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"Stranger Things" season 4 ends with Hawkins undergoing changes, as the Upside Down spills over into the Indiana town to make life troublesome for its residents, leaving viewers impatiently waiting to find out what happens next. Detailing the aftermath of this seismic event will be one of the main storylines in Netflix's upcoming fifth installment of the sci-fi series, and it seems that the show's creators went all out to bring their vision to life. While speaking to SFX Magazine (via CinemaBlend) for its December 2025 issue, "Stranger Things" co-creator Ross Duffer explained that the series' crew built a set for the new Hawkins, a first for the show. Here's what he had to say on the matter: "We needed downtown Hawkins to be destroyed by the rifts at the end of season 4, so we couldn't just shoot in a real small town in Atlanta this season. We obviously couldn't destroy this poor small town and take it over for months. In order to build this destroyed area of downtown that the military has taken over, we had to build our stages. So, that is certainly the largest set that we've ever built for the show. We have a new home base of operations for our characters, which is a radio station, which is a beautiful set. There are some epic ones in later episodes. We built some huge sets, specifically on the horror side of things." "Stranger Things" is a big money maker for Netflix, so it's only right that the show received a state-of-the-art set for its final season. What's more, the structure allowed the Duffer Brothers and their collaborators to realize a dream they've had for a while now — one that created lots of excitement behind the scenes. "Stranger Things" is a love letter to '80s pop culture, so it's unsurprising to learn that the Duffer Brothers prefer practical sets over computer-generated imagery. In the aforementioned interview with SFX Magazine, Ross Duffer revealed that building sets for season 5 was a lot of fun for everyone involved, as it opened the door to fresh creative challenges. As he put it: "What was exciting is, we always want to build as much as possible, because it's so easy to throw people up against blue screen[s] or green screen[s], and you can always feel it. So, what our team was so excited about is, you've got sculptors and painters, and we're just building this stuff from scratch, as if this were an older film." Duffer added that the cast also enjoyed working on the sets, saying that it felt like they had stepped into another world that felt authentic. Even if their characters die in "Stranger Things" season 5, at least the actors had a lot of fun making the series. Meanwhile, viewers will get to see the new structure for themselves very soon, as "Stranger Things" season 5, volume 1 will hit Netflix on November 26, 2025.
