- - How the “Stranger Things” series finale scored 2 Prince songs for its end-of-the-world soundtrack

Joey NolfiJanuary 2, 2026 at 9:46 PM

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Netflix; Warner Bros. / courtesy Everett

Millie Bobby Brown in 'Stranger Things' season 5 finale; Prince in 'Purple Rain'Key Points -

Matt and Ross Duffer explain the "challenging" process of securing 2 Prince songs for the Stranger Things finale.

The pair credited the success of Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill" after season 4 with helping their bid.

"The only thing that was harder rights-wise was getting Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' for the season 2 trailer."

Prince's estate — and the late pop star's iconic music — helped turn the Stranger Things Upside Down right side up in the beloved show's emotional series finale, creator-directors Matt and Ross Duffer reveal to Entertainment Weekly.

After the beloved sci-fi show's final episode featured not one, but two notable Prince songs soundtracking pivotal moments during the climax of the the two-hour installment, the Duffers explain the "challenging" process of securing the rights to use both "Purple Rain" and "When Doves Cry" in a key scene.

"It was cheap," Matt jokes to EW in a recent interview, later adding that he and brother Ross are "very grateful for the estate for allowing us to use" the songs in a sequence depicting the final exchange between Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) and Mike (Finn Wolfhard) before a bomb set by the Hawkins gang (who attached a fuse to a record playing both the A- and B-side of a Prince single) destroys the Upside Down for good.

"The rights issues were challenging, just because it hasn't been licensed very much. I don't know if in a world where 'Running Up That Hill' didn't do what it did for Kate Bush last season, that we would've gotten these rights," Ross observes, recognizing the overwhelming pop culture resurgence Bush had after her 1985 single returned to the Billboard Hot 100 chart at No. 3 in 2022, following its usage in a key episode of Stranger Things season 4.

Warner Bros. / courtesy Everett

Prince in 'Purple Rain'

Ross continues, adding that "the stars aligned and we were able to get" Prince's songs for the season 5 finale.

"We've never thought so much figuring out what the right song was and talked to so many people, because it wasn't just about the emotion of the scene," he explains. "What's really challenging, because of the way the bomb worked with the record player, we needed the beginning of whatever song was on the A- or B-side to be upbeat and hopeful, and then we needed the last song to be epic and emotional, and obviously had to be period correct and it had to be an iconic song."

He finishes, adding that "once you start doing that, it does actually narrow it down fairly quickly. There just weren't that many incredible options, and so we fell in love with Prince and, luckily, it all worked out."

Matt additionally says that the 1980s-set series — which often used iconic songs from the era in various episodes, from "Upside Down" by Diana Ross to Tiffany's "I Think We're Alone Now" — only had more difficulty while chasing after a tune by the King of Pop.

"I would say the only thing that was harder rights-wise was getting Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' for the season 2 trailer," Matt says. "And, actually, that trailer's not even available anymore because of the rights issues. So, that was more brutal and more expensive than Prince."

The songs of Prince, who died three months before Stranger Things premiered in 2016, helped fans say goodbye to the popular series' five-volume run upon the finale's debut on New Year's Day.

Among other developments in the episode, which included a lengthy epilogue highlighting the trajectories of several key characters, perhaps the most divisive was the show's presentation of Eleven's ambiguous fate.

While the Hawkins crew seemingly watched Eleven sacrifice herself (and, in turn, eliminate the violent hunt for her at the hands of Linda Hamilton's ruthless Dr. Kay) amid the teens' successful plan to vanquish the Upside Down, Mike introduced a theory in the episode's final moments, posing that Eleven actually deceived everyone, and might be living a quiet life somewhere else, free from detection.

Netflix

Finn Wolfhard and Millie Bobby Brown in 'Stranger Things' season 5 finale

"Our goal, our hope, is to leave it up to the fans, ultimately, and the audience in terms of what they believe, just as we leave it up to our characters in that basement to decide what they believe or not," Ross told EW elsewhere in the interview.

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"We spent probably more time talking about Eleven's fate than anything else as we were working on season 5," Matt adds. "A lot of the dialogue you hear in the finale reflects the kind of debates that we were having in the writers' room. Hopper's [David Harbour] speech to her, he's expressing what a lot of us were expressing in the room, but then there was the flip side of that argument, which is what Kali [Linnea Berthelsen] was saying."

The Stranger Things series finale is now streaming on Netflix.

--Reporting by Nick Romano

on Entertainment Weekly

Original Article on Source

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