Stranger Things star Winona Ryder had no idea what Netflix was when she met with producers of the show, director and EP Shawn Levy told Josh Horowitz on his Happy Sad Confused podcast.

“She opened by asking, ‘What is Netflix? What is streaming? Is it like TV but different?’” Levy recounted.

He continued, “That was the starting point…Winona took a little onboarding to explain this emerging form of storytelling called Netflix and streaming.”

All's well that ends well, though, because Ryder was cast as Joyce Byers. She will return to film the fifth and final season of the show in 2024.

Levy said that season five will be “epic in its cinematic scope. But very much ‘Stranger Things'.”

He added, “I have to credit the Duffer Brothers. You read the outlines sometimes and it’s massive, but then you read the scripts and you remember again and again that their instinct for anchoring the epic in the intimate, and for anchoring the darkness of genre in the warmth of these characters, it’s so innate to them. Season five gets bigger in scale but doesn’t forget who or what it is.”

The shows' stars, namely Joe Kerry (Steve Harrington), David Harbour (Jim Hopper) and Millie Bobby Brown (Eleven) have all felt that it's time for the massively successful show to end.

Creator and showrunner Matt Duffer said the final season will have a different pacing compared to the previous seasons.

“[With five], there’ll be no wind-up time – like even this season, you get to experience the kids and what they’re going through in high school before things start to escalate. Then it gets crazier and crazier and crazier – that’s typically the trajectory. Five, you’re just going to be right in the middle of it so it’s going to feel very, very different.”