Diksha Sundriyal
Netflix’s ‘Stranger Things’ started with the disappearance of Will Byers in 2016, and the story comes full circle in its fifth season in 2025. The final season opens with a callback to this pivotal event as we, for the first time, see what happened to Will when he was taken to the Upside Down. His encounter with Vecna explains a lot of things that unfolded over the course of the first four seasons. However, the young Will that we see in Season 5 looks a little different from the one we saw in Season 1, and there is a good reason behind that. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Stranger Things Used De-aging to Portray Will’s Experience in the Upside Down
While the events of ‘Stranger Things’ take place over the course of five seasons, the show itself has been around for nine years now. This almost a decade-long difference between the first and fifth seasons means that the core cast is all grown up and they look nothing like they did nine years ago. This posed an issue for the season, featuring a callback to Will’s disappearance in Season 1, because it meant that the show’s creators needed Will to look the way he did in the first season. This is where the de-ageing tech came in handy. For the opening scene, 11-year-old Luke Kokotek served as the body double for Noah Schnapp, who plays Will.
Deadline reported that the services of Weta FX were used to de-age Schnapp, following which his face was composited onto Kokotek. The younger actor enacted the whole scene, with Schnapp providing him with pointers to help him understand Will’s body movements and expressions. At the same time, the older actor also lived the character’s experience, which allowed the team to carry his expressions into Kokotek’s performance, bringing the 11-year-old Will to life in a more organic manner. The de-aging process might also lead audiences to wonder if AI was involved. Back in 2023, Shawn Levy, who serves as an executive producer for the show, said that they wouldn’t be using any AI to de-age the cast. It is expected that the show’s creators have adhered to this rule for the fifth season as well.
Notably, this isn’t the first time the show has used de-aging to portray a character’s younger version. In the fourth season, Millie Bobby Brown’s Eleven underwent a similar process, showing flashbacks to the time before the events of Season 1, with a focus on her time at the Hawkins Lab and her encounter with Vecna. A similar method was used to de-age her, with a younger actress stepping in to complete the character’s look. Schnapp turned towards his co-star to ask for pointers about how to approach the process. He described the process like stepping into the director’s shoes and thinking “introspectively and reflectively” about how he played Will, especially all those years ago. He called it a “fun experience,” stating that despite the challenges of the process, the scene turned out “pretty well.”
Read More: Who Plays Holly in Stranger Things Season 5? Why was She Recast?
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