Duffer Brothers Cut Three-Hour Stranger Things Finale

Fans who wondered where all the demogorgons went during Stranger Things season 5's finale can blame creative restraint. The Duffer Brothers originally envisioned a three-hour epic that would have packed in creature battles and sci-fi movie homages.

The showrunners explained their reasoning during a recent interview. When Vecna faces that surprise attack at The Abyss, he's caught completely off guard. "Mainly it's just that Vecna was not expecting this sneak attack on his home turf. Never in a million years could he even imagine that," Matt Duffer said.

Why the Demogorgons Stayed Hidden

Those familiar creatures are still lurking somewhere in the Upside Down. The brothers considered staging a massive demo battle alongside the Mind Flayer showdown. But they decided against it. "We obviously discussed having a demo battle on top of the Mind Flayer battle, but it felt more right to us that why does he need the demos when the Mind Flayer is this giant thing and can attack them?" Matt explained.

The logic makes sense. Why deploy foot soldiers when you've got a massive psychic entity doing the heavy lifting? "He doesn't need his little ant army to attack, he's going to take care of this himself. It's a giant, desolate planet," Matt continued. Remember Henry wandering that wasteland in season 4? He spotted a demo in the distance, but they weren't exactly building neighborhoods up there.

The Aliens Reference That Never Happened

The extended version would have borrowed heavily from classic horror. "We did at some point have that they were going to come across a giant field of demo eggs in kind of an Aliens thing, but you can't get all your ideas in there," Matt revealed. Ross confirmed the ambitious scope: "Yeah that's in the three-hour version of the finale, which was never written."

Picture this: the gang stumbles across rows of demogorgon eggs. They try to sneak past. The creatures hatch and chaos erupts. Classic Ridley Scott territory, but in the Upside Down.

Creative Fatigue Won Out

The Duffers worried about overusing their signature monsters. "One of the other things we talked about was just demo fatigue. I felt like we did everything we wanted to do with them in Sorcerer, and wanting to keep the focus on Vecna and the Mind Flayer, who's been absent this season," Ross explained.

Smart call, maybe. The demogorgons got their spotlight earlier in season 5. Cramming more creature features into the finale might have diluted the main villain showdown. Sometimes less really is more, even when you're dealing with interdimensional horror.