with plot points being leaked online, perhaps there's some comfort in the knowledge that people care enough to stoop to such lengths. After all, people don't bother to leak shows that no one's excited about. 

The controversial plot twist in the latest season of "Doctor Who" wasn't leaked to fans ahead of time, for instance, but that's not an impressive sign of the production's competence but rather a dark indicator of how far the buzz around the show has fallen. Back in the show's 2008-2013 heyday they never could've kept such a major cast shake-up hidden like this, but by 2025 the ratings are down and the remaining viewers are losing interest.

You can start to see a similar trend in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, where major leaks are certainly a concern but not as much as they used to be. The production of "Avengers: Endgame" famously refused to even tell the actors what they were reacting to in some scenes, a cautionary move that felt reasonable at the time but wouldn't feel worth the trouble today. But although the hype around the MCU has fallen, it's still strong enough that major leaks (like with the Thunderbolts* ending) can still occur. In the precarious stage the MCU is currently in, maybe these leaks are less of an annoyance to the studio and more of a comforting sign that the fans still care. 

With that in mind, it's probably for the best that "Stranger Things" is ending now, while the market for photo and video leaks of the show is at its height. It's better to have the fans care too much than barely at all.