Finn Wolfhard has admitted he had mixed feelings about Stranger Things coming to an end at the beginning of this year.

The long-awaited fifth and final season of Stranger Things began streaming towards the end of 2025, with its divisive finale premiering on Netflix on New Year’s Day in the UK.

Looking back on shooting these final episodes, Finn – who shot to international fame as a teenager thanks to his performance as Mike Wheeler – admitted that it took a moment for it to dawn on him that the show would not be returning.

“Every year it was like, OK, I know I’m going to be in Atlanta filming this thing with the same people for the next however long,” he recalled to The Guardian. “It was like my school in a really odd way.”

As a result, going into season five, he claimed “the vibe was almost like ‘oh, we’ll be back next year’”.

“But once we got about halfway through, everyone started to realise like, ‘Oh. This is it’,” he continued. “And then everyone just really valued the time we all had together for that last half.

“It was pretty depressing for everyone when it ended … but it feels absolutely right that we’ve ended at the time that we did.”