David Harbour: ‘Stranger Things’ Season 5 Has Moments ‘Bigger Than Anything We’ve Done Yet’
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David Harbour has seen scripts from Stranger Things’ fifth and final season, and from what he says about those pages, the Netflix hit’s endgame won’t disappoint.
“They’re terrific, as per usual,” the actor, who plays Jim Hopper on the show, says of the scripts in a Happy Sad Confused podcast interview conducted before the SAG-AFTRA strike. “They continue to outdo themselves, these currently-on-strike writers called the Duffer Brothers.”
The fifth season — which will pick up sometime after the destruction of Hawkins, Indiana, seen in the Season 4 finale — is “a hell of an undertaking,” Harbour says.
“I mean, the set pieces and the things in the scripts that we saw are bigger than anything we’ve done in the past,” he adds. “After where season 4 ended — when you watch us on that hill looking at the ash and the smoke and fires — we’re going to start somewhere after that,” Harbour said. “So you’ve got to imagine the world is a different place.”
Matt and Ross Duffer, who created the sci-fi series, announced in May that production of Stranger Things Season 5 wouldn’t start until the end of the WGA strike. That writers strike began in early May, while the actors strike started in mid-July, just over a year after the last episodes of Stranger Things’ fourth season hit Netflix.
“It’ll take a while to shoot, which will be tough since we can’t get started yet, but it is what it is,” Harbour says in the Happy Sad Confused interview. “I’m excited to go back. I’m excited to wrap it up in a bold, amazing way. I’m excited to really swing with this character, because you know they’re going to pay off these OG characters — Eleven, Hopper, Joyce, Will, Mike — they’re going to pay them off in big ways because they’ve lived with you for the past eight years.”
And though Harbour hasn’t seen the series finale script, he knows how the story will end. “Like, I know where we net out, and it’s very, very moving,” he says. “That is the term I will use.”
Stranger Things, Fifth and Final Season, TBA, Netflix
