Stranger Things Season 5 Breaks A Major Promise To Fans

The Stranger Things kids are now adults, so making them feel like kids again was tough for the show’s fifth and final season. This is evident in the first episode of Season 5, which begins with a flashback that tells the story of Noah Schnapp’s Will Byers being stuck in the Upside Down that day – a story that happened in Season 1. Bringing these scenes to life required the show’s creators to use digital de-aging technology, but were they giving fans some misinformation about the process?

The first scene of Stranger Things season 5 took months to complete, mainly because Schnapp’s age-deleted teenage face had to be digitally inserted onto a younger actor’s body to recreate young Will. It sounds pretty terrible, and it’s made worse by the fact that Shawn Levy, the executive producer and director of the series, has led us to believe that the anti-aging effects are practical. As the episode proves, that’s not the case at all, but at least Levi insists they didn’t use AI. As Deadline said:

“[O]Your hair, makeup and wardrobe department is quite exceptional, using costumes, wigs and makeup. The 80s are also our friends in bringing these young actors back to the iconic Hawkins characters. So we will use all the tools at our disposal.”

De-aging actors through digital magic is a complex and polarizing topic among pop culture enthusiasts, and it tends to look weird on screen. However, Noah Schnapp was happy to return to Will’s roots in Stranger Things Season 5, and he shared more details about how the show’s creators brought his teenage character to life.

Noah Schnapp actually had a blast filming the aforementioned flashback sequence for Season 5 of Stranger Things, and even had to mentor his child actor at the time. However, his account of the process makes it seem more complicated than Shawn Levy’s story about using simple makeup and wigs on actors. In an interview with the print edition of SFX, Schnapp revealed that de-aging in the first episode of Stranger Things Season 5 was a strange experience — and a long one at that. Here is what he said in this regard:

“[T]They put me in a tent and asked me to do all these different expressions and faces, like being afraid and running and all that stuff. It was very strange. The visual effects team then worked on it for several months. I mean, there were these VFX people who told me, “Noah, I’ve been working with your 11-year-old for the last six months, watching every video of yours.” It’s like, “Oh, that’s weird.” But then they imprinted it on this little kid, and we get this great flashback scene, which is fun.”

But the good news is that practical effects fans can still celebrate the final season of the show. In fact, the creators built a state-of-the-art set to bring Hawkins, Indiana, to life in Season 5 of Stranger Things, the show’s first major event. With that in mind, we can forgive them for using digital de-aging technology to make Will look weird for a few minutes.