Stranger Things star Finn Wolfhard has opened up about feeling “really lost” and depressed when the Netflix series came to an end last year after almost a decade.
Wolfhard, 23, was just 12 years old when he auditioned for a role in the supernatural teen drama and was cast as Mike Wheeler, one of the series’ leads.
The Duffer Brothers’ show was an immediate hit for the streamer, and turned the show’s young cast members, including Millie Bobby Brown, Gatten Matarazzo and Sadie Sink, into stars.
In a new interview, Wolfhard spoke about filming the final season, which was released in winter 2025, and admitted that the cast had been somewhat in denial about the show’s end.
“The vibe was almost like, ‘Oh, we’ll back next year,’ but once we got about halfway through, everyone started to realise like, ‘Oh. This is it.’ And then everyone just really valued the time we all had together for that last half,” he told The Guardian.
“It was pretty depressing for everyone when it ended… but it feels absolutely right that we’ve ended at the time that we did.”
The Canadian actor continued: “At first I felt really lost, because that’s your life for so long and so many of the crew and cast were so integral to the person that you are and to your identity.
“You almost have a kind of withdrawal for a little while. Then you realise all those relationships, all those friendships, they’re around forever.”
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After a three-year break between seasons, the fifth and final season of Stranger Things came to Netflix at the end of 2025. The first four episodes were released on 26 November, with three more following on Christmas Day and a feature-length series finale arriving on New Year’s Eve.
The final episode, released nearly a decade after the show first premiered, received mixed and middling reviews from fans and critics alike.
In his three-star review, The Independent’s Nick Hilton wrote of the Stranger Things finale: “Netflix’s most important original IP has morphed from a brilliant, influential coming-of-age saga into just another CGI rock’em sock’em adventure.”
One element that infuriated fans was the inclusion of a historically inaccurate piece of clothing, after Holly Wheeler (Nell Fisher) was seen in the penultimate episode wearing an Under Armour shirt, despite the brand not being founded until 1996 when the episode was set in 1987.
By the time the finale was released, the show’s editors had removed the brand’s logo from footage in the last episode.
