Few actors have ridden the Stranger Things wave as visibly as David Harbour. When the series launched in 2016, he was a respected character actor with a steady career.
Ten years later, he is done as one of Netflix’s most recognisable leading men and, by his own admission, someone who is more than ready to step out of Hawkins for good. Harbour has been signalling that shift for months.
Back in June, he spoke frankly about the show reaching its natural endpoint, saying he had begun to wonder how much more story there is to tell.
The comment barely caused a ripple at the time, but reads differently now that the final season has arrived and after a year in which Harbour has found himself repeatedly in the headlines for reasons far removed from the Upside Down.
The break-up with Lily Allen set that tone early. Her album West End Girl, released in October, contains sharp and very public allusions to his infidelity and the gradual unravelling of their open marriage.
What began as a private separation became cultural fodder once Allen sang about protecting his secrets, a lyric that arrived just as industry insiders were suggesting that Netflix itself had been quietly steering the final season away from distraction.
The implication was not that the streaming giant staged a cover-up, but that Stranger Things had become such a valuable property that everyone involved was incentivised to keep its centre of gravity still.
With the series now ending, observers have begun to speculate about what that protective ring might look like once the show no longer needs guarding.
That conversation intensified when, earlier this month, reports emerged claiming Millie Bobby Brown had filed a harassment and bullying complaint against Harbour before filming on season five.
Both actors appeared together at the Los Angeles premiere, smiling for cameras and presenting a united front, but the shadow of the story hung over the event and coloured the reception of Allen’s album.
The internet, already primed by West End Girl’s lyrics and the tabloid speculation around a figure nicknamed Madeline, folded everything into the same narrative: a star no longer insulated by the superstructure of a global hit.
Last Thursday, however, he skipped the London premiere altogether leading ton speculation that he wanted to steer clear of Allen’s hometown.
Against that backdrop, Harbour’s reflections on the end of Stranger Things have taken on a clearer tone. Speaking at the LA premiere, he described the moment as bittersweet, acknowledging the decade spent with the cast and crew but also a sense of release.
I just see all these people I have loved and known so deeply for 10 years and we have to move on and let go, he said. And that is life.
It is a more measured version of the sentiment he expressed earlier in the year, when he admitted that repeating the same emotional beats season after season had left him restless. You get to a certain point where you are like, I want to take a risk.
I want to do something people have not seen me do before. After a decade of Hopper’s grief, grit and paternal angst, it is not difficult to see why Harbour might feel he has given the role everything he can.
He has recently wrapped Violent Night 2 and is heading into production on Behemoth, starring opposite Pedro Pascal. Stranger Things may have transformed his career, an earthquake as he once called it, but Harbour is clearly positioning himself for the next chapter.
As for the show itself, this season - which Standard’s Vicky Jessop has called ‘a gloriously silly final’ - marks a return to Hawkins now under military quarantine as Eleven goes back into hiding and the threat of Vecna deepens.
This is the most emotional season yet, with the final episodes designed to hit pretty hard. It is a fittingly ambitious ending for a series that reshaped Netflix and launched a global fan phenomenon.
For Harbour, though, the emotion seems rooted less in nostalgia than in closure. After the personal upheaval of the past year, the professional turbulence around the show and the simple fatigue of playing the same man for a decade, Stranger Things ending feels, in his words, “okay”.
