David Harbour Calls Stranger Things Series Finale 'The Best' Episode, Reveals the Cast Was 'Uncontrollably Sobbing'

David Harbour gave his stamp of approval to the Stranger Things series finale.

Harbour teased a little bit of information regarding the upcoming fifth and final season of Stranger Things at the Happy Sad Confused podcast’s 10th-anniversary celebration in New York City on Thursday, Oct. 17.

The 49-year-old actor, who portrays Jim Hopper in the beloved Netflix show, told host Josh Horowitz and the event crowd that the cast recently read through the final episode of season 5.

“Look, I'm very close to the show, so I have very strong opinions,” he began. “And they may not match yours if you're a fan of the show.”

“I'm an actor on the show. So I see the nuts and bolts,” he said before confessing that “sometimes [he’ll] get very mad” at what he thinks is “a bad episode” or a season he “didn't like.” 

“I can be very critical of this show,” he admitted to the crowd. However, he revealed that in season 5 episode 8: “They land the plane, and it is the best episode they’ve ever done.”

“The end of this episode when we were reading it — just us reading it — about halfway through, people started crying,” he said. “Then about the last 20 minutes, it was just uncontrollably crying, waves of different people. Noah Schnapp being my favorite,” he said before jokingly, imitating Schnapp’s wailing sobs.

“I think part of that also is the fact that these kids, it was their childhood,” he said in reference to Millie Bobby Brown, now 20, Finn Wolfhard, 21, Gaten Matarazzo, 22, Caleb McLaughlin, 23, and Schnapp, 20. “Like, they started the show when they were 11 and 12, and here we are reading [the finale].” (When the series premiered in July 2016, Brown was 11, Wolfhard was 12, Matarazzo was 13, McLaughlin was 14 and Schnapp was 11.)

“It's 10 years later, and we examine that idea, and it's so well done and so beautiful,” he notes before admitting that he “was totally prepared” to not tell the crowd that. “It's such a great episode, and it's such a great season. You guys will love it,” he concluded.

In May 2022, Harbour told Variety that he knows how the series ends and "it's quite moving and quite beautiful."

However, Netflix hasn't revealed the official plotline for season 5 yet, it will likely follow the Hawkins kids as they try to defeat Vecna once and for all now that the Upside Down has invaded their town.

Alongside Harbour, Brown, Wolfhard, Matarazzo, McLaughlin and Schnapp, the season will also star Winona Ryder, Joe Keery, Maya Hawke, Natalia Dyer, Charlie Heaton, Sadie Sink, Priah Ferguson, Cara Buono, Brett Gelman, Jamie Campbell Bower and Amybeth McNulty.

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Netflix has not announced the season 5 premiere date; Stranger Things’ first four seasons are currently streaming on Netflix.