WILL’S RESCUE

 

AS ELEVEN and the boys are battling the Demogorgon at the school, Joyce and Hopper are traveling together through the terrain of the Upside Down to rescue Will. For the sequence, Ryder and Harbour wore customized hazmat suits^*31 made from Cordura nylon that were dyed a “mustard sort of ocher color,” according to costume designer Adams. The suits were also fitted with lights inside them to help illuminate the actors on-screen. Says Ives, “Those lights definitely helped us a lot with Hopper and Joyce coming into the Upside Down out of the lab.”

Although Joyce and Hopper’s rescue efforts succeed, not all is well when Stranger Things concludes. At the end of the first season, the Duffers reveal that Will might be home, but he’s not the same boy as when he vanished.^*32 “You don’t want everything tied up in too neat of a little bow,” Matt Duffer says. “The idea always was: If there was going to be a season two, it would focus on Will—specifically on the effects that being in the Upside Down had on him. We wanted to introduce that idea, there being something wrong with Will. We thought that would be a haunting end to this first chapter.”