After five seasons, the “Stranger Things” kids are all grown up. Well, at least the actors are. In the world of the show, they’re still just youngsters trying to save Hawkins, Indiana from being swallowed by the Upside Down. With the fifth and final season about to hit, we’ll soon see whether they’re successful in that regard. Before the show ends, however, the new season begins with a flashback sequence that required a ton of VFX in order to de-age Noah Schnapp’s Will Byers.
When “Stranger Things” debuted back in 2016, Schnapp and his fellow “Stranger Things” cast members were just middle schoolers doing battle with the eldritch beasts of the alternate dimension that exists beyond the veil of Hawkins. Now, however, Schnapp is a 21-year-old, which made things a tad difficult for the Duffer Brothers and their crew when crafting the opening moments of the new season. Luckily, “Stranger Things” season 5 had one of the highest budgets ever for a TV series, which meant the Duffers could afford to pay their VFX team for what was months of work spent solely on revisiting the time period in which the inaugural season unfolded.
The flashback takes place in 1983, when Will first disappeared into the Upside Down and kicked off the events of “Stranger Things.” As such, the VFX crew had to de-age the 21-year-old Schnapp to his early teens. In the December 2025 issue of SFX Magazine, the Will Byers actor explained how the sequence was created using a younger stand-in and scans of his own face, which were ultimately melded together to create a digital reincarnation of young Will. Such a process was, unsurprisingly, not easy.
VFX artists worked on the Stranger Things season 5 opening for half a year
“Stranger Things” affected its young actors positively, with most coming away having learned valuable lessons on the massively popular Netflix series. In the world of the show, however, the “Stranger Things” kids have been through hell trying to suppress Vecna — whose powers will be deadlier in season 5. Now, it seems the VFX artists have endured their own hell trying to create the opening sequence for the new season.
During his SFX interview, Noah Schnapp explained how he worked with the young Will Byers stand-in, which he said was “actually really cool” and “a full circle moment.” He continued: “It felt like, ‘Oh, wow, now I’m the adult telling this kid what to do, and I’m no longer that little boy being told where to stand.’ It just helped me reflect on all the years that passed.”
According to Schnapp, he and his younger counterpart worked together for a few days “to get his physicality and running and breath work the same.” He continued: “Then they put me in a tent and had me do all these different expressions and faces, like fear, and running and all these things. It was so weird.” After that, the VFX team composited the final shots using Schnapp’s facial scans and the stand-in’s real performance. According to the actor, some VFX artists said they’d been watching videos of him as an 11-year-old for six months in order to produce the final scene. “They stamped it onto that little kid, and we got this cool little flashback scene,” added Schnapp, whose character is on /Film’s list of the “Stranger Things” characters most likely to die in season 5 (though we hope he doesn’t).
