Stranger Things has dominated our Netflix screens since the show’s debut in 2016. Now, almost 10 years later, the show is coming to a close with the 5th and final season rumoured to air sometime this year (2025). Naturally, fans are desperate for even the tiniest titbit of information about this new season that has been three years in the making, and Finn Wolfhard, who plays Mike Wheeler in the show, dropped an enticing suggestion as to what awaits at the end of the road for his cherished character in an interview with People.
The End of an Era
Finn Wolfhard, as Mike, was introduced in the very first episode of Stranger Things and, as the dungeon master of a small Dungeons and Dragons circle, it was easy to see that he was the de facto leader of his group of young friends. Mike is the one to persuade his friends to go out searching for Will Buyers (Noah Schnapp) who goes missing on the way back home from one of their Dungeons and Dragons sessions. They instead find a disturbed girl, Eleven (Millie Bobby-Brown), and decide to take her back to Mike’s house as increasingly unexplainable and horrific events start happening around their home town of Hawkins.
Fans will be heart-broken to finally say goodbye to the show and Finn Wolfhard explains that it’s just as bittersweet for the actors. For Mike, Finn says: ‘I was so happy with my character’s ending. I was satisfied, but I was also very confused and sad, but also very happy.’ This follows on from a comment made by Noah Schnapp at the Broadway premiere of Stranger Things: The First Shadow who said of the last season: ‘People are going to be devastated.’
What’s Next For Finn Wolfhard?
Finn Wolfhard took the role of Mike Wheeler when he was only 13 years old. Now, at 22, he has spent an entire chunk of his adolescent life involved with this role so parting ways with the character must be like parting ways with an old friend. The character of Mike goes through a lot of ups and downs throughout the series, growing and changing as much as Finn himself, so with a comment like: ‘I was so happy with my character’s ending’, we’re hoping Stranger Things at least stays true to the leaderly values that made Mike shine in the beginning of the series.
Throughout his career with Stranger Things, Wolfhard has starred in films like It (2017), Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021) and the sequel, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024). He’s also directed a short comedy film by the name of Night Shifts (2020) and a feature, Hell of a Summer (2023). As of now, Finn has his role as Petro in The Legend of Ochi which released on April 25th 2025 so it’s safe to say that we’ll still be seeing him around our screens once the final season of Stranger Things is finally set to wrap up.
And They All Lived…
Alas, we can still only speculate for the time being what these cryptic comments could be leading to in terms of Stranger Thing’s finale. Finn Wolfhard has left nothing concrete behind about his character, only continuing to express his further mixed emotions to People in stating that he had: ‘an emotional hangover’ the day after filming the final episode.
All we can say is that the last season has a lot of loose ends to tie up, and as the Duffer Brothers have commented before, that each of the episodes in the last season of the show is a feature length movie on it’s own, it looks like they’ll be given ample space to provide something as satisfying as Finn Wolfhard implies it will be.
