Why Stranger Things Expanded Its Core Ensemble Cast In The Final Season

When it comes to a long-running TV show with a serialized narrative, the conventional wisdom is that the final season (if a series is lucky enough to know it's a final season going in) should essentially be one long payoff to all that's come before. Also, any new plotlines should be kept to a minimum, and the show certainly shouldn't introduce new characters at a time when fans are already too eager to know what happens to the characters they've been following since the beginning. Yet any good artist worth their salt knows that going against conventional wisdom often yields the most vibrant and inspired work. As such, most great series buck this assumed trend, as their creators realize that a season made up of only endings and payoffs doesn't make for proper television.

The best case scenario is when showrunners can have their cake and eat it too, so to speak, and that's exactly the position creators Matt and Ross Duffer found themselves in when approaching the fifth and final season of "Stranger Things." They were hoping to introduce an element of youth back into a show where the core cast has rapidly grown into young adults, as well as not have to introduce too many brand new characters into the series' already busy final season. Fortunately, they were able to land on an idea which solved both problems in one fell swoop with the character of Holly Wheeler. This move was certainly a tricky one, as it required a casting change which might prove controversial with fans. Yet it's something which the Duffer Brothers believe threads the needle of some typical final season pitfalls, and according to remarks they made during a recent press conference, their reasoning for the decision is absolutely sound.

The prospect of new leading characters being introduced to "Stranger Things" sounds foolish, considering that the show has at least a dozen core characters to contend with (depending on your count) going into the final season. Yet the Duffers have a pretty salient reason as to why they were looking to add a new face to season 5. During a virtual press conference attended by /Film, Matt Duffer explained how their interest in expanding the core group had everything to do with serving the original creative vision of the show:

"We're always very careful about adding new talent [...] you don't want to upset the balance of things. And especially in the last season. For a while, we were planning not to do it at all. But one of the things we wanted to do with the final season was recapture some of the feeling of the first season, so it would feel like everything is going full-circle. And because the kids in the show are clearly not kids anymore, the only way to really recapture some of the energy and innocence of the first season was to introduce a new, younger cast into the show. To get kids back into the show."

To be fair, most viewers probably still consider the core characters of Mike (Finn Wolfhard), Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown), Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo) and Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin) as "kids" given that's how they were introduced to us, and how the older characters are still a big part of the show. Yet there's no denying Duffer's point, and while a big theme of the show is growing up and coming of age, the presence of a more innocent character only helps serve that theme better.

Once the Duffers landed on why they needed someone new to join the core cast, they then had the issue of figuring out who this person could be. Fortunately, as Matt explained, this character was right under their noses:

"That's when we came up with the idea of elevating Holly to a major character, which made sense, because she's another Wheeler. She's really just been in the background. We thought that was a really fun way of recapturing some of that spirit of season 1."

One detriment to this lateral move involved the element of recasting, as Holly had previously been portrayed by twins Anniston and Tinsley Price, given that the character was a toddler in season 1. In season 5, Holly is now played by Nell Fisher. Duffer laid out the delicate logistics behind this decision: 

"And then we were very nervous about casting, because there are not that many kids that can carry a role of that size and that have the kind of range we knew Holly would need. And also, extra challenge, she had to look like our Holly would look, and like she was a Wheeler family member. But we were very lucky in finding Nell [Fisher], who we think is a very special kid and extraordinary actor."

From the tenor of Duffer's comments, it seems like they've managed to capture the best of both worlds with Holly, allowing her to bring some much-needed kid energy back to the series while not seeming like a left-field addition. We'll see for ourselves how it all shakes out when the final episodes of "Stranger Things" premiere on Netflix.