Talking to Stranger Things season 4 star Gaten Matarazzo is like talking to a wise, grateful old man who happens to live in a 19-year-old’s body. His hindsight is sharp and his foresight even sharper, and he speaks about the things he’s passionate about with an intellect reminiscent of his boy-genius character, Dustin Henderson.
But Dustin and Gaten are two different people, a distinction that can sometimes be blurred for audiences who have watched him and the rest of his Stranger Things co-stars grow up right before their eyes onscreen. It happens to many young stars who are introduced to the world in iconic roles and larger-than-life stories — to this day, Daniel Radcliffe is still called “Harry.” Yet, when asked what characteristics of his own he’d like people to know, Gaten is stumped.
“I feel like for the most part I kind of wear it out on my sleeves, at least I like to think I do,” Gaten tells Teen Vogue. “I've never been asked that question before actually, now that I'm thinking about it… I don't know. I'm a nerd, I'm a hella nerd. I'm soon to be 20 and I don't feel like it, but I don't think that's a rare occurrence for people turning 20 and leaving their teenage years. I love the theater. I love my family. But that's all normal stuff, I think. Most of the stuff that interests me and that I love to do and talk about and put my energy into is what I get to do for my career, which is incredible… I’m very lucky.”
While luck surely had a part to play in the steady rise of Gaten’s career, his success is also due to the fact that he’s been performing since he was single digits. Gaten started out under the bright lights of Broadway in roles like Benjamin in Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and Gavroche in Les Misérables. Later this summer, Gaten will make a return to his Broadway roots as Jared Kleinman in the final cast of Dear Evan Hansen until the production closes in September 2022. When we talk on Zoom, he’s in the midst of packing up his life to move to New York City. He holds out the camera with a smile to show me his sparse living room, empty save for a few cardboard boxes.
This summer will be an intense but exciting one for the young actor, as he starts “daunting” vocal training and rehearsals for his run as Jared — “I'm crapping myself endlessly in a continuous loop for the next three months of my life… I haven't sang professionally long term since my voice changed,” he says, “But it’s [an] exciting fear that’s like butterflies times 11” — while also releasing two major projects.
Next month, Gaten will make his live-action film debut in the Paramount+ coming-of-age comedy Honor Society with Angourie Rice and Christopher Mintz-Plasse, and the long-awaited second volume of Stranger Things season 4 will finally be released unto the world.
Large emphasis on “finally” — Gaten apologizes multiple times throughout our conversation for not being able to answer certain questions without dropping extreme spoilers. “It’s going to be so much easier to talk about it and really go into detail once the arc of the season is complete,” sighs Gaten. But what he can disclose is that “the most interesting and most challenging stuff” of the season comes in Episodes 8 and 9 of Volume 2, calling the two-part finale a “marathon.” With runtimes of 1 hour and 25 minutes and 2 hours and 30 minutes respectively, Volume 2 will satisfy much more than your typical binge-watching session.
“We have so much more to give in just two episodes, which has been incredible,” says Gaten. “I've never felt as committed to being truthful on screen as I have this year.” Gaten has been playing Dustin for nearly half of his career, and for all of his adolescence. He remembers arriving on set for season 1, having just turned 13, and feeling like it was the first day of school. Now, as he and most of his castmates exit their teens and enter adulthood, their characters have grown alongside them. As their characters reckon with the aftermath of all they’ve been through, experiencing grief, trauma, and the fantastic misery of high school, they require more depth and a new approach. And Stranger Things 4 has captured that shift more than any other season.
“I think Matt and Ross [Duffer, the show’s creators], they know that not only are these kids and these characters growing physically and emotionally and mentally, but that these characters have to,” Gaten says. “And they know that this show is going to have to as well, if it's going to work. And it's felt natural, it's felt real. I'm excited for people to finally see what we've made and what this season has been building to. It'll explain quite a lot about the characters and what's to come, and what the past three [seasons] have really been all about. Yeah, it's a big one.”
Gaten promises answers, which is encouraging, since Stranger Things 4: Volume 1 left fans with lots of confusion and uncertainty. Set in the spring of 1986 in the months following the Battle of Starcourt, the Hawkins gang is split up across California, Indiana, and Russia while facing Vecna, a murderous threat from the Upside Down that seems undefeatable without Eleven’s powers. By the end of seven episodes, the fate of our favorite meddling kids looks bleak. For its fourth installment, Stranger Things has fully embraced the horror side of its sci-fi genre — but the scariest parts of this season were never the jumpscares or the gore.
“I think the scariest part about this [season] is truly how in danger these characters feel,” Gaten says with severity. “Everybody's always in danger in this show. That's kind of the point of the show, is we're on edge all of the time, but this season has always given the vibe that not everybody we would assume is safe is necessarily continuously going to be… the stakes are really high.”
Since the release of Volume 1 on May 27, theories have abounded the Internet on the Upside Down’s creation, how the gang will defeat both Vecna and series big bad the Mind Flayer, and which characters fans believe will be killed off.
Gaten’s co-star Noah Schnapp (who plays Will Byers) and showrunners the Duffer Brothers have all hinted at major character deaths in interviews about Volume 2. When asked his thoughts on the rumors, Gaten jokes that a number of characters will die in the first few minutes — but is he joking? The number is too high, too random, but shocking enough to be possible. He laughs out loud, shrugging at my bewilderment. I can’t tell if he’s lying. “It seems outlandish,” he says with a sly smile. “But you never know with the show.”
Which is true: the golden rule of belonging to the Stranger Things fandom is to always expect the unexpected. But Gaten notes how cautious he is about revealing spoilers, a trait he’s proud of — one that he thinks makes him more worthy of knowing sacred secrets of the show than, say, David Harbour, who has long been rumored to know how the entire Stranger Things saga ends.
“Who would I trust the most with? I think Sadie [Sink]. I would probably trust [her] with any secret from the show,” Gaten says. “I think that she would have the least desire to talk about it in public interviews… I wouldn't trust Noah.”
Gaten doesn’t pay too much attention to the fan theories, only occasionally dropping into a deep dive Google hole. “That’s like 3 a.m. me. That’s me by myself, like Christmas pajamas in July,” he says. “There's so many devoted people to this show and so many theories, and most of them are just bonkers. Some of them are just ridiculous and so much fun to read, and some of them are so cocky about it, like they know that this is what's going on in the show and they couldn't be further from the truth, and that's my favorite.”
Though, the fans who devote hours to uncovering plot details or twists before the episodes are released confuse him. “I don't get it. Especially if it's a show you love and are devoted to, I never want spoilers — if anybody were to give me spoilers, I'd be so pissed off!” Gaten says. “So I don't understand the desire and the fire and fury. We're so close, just no, please no.”
Fair, but an easy perspective to have when you know how the season will end before the rest of the world. After reading the finale script, Gaten remembers feeling both genuine surprise and satisfaction.
“It's not an ending like any ending that we've made before. And that explains it enough, I think. People will know what I mean once they see it,” he says cryptically. “It breaks Stranger Things formula, which is cool. Even though it's a formula that's worked quite well and [that] we've utilized quite nicely over the past three seasons. But yeah, I think big changes in the season calls for big changes when it comes to wrapping it up.”
Back in February 2022, the Duffer Brothers announced that the show’s fifth season would be its last. Now, with only two episodes left before the show enters its final chapter, there’s been lots of talk about endings and goodbyes. Gaten has started reflecting, but he isn’t ready to move on quite yet.
“I look back on all the years spent on it and I can't be more grateful, genuinely. You get emotional thinking about how long you really spent on it and just how much of an impact it has had, and it will continue to have,” says Gaten. “This show is going to mean so much to me, not just now and in the next couple of years, but in the coming decades of my life and how it defines my career and how it defines the work that I will choose to do and want to do. It means everything.
“We've been talking a lot about the end, but… I think the announcement kind of made everyone jump the gun in a weird way… We still have several years in the making of being able to finish this show. And by the time season five is written, shot, edited, released, pressed for, all that — it's going to be a little while again, like every season is. So we still have plenty of time to just sit back and enjoy the show while it's still here and not worry about saying goodbye to it just yet. Which is great.”
There’s still so much to learn about the mythology of the Stranger Things universe, answers we’ll likely get throughout the course of the final season. But like Gaten says, there’s so much beauty to appreciate in the now. For two super-sized episodes of Volume 2, we can look forward to the thrill of the unknown, to the possibility that our favorite crew of underdogs will come out on top. Since season 1, fans have crowned Dustin as the unofficial leader of the Hawkins crew, noting that he’s often the key to conquering the show’s mystery. It’s a title Gaten bashfully brushes off, but coyly accepts. Well, if the trucker hat fits, right?
“Which it doesn’t, by the way,” reveals Gaten with a laugh. “It is tight. I have a big ass head. That’s something people don’t know about me!”
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