Here’s How ‘Stranger Things’ Scored Two of Prince’s Biggest Hits For Thrilling Series Finale: ‘We Were Told That It Was a Real Long Shot’
Luckily for creators the Duffer Brothers, Kate Bush had already done some of the heavy lifting in season four.
1/2/2026
Luckily for creators the Duffer Brothers, Kate Bush had already done some of the heavy lifting in season four.
Caleb McLaughlin as Lucas Sinclair, Sadie Sink as Max Mayfield, Noah Schnapp as Will Byers, and Gaten Matarazzo as Dustin Henderson in Stranger Things: Season 5. Courtesy of Netflix © 2025
Over the course of five fright-filled seasons, Stranger Things has had a knack for picking just the right song, at just the right time, to accompany some of the sci-fi horror series’ most action-packed moments. And, because the show took place in the 1980s, of course this week’s finale had to pay tribute to one of the eras most dominant pop superstars: Prince.
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Some folks in the Minneapolis/St. Paul region thought for sure that the era-appropriate song that might help bring the season five story to a close would be something from beloved indie rockers The Replacements. There were two reasons for this theory: number one, WSQK DJ Robin Buckley (Maya Hawke) suggested in the next-to-last episode that the Paul Westerberg-led band’s music would be the perfect monster-fighting soundtrack. Plus, co-star Finn Wolfhard (who plays Mike Wheeler) has optioned the rights for a big-screen adaptation of the biography Trouble Boys: The True Story of the Replacements, which he plans to direct and co-write.
But, alas, in the final two-hour goodbye that dropped on New Year’s Eve, show runners the Duffer Brothers opted for two songs from Prince’s iconic 1984 Purple Rain album, both of which were perfectly placed, and, to hear them tell it, incredibly long shots to be approved by the late pop star’s estate. (Warning: the following contains spoilers about the finale.)
