After 5 seasons, the “Stranger Issues” youngsters are all grown up. Properly, not less than the actors are. On the earth of the present, they’re nonetheless simply kids making an attempt to save lots of Hawkins, Indiana from being swallowed by the Upside Down. With the fifth and closing season about to hit, we’ll quickly see whether or not they’re profitable in that regard. Earlier than the present ends, nonetheless, the brand new season begins with a flashback sequence that required a ton of VFX with a purpose to de-age Noah Schnapp’s Will Byers.
When “Stranger Issues” debuted again in 2016, Schnapp and his fellow “Stranger Issues” forged members have been simply center schoolers doing battle with the eldritch beasts of the alternate dimension that exists past the veil of Hawkins. Now, nonetheless, Schnapp is a 21-year-old, which made issues a tad troublesome for the Duffer Brothers and their crew when crafting the opening moments of the brand new season. Fortunately, “Stranger Issues” season 5 had one of many highest budgets ever for a TV collection, which meant the Duffers might afford to pay their VFX crew for what was months of labor spent solely on revisiting the time interval through which the inaugural season unfolded.
The flashback takes place in 1983, when Will first disappeared into the Upside Down and kicked off the occasions of “Stranger Issues.” As such, the VFX crew needed to de-age the 21-year-old Schnapp to his early teenagers. Within the December 2025 subject of SFX Journal, the Will Byers actor defined how the sequence was created utilizing a youthful stand-in and scans of his personal face, which have been in the end melded collectively to create a digital reincarnation of younger Will. Such a course of was, unsurprisingly, not straightforward.
VFX artists labored on the Stranger Issues season 5 opening for half a yr
“Stranger Issues” affected its younger actors positively, with most coming away having discovered invaluable classes on the massively widespread Netflix collection. On the earth of the present, nonetheless, the “Stranger Issues” youngsters have been by means of hell making an attempt to suppress Vecna — whose powers will likely be deadlier in season 5. Now, it appears the VFX artists have endured their very own hell making an attempt to create the opening sequence for the brand new season.
Throughout his SFX interview, Noah Schnapp defined how he labored with the younger Will Byers stand-in, which he mentioned was “really actually cool” and “a full circle second.” He continued: “It felt like, ‘Oh, wow, now I am the grownup telling this child what to do, and I am now not that little boy being advised the place to face.’ It simply helped me replicate on all of the years that handed.”
In line with Schnapp, he and his youthful counterpart labored collectively for a number of days “to get his physicality and working and breath work the identical.” He continued: “Then they put me in a tent and had me do all these totally different expressions and faces, like concern, and working and all these items. It was so bizarre.” After that, the VFX crew composited the ultimate photographs utilizing Schnapp’s facial scans and the stand-in’s actual efficiency. In line with the actor, some VFX artists mentioned they’d been watching movies of him as an 11-year-old for six months with a purpose to produce the ultimate scene. “They stamped it onto that little child, and we obtained this cool little flashback scene,” added Schnapp, whose character is on /Movie’s record of the “Stranger Issues” characters most definitely to die in season 5 (although we hope he does not).
