Warning! This article contains spoilers for Stranger Things season 5, episode 8, “Chapter Eight: The Rightside Up.”

Joe Keery’s Steve Harrington has officially survived the Stranger Things finale, despite his terrifying, near-death experience in the Upside Down — but that scene wasn’t meant to simply “torture” Steve’s biggest fans. Though Stranger Things is a complex tale of alternate dimensions, monsters, and X-Men-esque powers, one of its greatest strengths has always been its core cast of lovable, well-developed characters.

This includes Steve Harrington, who, having started as the show’s stereotypical high school king, matured into a thoughtful friend, mentor, and a steadfast protector. Before the final season premiered, Steve was included on almost every “Characters Most Likely To Die In Stranger Things Season 5″ list; after all, Steve’s death would have been a shocking twist after surviving being swarmed by Demobats and facing a horde of bloodthirsty Demogorgons.

As such, when Steve nearly fell off the 500-foot radio tower in the Upside Down as the gang enacted his creative “Operation Beanstalk” plan in the Stranger Things series finale, it seemed all those predictions had finally come to pass. Interestingly, though, according to creators the Duffer Brothers, that heart-stopping moment “wasn’t designed to torture fans who [were] terrified that Steve [was] gonna die.”

In an interview with Netflix’s TUDUM, Matt and Ross Duffer explained that Steve’s fall was actually about fixing another one of the show’s trademark character pairings. “I’ve never really understood why they’re so worried about Steve dying,” Matt Duffer said, “Really, it was about him and Jonathan coming together, and that’s why that moment is in there.”

Just before Steve could plummet to an untimely death, Jonathan (Charlie Heaton) manages to pull him back up. Given the animosity between these two characters throughout season 5 — and the rest of Stranger Things — Jonathan being the one to save Steve creates a nice parallel to Steve coming back to help defeat the Demogorgon in season 1, as well as finally giving them a reason to bury the hatchet.

“We wanted those two to find common ground by the end of the series, and it leads to that conversation they have in the Abyss where they finally open up about their feelings and their conflict as it relates to Nancy,” Duffer continued.

As the other half of the Duffer Brothers duo, Ross Duffer remarked, Steve and Jonathan were the only character pairing with unresolved tension left before the final battle against Vecna/Henry/001 (Jamie Campbell Bower) and the Mind Flayer. Though Eleven’s (Millie Bobby Brown) and Will’s (Noah Schnapp) powers contributed the most to the Hive Mind’s ultimate demise, everyone had a part to play, and everyone needed a clear head.

“We needed to make sure that by the time we got to the final battle, any conflicts were resolved because they really needed to work together as a team. Steve and Jonathan were the last remaining source of tension within the group, and so we realized we had to resolve that before they would be able to defeat Vecna and the Mind Flayer,” Duffer explained.

Bringing the actors’ real-life dynamic into the show was a bonus. “Joe and Charlie in real life are very close, and we wanted to tap into that bromance and have that reflected on screen in some way. We wanted the least likely person to save Steve,” Matt Duffer added.

As depicted in Stranger Things’ extensive epilogue, Steve gets a chance to live the life he wants, coaching baseball, becoming a teacher, and continuing the search for the love of his life. Steve and most of Stranger Things season 5’s other pivotal characters made it out of the Upside Down in one piece, but sadly, not everyone got a chance to enjoy a well-deserved happy ending (or so it seems).

All episodes of Stranger Things season 5 are streaming now, only on Netflix.

Here you can find the original article; the photos and images used in our article also come from this source. We are not their authors; they have been used solely for informational purposes with proper attribution to their original source.[/nospin]

Share on Facebook

Post on X

Follow us

Save