Gaten Matarazzo Talks ‘Stranger Things’ Final Season And His Next Move

Gaten Matarazzo attends the Los Angeles premiere of Netflix’s “Stranger Things” Season 5 at the TCL Chinese Theatre on November 6, 2025 in Hollywood, California.

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Ever since the first season of Stranger Things premiered on Netflix in July 2016, Gaten Matarazzo shot up to childhood stardom overnight – but the celebrated actor was hard at work, long before playing “Dustin Henderson” on-screen and fighting off supernatural creatures alongside his friends in 1980s Indiana.

Created by Matt and Ross Duffer, Stranger Things has become a global phenomenon in pop culture, paving a fresh take on the horror/supernatural genre by also adding in plenty of humor around its large ensemble cast of actors.

Born in New London, Connecticut, Matarazzo, 23, made his Broadway debut in 2011 with Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, followed by notable performances in Les Misérables, Into the Woods, Dear Evan Hansen and Sweeney Todd. However, his role as the silly and sweet “Dustin” on Stranger Things remains his most noticeable role to date.

Nearly a full decade in the making, Stranger Things is about to take its final bow with one last season, as the first four new episodes debut Wednesday on Netflix. Having grown up, literally, before our very eyes, I sat down with Matarazzo to discuss his evolving career, saying goodbye to this beloved Netflix series and his creative aspirations moving forward.

So, what is Matarazzo enjoying most about this stage of his young adult life and career now, that he did not enjoy to the same level in years past?

“Oh, man – that’s a good question. I like being able to focus on the career that I love as the primary focus, because when you’re a kid and you’re doing it, you have a lot of other priorities to worry about, not only like maintaining your childhood and worrying about your family and getting your homework done and prioritizing things like your education. There’s just a little bit – not more pressure as a kid when doing it, but it’s just different. You are going to have to manage your priorities a little bit to balance them out a little bit more.”

Having grown up alongside several other child actors-turned-young Hollywood stars, I wondered if Matarazzo, his cast and crew felt any pressure to satisfy loyal Stranger Things viewers with this final season, or if they were able to lead with their own creative ideas for this conclusion and could block out any “noise” around them.

“You always consider it,” Matarazzo said of the fans. “It’s never something that doesn’t leave your brain. There’s such a love of the show that we all have. We wanted to make it good for us, not just for the people that have loved it for so long. We wouldn’t feel like we were doing something right, unless we loved what we were doing. Not only that, but also fans of the show, they deserve it. They have spent a lot of their time and energy investing into the show and into what has been created here. They deserve a good season. That is something that everybody was really excited to jump into.”

Matarazzo went on to say that a lot of the “brunt” in ensuring a proper farewell story has remained on the shoulders of the Duffer brothers and the Stranger Things writers. When first arriving in production to learn the story for this final season, Matarazzo recalls, “We were excited that when we did get there and see what they created, and what we were about to embark upon was pretty special. It was a bit of a pump-up of adrenaline before going in, knowing it would be pretty intense and pretty cool.”

Following the first four episodes of this fifth and final season, three more episodes will release on December 25, followed by the finale episode on December 31. Having already filmed everything before our interview, I was curious to learn what is the most difficult part for Matarazzo in letting go of his Stranger Things character of “Dustin” after playing him on-screen for a decade, and what is going to be the biggest relief in letting go of his character.

“It’s hard to say,” Matarazzo said. “I think I’ll have a better idea of how to answer those in-depth a few years from now, but I’ll do my best now. I am going to miss playing somebody that I can fully jump into on instinct. When you play somebody for so long and have so many parallels personally with them – sometimes, if you just lock in to the world that’s created around you and with the cast that you have known for so long, you can just become a bit of a well-oiled machine and react accordingly – and not overthink anything because you have a security that who I am is ‘Dustin’ in that moment, and that’s hard to transition out of.”

He added: “Anytime I did something between seasons, there would be a big process of a few weeks where I would usually start with reading a script and kind of starting from scratch of creating a bit of a backstory and understanding how I could develop something instinctual there. It usually takes a lot of time and I’ve frankly been spoiled with the amount of time given to me on Stranger Things. I have years to figure out those nuances or just let them naturally occur. With film specifically, you have only got a few weeks, at most, before you are trudging along. Even in those movies – movies only dedicate the first maybe half an hour to giving you the intro and first impressions of a character that you are playing, which is a little bit more pressure and something I am not used to. I think that will be hard to let go of for sure.”

Matarazzo also acknowledges how lucky he has been, to be a consistently working actor over the years with Stranger Things. “It’s never a guaranteed career that people can make a living doing. It’s a very competitive industry. There’s a lot of demand for it. It’s a very hard job – it can be, you know?”

Looking beyond Stranger Things, what types of genres, stories and characters does Matarazzo want to tap into next, in ways that he has yet to creatively take on?

“That’s a good question. I’ve always said that I want to do stuff that I’m bad at, just because I don’t necessarily want to be bad at it. I would like to, I guess, diversify my work as much as I can. I don’t want to just jump into stuff I’m cozy doing, which is funny, because a lot of the parts I’ve done recently, just after the show, kind of teeter along the line of something I feel comfortable in. Most of the time when I read a script, my instinct is just kind of explode into it and use my body and try to naturally just have like this robustness around it, just because what I do gives me a lot of energy because I love it so much. Sometimes, I’d like to jump into something where I have to be a little bit more careful and consider – and sometimes, just take a deep breath and really start from scratch and really kind of shake off what I know, which is hard to do. I love to do that on-stage. I’d like to read something and be scared of doing it, but know that I have to.”

As for the tone and energy on-set while filming this final season of Stranger Things, Matarazzo said, “There really isn’t one way to describe it. There really isn’t a single word you can use. There are so many mixed emotions. The overwhelming one being very, very sad. You don’t want to let go of something that you’ve loved over the course of a decade. You know it’s coming to an end, eventually – everything good has to. That last day, specifically, maybe those last few weeks, it was incredibly sad but necessary. I think that if it wasn’t sad, that would be a problem. It means that you love something greatly. It means that you miss it.”

Like many actors experience when they seek out new roles and opportunities, following a character and performance that initially made them a household name, I brought up the rather likely “elephant in the room,” wondering how he will navigate between fans, casting directors and more when seeking to make new moves within his career, knowing some will always see him as “Dustin.”

“That’s something that I consider constantly,” Matarazzo said. “It’s something that I talk, think about to myself for the most part. It’s also an inevitability. That’s just how it goes. That’s something you take as much of a compliment as it can be – that you have been a part of something that when you’re seen, you can be recognized for it.”

Next up, I decided to ask Matarazzo one of my signature questions – Who is Gaten in 2025? What are the biggest passion and priorities in your life lately?

Matarazzo said, “That’s a really good question. It’s actually something that I’ve been asking myself, considering the ending of this process in this show has really felt like a graduation. It’s felt like it’s grown and culminated to something really exciting. It is a chapter closing, but another one beginning. I think I’m okay with letting this moment be and seeing how that develops, naturally. I know that’s probably a bit of a boring answer, but I think I’d be lying to you if I said anything else that I’m really not quite sure. I want to make sure that I look at that with a positive mindset, rather than an anxious one.”

Seeking to give Matarazzo a real moment to gather his thoughts and share a message for his Stranger Things cast and crew, as the series soon says its goodbye, “I have to say I’m used to saying this to them, personally, but I’m going to come up with something that I think will be fun for others to hear from my soul to them. They are family. I owe them so much of – what it is that I have within my heart for this job that we all share, that we do together, that we’ve grown together. Without them, I don’t think that I’d be even close to the person that I am today. I love them greatly and not only do I miss the show and miss them greatly, but I’m very excited to continue being their friend and to continue a very long life, having them be a part of it.”

As for Matarazzo’s thoughts and feelings towards his loyal and vocal Stranger Things fanbase, he said, “There isn’t the ability to do what I do, literally, without people investing their time and their energy and their money into it – into seeing shows or watching TV. That’s not something that is taken lightly in the slightest. There is such an appreciation there. There is no way to do this as a career, consistently, without people investing their time into it. I love them greatly. When people tell me that they like the show and that they resonate with what I do on-screen, it never really does get old because it does just fill my heart every single time. It’s not something that I even really compute. It’s not something that I stop to consider very often, more than I should. All there is, is just an intense feeling of gratitude towards anybody, who even in passing, watches something that I do.”

Concluding my conversation with Matarazzo, I left him with my signature and original interview question – Gaten, what would you say to your Stranger Things character, “Dustin,” after embodying him over these five seasons and could give him advice, a warning or a comforting message? What do you feel he needs to hear, that you would love to tell him?

“Listen more. Take a deep breath. You’re not always the smartest person in the room and I think that you will have more fun if you understand that going forward.”