Matt and Ross Duffer, the twin showrunners of Stranger Things, don’t particularly enjoy killing off their characters. But their Netflix series is an homage to ’80s horror and adventure flicks, and Vecna and the Mind Flayer—the show’s ultimate big bads—need to kill people in order for the threat to feel real. So, yes, the brothers do occasionally take a life. And, yes, the internet always has something to say about those character deaths. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]It’s a responsibility they do not take lightly. “It’s important that every death resonates in a big way,” says Matt. “Which is why we’re very careful who we kill because it has these massive season-long ripple effects. Otherwise it just doesn’t feel like it has any weight to it.” Season 2 saw Nancy (Natalia Dyer) seeking justice for her friend Barb (Shannon Purser), an early victim of a monster called the Demogorgon. Much of Season 4 centered on Max (Sadie Sink) reckoning with the loss of her brother Billy (Dacre Montgomery). And, the brothers tease, Eddie’s (Joseph Quinn) sacrifice in the penultimate season will have a deep impact on Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo) in Season 5.Ahead of the megahit’s fifth and final season, TIME spent months inside the world of Stranger Things for a cover story. I shadowed the Duffer brothers as they directed an epic action scene on set in Atlanta in the spring of 2024 and then visited them in their Los Angeles edit bay for an extended interview the following summer. During our conversations about how they’re wrapping up their story we discussed, among other things, the character deaths that meant so much to the fans.Questions about some of the dearly departed characters who have become internet obsessions—especially Barb—prompted knowing eye rolls from the twins. But as the series comes to an end, the duo offered rare insight into their writing process. They explained why they sometimes conjure up characters specifically to die and what it was like to film those moments with some of their favorite actors. Certain patterns emerge: The core ensemble is usually safe, while season breakouts like Bob and Eddie often meet a grim fate. But fans are already speculating that this final chapter may break that rule, as the stakes in the battle for Hawkins have never been higher.Below, the Duffers reflect on some of the most impactful deaths in the show’s run.BarbBarb’s death—and the show’s lack of attention to it—was the first viral moment for the series. Despite appearing in just two episodes of Season 1, actor Shannon Purser made an impression on the show’s audience. When she was pulled into the Upside Down and seemingly forgotten, the fanbase rebelled and #JusticeforBarb was born.The brothers ascribe some of Barb’s staying power to Purser, who was working in a movie theater when the Duffer brothers cast her. “The reason we had Barb in there as a character is we wanted Nancy to have a real direct connection to the supernatural goings-on,” says Matt. “We liked the idea that she had this nerdy friend—she’s an academic girl—but is getting pulled toward the popular crowd. This is something we experienced in high school.”“We were Barb in high school, though,” Ross clarifies. “We weren’t Nancy.”Matt agrees: “We had friends who were Nancy, who left us. We didn’t die, but we died on the inside.”The brothers were surprised by the reaction to Barb’s death given she only had 25 lines in the whole series, though some executives at Netflix had an inkling of what was coming. “As we were turning in the scripts for Season 1, the one note we consistently got back is like, ‘What about Barb? Is anyone thinking about Barb?’” says Ross. “And we’re like, it’s a show about Will and so much else going on.”Matt jumps in. “‘What about Barb’s family?’ We just don’t have time or the bandwidth to start to introduce Barb’s mom and dad. But Netflix kept harassing us about it. And it turns out they were right. Maybe we should have included more Barb. But that was part of the reason she became a phenomenon because of how little the town seemed to care about her, which is part of the point of that character.”But Ross thinks at the end of the day, it all worked out for good ol’ Barb. “We neglected her and as such Hawkins neglected her,” he says. “And it made her that much more famous.”BobMuch like Barb, Bob was designed to die. Unlike Barb, he managed to stick around for nearly an entire season. “The initial idea was Joyce has an obnoxious boyfriend that was going to get killed by Will very early on,” says Matt. But then they cast Sean Astin of Goonies and Lord of the Rings fame and found him so endearing that they completely rewrote the part of Bob to make him a lovable nerd—and then delayed his death from the third episode of Season 2 all the way until the finale. “At that point, we were like we can’t have even a possessed Will kill Bob because we’re going to not like Will anymore,” says Ross. “So we had the Demodogs do the deed.”Winona Ryder, in particular, was attached to Astin, and so his death scene was an emotional day for both actors on set. “At the same time, we were filming something rather ridiculous,” says Matt. Their visual effects supervisor thought that the Duffers’ fellow writer Kate Trefry was about the size of a Demodog. “So we had her on top of Sean fake slashing him.”Ross adds: “But Sean loved it. He kept wanting more blood in his mouth so he could spit it up. Even though it was emotional and nobody wanted to see him go, and Sean didn’t want to go, it was a surreal and fun day.”And, of course, it wouldn’t be a memorable Stranger Things scene without some nod to Steven Spielberg. “Quint from Jaws was a big reference,” says Matt. “Actually our mom thinks we went too far and it was too violent. So I got a little bit of a lecture about that.”BillyThere would be no Billy without Steve’s redemption arc. Originally, Joe Keery’s popular kid with a crush on the nerdy girl, Nancy, was supposed to be a bad guy. But, again, the Duffers changed their minds and the character when they actually cast the role.“Because Joe Keery was so endearing, we began to shift the Steve character,” says Ross. By Season 2, the jock that the audience was supposed to hate had evolved into a buddy for Dustin and babysitter to the younger gang. “It was a very different character than we originally imagined for Steve, who was much more of a vicious, mean bully. And so when we were brainstorming ideas for what Max’s brother would be like, that’s the vibe we wanted.”Enter Billy, played by Dacre Montgomery, a troubled California transplant who bullied his younger step-sister, Max, and her friends. “We knew he was going to die from the moment we introduced him,” says Ross. “We knew we were going to build a possession story around him.” But Montgomery also insisted that Billy get a more complex backstory that helped explain his repugnant behavior, especially toward Max and Lucas in the second season. “That’s the reason we added the scene where he’s chastised by his dad,” says Ross. “He’s never redeemed like Steve. He never becomes a good guy. But we know that deep down there is this goodness in Billy.” The audience sees a glimpse of that goodness in Season 3 when Eleven dives into Billy’s memories and sees Billy happy as a child with his mother. And that goodness manifests in his decision to save Eleven in that season’s final battle. “Were it not for some of the circumstances in his life, Billy could have been an OK person,” says Matt. “Eleven is able to reach the inner child before he turned, and that’s who we’re experiencing at the very end.”But, he adds, “I don’t think it’s a redemption moment for him.” The idea of exploring Max’s reaction to Billy’s death didn’t come until the Duffers were writing Season 4. “We thought we had a powerhouse actor in Sadie and wanted to explore something complicated with her,” says Matt. Eddie“There was a version of Eddie that was going to be annoying and grating and wasn’t going to work, so we needed to find someone with a lot of charisma,” says Matt. “It was maybe the hardest casting we’ve ever done in the show.” They found Joseph Quinn, who brought shades of a young Robert Downey Jr. to his charismatic performance as the king of the nerds. His character, Eddie, leads the school’s Dungeons & Dragons group, sells drugs on the side, and becomes the prime suspect in a string of deaths that many Hawkins townspeople believe to have satanic undertones. “We knew Joe was special but we didn’t know how special until we started filming,” says Ross. And then three weeks after they started filming the season in 2020, the pandemic hit and production had to shut down. “That was actually where the pandemic was beneficial in terms of the writing because we had seen Quinn and knew what we could do. And so we went back and continued to hone the Eddie scenes because we knew even though he’s only sporadically in the season, he’s the backbone of it.”Adhering to the typical Stranger Things pattern, Eddie’s was always destined to sacrifice himself for the sake of the gang. “Once we got to that point it was really hard,” says Matt. “It was similar to Sean Astin where we weren’t sure we wanted to do it because it meant saying goodbye to Eddie and Joe.” But once Chrissy died inside Eddie’s trailer during a covert drug deal, he was doomed. The town was always going to blame the burnout for the cheerleader’s murder. “His story was always going to be a tragic one. Even if he were to live, it would have been a tragic end for him. He would have ended up in jail probably.”