Spoilers for Stranger Things Season 5, Vols. 1 and 2 lie ahead.
In just a matter of days, fans will bid farewell to Stranger Things, as the show wraps up its five-season run at the tail end of the 2025 TV schedule. The experience is a bit different for the hit show’s cast and crew, though, as they already said goodbye when they wrapped production over a year ago. As the series finale draws closer, the stars are now sharing more insight into what it was like to finish filming. On that note, Sadie Sink shared insight into what her mindset was like on her last day and in the lead-up to it.
Sadie Sink joined the cast of ST ahead of the show’s second season, and she’s since become a fan-favorite due to her role as Max Mayfield. Considering Sink has been affiliated with the show for so long, it’s easy to imagine that she’d have a ton of feelings upon wrapping for the final time. The actress conveyed such sentiments when she spoke to SFX Magazine on CinemaBlend for its latest issue. Sink spoke to us about the final table read, and her comments suggest it was a truly visceral experience for her and her colleagues:
I remember at the table read, I didn’t think I would be emotional. But then, of course, we were all crying at the end of it, because it was the last new script we were ever going to read. Then just getting to that final page, and it’s saying, ‘End of Stranger Things’, it was like, ‘That’s right, this is it.’
Honestly, that last bit of Sink’s story feels like a true gut punch of a moment. Of course, at that point, she’d still yet to actually film her final scenes as Max. Later on in the interview, the Fear Street star recalled that “last day,” and she explained why that occasion was “weird” more than anything else:
Then the last day was one of the most important and memorable days of my life. It was so weird. It wasn’t emotional, but we were all very on edge, like we were having fun, and soaking it up, just being really present. But we all were just, like, doomed. By the end of that day, we were like, ‘Oh God, we know this was coming…’
Like a number of her co-stars, Sadie Sink posted about wrapping Stranger Things back in December 2024. At that time, she shared a carousel of BTS photos of her and the cast that were taken over the years, and she expressed gratitude for her experiences. Sink also mentioned earlier this year that she snagged a lot of props from the set. Aside from taking some Vans and a few Kate Bush cassettes (because, of course), she was also gifted Max’s skateboard. So, all in all, it sounds like Sink is appreciative of how she was able to close the book on this chapter of her life and career.
Now, fans are waiting to see how Max’s story ends on the show. Season 5 began with Max still comatose following Season 4. It was eventually revealed that her consciousness was trapped in Vecna’s mind and, with help from Holly Wheeler, she managed to escape “Camazotz” and regain consciousness in the real world. The show’s penultimate episode ends with the Hawkins crew gearing up for one last battle with Vecna, and Max is set to guide Eleven and Kali (who are planning to sacrifice themselves) through Vecna’s mind.
It’s hard to say what lies ahead for Max and the other characters, and there’s a chance some of them might not make it out of this final battle alive. Should that happen, I’d imagine fans’ tears will be flowing like the ones Sadie Sink and co. shed during that final read-through. Discover Max’s fate by using a Netflix subscription to stream the Stranger Things series finale, which debuts on December 31.
