Stranger Things Creators Did a Half Day of Reshoots Just to 'Milk' Steve's Fake-Out Death

Five months aft the Stranger Things finale, bid creators the Duffer Brothers person admitted they enactment other effort into Steve's fake-out decease due to the fact that they were "f**king with the audience."

Matt and Ross Duffer came cleanable during an interrogation with Josh Horowitz connected Happy, Sad, Confused. Though the Netflix show's last occurrence premiered successful December, that isn't stopping the duo down the bid from talking astir the lengths they went to successful bid to messiness with fans.

Warning! Stranger Things finale spoilers follow.

This is particularly existent erstwhile it comes to histrion Joe Keery's Steve Harrington, a quality who had fans fearing the worst successful the months starring up to the finale. One infinitesimal successful the last Stranger Things occurrence primitively saw him endure a brief, unimpactful autumn from a large height, truthful the Duffer Brothers acceptable speech a fractional time of reshoots to spice things up.

"We did a fractional time of reshoots, which we've really ne'er done connected Stranger Things before," Ross Duffer said. "It was conscionable little, tiny, miscellaneous things that we wanted to do, but the main crushed we wanted to spell backmost is due to the fact that Steve's near-death conscionable wasn't… It wasn't changeable similar that successful a slow-motion way. It each happened truly fast. In the edit, it's truthful acheronian that the infinitesimal wasn't going back.

"Then we went backmost with Joe Keery, and we conscionable built a tiny, like, 3-foot slab of the operation due to the fact that we didn't person wealth to rebuild it, and we conscionable did that infinitesimal wherever helium conscionable dropped. Then we conscionable milked it adjacent much successful the edit."

The finished mentation of the Stranger Things bid finale saw Steve autumn from the operation successful dilatory question earlier Jonathan Byers (Charlie Heaton) came to his astonishment rescue aft a drawn-out chopped to black. Matt Duffer aboriginal added that a melodramatic fake-out of this level isn't thing the unit down the Netflix bid would usually prosecute in, but with Stranger Things yet connected its mode out, they struck portion the robust was hot.

"I don't cognize that we usually would person done him astir falling disconnected the tower. That was america f**king with the audience, for sure," helium said. "For sure. Which, we don't usually do, but I was like, 'This is simply a aureate accidental that we can't walk up.'"

The Stranger Things finale teased fans with Steve's decease erstwhile it premiered December 31, 2025. Elsewhere successful the interview, the Duffer Brother denied rumors related to the show's infamous Season 2 occurrence and promised to uncover much astir Eleven's destiny successful 20 years.

Michael Cripe is simply a freelance writer with IGN. He's champion known for his enactment astatine sites similar The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be definite to springiness him a travel connected Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).