The Duffer Brothers Tease Steve’s Fate In Stranger Things Season 5
Things are looking dicey.
Steve Harrington might not make it through Stranger Things Season 5. Ahead of Volume 2’s release on Dec. 25, the show’s creators teased some danger ahead for everyone’s favorite babysitter. During a Dec. 17 appearance on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, Ross and Matt Duffer (aka the Duffer Brothers) dropped hints about the hit series’ finale episodes via figurines. According to them, Steve’s fate is not looking too good.
To start off, the Duffer Brothers got rid of the Barb figure (modeled after the character who died in Season 1). They knocked mini Barb to the floor, as Ross asked, "What is Barb doing here, man?" Matt added, "I know. I feel bad."
Then, they moved onto Steve — and it looks like Joe Keery’s character might meet a similar fate. “This is Steve,” Matt said, as he placed the figure on the edge of Fallon’s desk. When the audience audibly worried over him, Matt soothed the onlookers. “He's fine, he's fine,” he told them.
Ross, however, nudged the Steve figure a little closer to the edge, pushing him off the desk to join Barb on the studio floor. At that point, Fallon joked, “There it is! That's how Stranger Things ends!” But it’s unclear if Steve’s fall really was all fun and games.
Back in November, Matt told Entertainment Weekly that Steve almost did not make it past Season 1. “That was close,” he told the outlet at the time. “We just fell in love with Joe Keery, but had we not liked Joe Keery, Steve would've been gone.”
Matt added that the creators and writers behind the show “always talk about” killing off the show’s main characters. (Ross added Jim Hopper “came the closest to dying” in Season 3.) However, there’s one thing that typically stops them from pulling the trigger.
“What often holds us back is you have to talk about the repercussions," Matt said at the time. “This is a total hypothetical: You kill Mike. It just makes the show rather depressing and bleak, and it becomes entirely about that. Even these more supporting characters like Eddie [Joseph Quinn] or Bob [Sean Astin] or Barb [Shannon Purser], of course, have really long-lasting repercussions on our characters.”
As the show wraps up once and for all, Keery’s popularity (and the long-term effects of his potential death) might not serve as enough of a deterrent to save Steve.
