David Harbour warns of “uncontrollable crying” caused by ’Stranger Things’ finale

According to People, David Harbour, who stars as Jim Hopper in the Netflix sci-fi show, revealed during a live taping of the Happy Sad Confused podcast that things got pretty emotional during the table read for the series finale.

“The end of this episode when we were reading it — just us reading it — about halfway through, people started crying,” Harbour shared. “Then about the last 20 minutes, it was just uncontrollably crying, waves of different people.”

Harbour notes that much of the emotional heaviness comes from the cast’s young actors — including Millie Bobby Brown, Finn Wolfhard, Gaten Matarazzo, Caleb McLaughlin and Noah Schnapp — having essentially grown up on the show.

“I think part of that also is the fact that these kids, it was their childhood,” Harbour said. “Like, they started the show when they were 11 and 12, and here we are reading [the finale].”

Harbour adds that, while he’s “very close to the show” and has “very strong opinions,” he firmly believes in the quality of the finale.

“They land the plane,” he said. “It is the best episode they’ve ever done.” 

The fifth and final season of Stranger Things is expected to premiere in 2025. The show’s first season premiered in 2016.