Here’s the one “Stranger Things” scene that stressed the kids out the MOST
Warning, the following post contains serious spoilers from Season 2 of Stranger Things. If you haven’t seen it yet, you’d better pick up that Dungeons & Dragons manual and get studying because it’s about to get real.
We pick up with Stranger Things Season 2,*just* under a year following the harrowing events of season one and while Mike, Dustin, Lucas, and Will are all a year older — the dreaded 13. The boys have seen things and are still working their way back to normalcy. Especially Will, who was literally trapped in the Upside Down, and Mike, who is recovering from the perceived loss of Eleven.
While, Season 2 quickly throws our young heroes back in to danger — Will becomes possessed by the shadow monster/Mind Flayer and the rest of the gang, plus Max and their new babysitter Steve battle Demodogs — the young cast were more worried about the kissing scenes than shooting the scary Demodogs scenes.
Yes, while these 13-year olds certainly have a lot on their plates with, you know, the whole Upside Down business, they are still budding teenagers with hormones…and first crushes. The season finale saw our favorite middle schoolers acting like — gasp! — normal kids at their middle school dance. And with that, we got TWO kissing scenes.
According to the Duffer Brothers, shooting the kissing scenes was a dramatic ordeal in and of itself.
"So much drama around that! Whenever we make them kiss it’s like oh my god, it’s like a two month buildup," Ross Duffer told Variety.
Will and an unnamed classmate go off to dance, while a lonely Dustin is rescued from the dreaded bleachers by Nancy Wheeler — and honestly, seeing Nancy and Steve coach Dustin through the pitfalls of early teenage life is just adorable. That left Lucas and Max, who skated around their budding crushes on each other all season, and the Mike and Eleven reunion we’ve been waiting for.
According to the Duffers, the teens were *very* nervous for their kissing scenes, as it was many of their first kisses.
"Give me a break! They had to kiss three times. You’d think it’s the end of the world," Matt Duffer joked, before conceding that first kisses are very important for a young teen. "I guess it’s a big deal. Caleb, I think it was his first kiss. It was definitely Sadie’s first kiss. But then even Millie and Finn had never kissed before. Actually, neither of the kisses were written in the script, so we kind of dropped that on them the day of and caused a major panic." "But they did it. It was fun. I love it. You have to torture them a little bit. You know you’ve got to entertain yourself some way. And we have all these children who are just fun. I know exactly how to push their buttons at this point."
The Stranger Things after show, Beyond Stranger Things also touched upon the traumatizing kisses, with Wolfhard, Brown, McLaughlin, and Sink each sharing how nervous they were to film. But it looks as though the Duffers are going to keep teasing them with those scary scenes, as Matt told Variety that he’s already joked with the cast about potential make-out scenes in upcoming seasons.
We’re guessing that Stranger Things 3 will add ’80s teen rom-com to the list of genres it already touches upon.
