Finn Wolfhard was determined to stay in the moment. “Everyone was thinking about the end and was down, and I would just be like, ‘Yeah, but we’re all here hanging out. It’s fine,’” he recalls. “And I would push it away.” On Dec. 20, there was no more denial. He was filming the grand finale on a stage in the show’s Atlanta studio and noticed a massive crowd, including no less than Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos, gathering. Among the throng, Wolfhard spotted cast members Natalia Dyer, Charlie Heaton, Joe Keery and Maya Hawke, who all remained in Atlanta even though they wrapped production days earlier. “I turned around from the monitors, and it was hundreds of people just hanging out for the first time in the same room after 10 years of working. And they were just watching,” he remembers. “So if that wasn’t enough of a mindfuck there, it was also like, ‘Wait, that means it’s ending.’”
Then Matt and Ross Duffer — the brothers who created the ’80s-set coming-of-age paranormal drama — called “action” for the very last time. Wolfhard can’t say much considering that the series, a global phenomenon that peaked at No. 1 in 88 countries, is guarded more closely than a Demodog den in an underground labyrinth. All I can glean is that Wolfhard appears in the denouement alongside “some” of the “kids,” as he refers to castmates Millie Bobby Brown, Gaten Matarazzo, Caleb McLaughlin, Noah Schnapp and Sadie Sink. “There was a moment where there was true joy from everyone because of a moment that happened,” he lets slip before stopping himself from spilling further. “When I walked out from doing the scene, it was just one of the greatest moments in my entire life. I didn’t process at the time because it was just so emotional. There was a lot of Champagne.’”
Wolfhard is sitting cross-legged in a hipster-adjacent café in his native Vancouver. The 22-year-old star is, for the first time since childhood, free from playing Mike Wheeler, who began his arc as the valiant but often obstinate tween avenger who wrangles a group of kids to battle the dark forces that reign just beneath the surface of Hawkins, Indiana. Unlike Eleven (Brown), Mike has no special powers. He relies on board game-honed wits and a fierce sense of justice that take him through his freshman year in high school (even if Wolfhard was 21 while still playing a high schooler in Season 5). And as he looks back, he’s endlessly twitchy, plugging his nose repeatedly like a swimmer about to take a plunge before gulping down some white coffee.
For Matt Duffer, Finn and the headstrong Mike have always been entwined — but never so much as in those waning hours, which he calls “an emotional sledgehammer.” “The way we write these characters is based in small part on the actors themselves,” he says. “The way Finn has matured into this very confident young man is mirrored in the show and in Season 5 in particular. You see Mike become that leader again that he was in Season 1, but a more mature, confident version.” Back in the first season, Mike eludes evil government agents and a bloodthirsty Demogorgon to help reestablish order in this Anytown, USA; now, he’s back at the head of the Hawkins crew.
“And it’s just been so fun,” Matt Duffer says, “to see Finn sort of tap back into that fearless-leader mode but bringing that more adult maturity to it.”
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With Season 5 rolling out in three waves, beginning with Volume 1 (Episodes 1-4) on Nov. 26, followed by Volume 2 (Episodes 5-7) on Christmas and the Finale (Episode 8) on New Year’s Eve, the actor is savoring the twilight of a show that defined him. The nearly decade-long “Stranger Things” run might be ending, but Wolfhard has already laid the groundwork for a giant career.
In between five protracted seasons, he managed to star in 17 movies that earned more than $1.8 billion — including two “It” films and a pair of “Ghostbusters.” Of his “Stranger Things” co-stars, no one comes close to boasting that box office cred. (Brown is next in line with two “Godzilla” movies, which pulled down a combined $857 million.) At the age of 19, Wolfhard moved into the director’s chair with the camp-set horror send-up “Hell of a Summer.” (In addition to co-helming with friend Billy Bryk, he wrote, produced and starred in the film, which was released by Neon.) And in June, he released his debut album, “Happy Birthday,” an ode to the British invasion and power pop bands like the Cars. His social media footprint dwarfs that of even Timothée Chalamet.
Jason Reitman, who directed Wolfhard in “Ghostbusters: Afterlife” and “Saturday Night,” says the key to the young star’s success is an ability to harness his own constant state of change. On “Ghostbusters,” Wolfhard’s post-puberty limbs were becoming a tangled mess. So the actor introduced some physical comedy into his performance, purposely bumping into objects.
“No normal 16-year-old is looking for ways to make themselves look like a buffoon. They want to look attractive. They want to look cool. They want to look charismatic,” Reitman explains. “And here he had the wherewithal to understand that his body was going through a growth spurt. He was lanky and gangly at the time, and he saw the humorous opportunity.”
In another feat of intuitiveness, Wolfhard is the only one who correctly guessed what the “Stranger Things” spinoff might be.
“Nobody — not Netflix, not any of the producers, not any of the directors, not any of the actors — nobody else has figured out what the spinoff is. Finn figured out, which is pretty remarkable,” Ross Duffer says. “We’ve mind-melded with this kid a bit.”
As for what Wolfhard speculated, he tells me: “Like David Lynch’s ‘Twin Peaks.’ Sort of an anthology and different tones but similar universe or same universe. I think set in different places and all tied together through this mythology of the Upside Down. Don’t even talk about Hawkins. Don’t have any mention of our characters. They were toying around with ideas in case Netflix wanted them. I’m sure they do, and I’m sure it will happen, but there’s nothing official. I think the coolest way, the way that I would do it, there has to be labs everywhere. If there was one in Hawkins, there’s one in Russia. Where else could they be?”
Back in 2015, when the Duffers and casting director Carmen Cuba were looking for their series protagonist, they viewed hundreds of tapes. Wolfhard’s, a video recorded by his father of his son sick in bed, stood out.
“He just had this precociousness but also energy, and he felt like a real kid,” says Ross Duffer. “There was none of those sort of play-acting tendencies that you see from so many kids. Finn fidgets and he talked really fast, which wasn’t how Mike was written. But honestly, once we saw him, we knew it was so much more interesting than what we had written on the page.”
Only two actors were called in, but the second was more of a perfunctory meet. There was no doubt in the Duffers’ mind that Wolfhard was the one.
Hollywood is littered with cautionary tales of child actors whose natural development is stunted, leaving them unable to ride the physical and emotional chaos that follows. “At that time, my focus was on staying sort of as quote-unquote normal as I could be,” he says of his two worlds: rising Hollywood star and youngest of two boys in a traditional family. “I was never really a normal person — whatever normal is, whatever I thought that normal was. But I definitely was aware of how many child actors had it bad, how it ended up so bad.”
Religion was a big part of his childhood; he continued to attend a nearby Catholic school throughout the early seasons rather than go the homeschool route. Today, he describes himself as “pretty agnostic” but a fan of Pope Leo XIV, whom he dubs “a cool liberal-looking guy who actually cares about people.”
Richie Shazam for Variety
Like much of Gen Z, Wolfhard is political. But unlike peers such as Schnapp, who faced backlash over pro-Israel comments, he prefers to keep mostly low-key. “I am active in my personal life and try not to be in public, but I also know how that sounds in the sense of ‘Everyone has a platform’ and ‘I should be more …’” He struggles for the next word before trailing off.
He identifies two issues of particular importance: Ukraine and Indigenous land rights. (His attorney father advocates on behalf of the latter.) “I think the amount that the government gets away with, by just fucking over so many Indigenous groups …” he says, trailing off in his worked-up state. The fact that “they have to fight the government to try to get money from them for stolen land is just insane.”
As for the Ukraine-Russia conflict, he donates monthly to United24.
His quiet activism — like his 17 movies — might be a tactic for avoiding his inner Demogorgon. Wolfhard’s anxiety came acutely — and early. “Diagnosed, yeah,” he says. “Then I started seeing a therapist. It’s something that’s worked for me. I can either try to bury that stuff and just do project after project, not think about it, or be able to ask myself these questions.”
Said questions are not existential in nature: Why are we here? Why do we die? Instead, they involve how he is perceived, either in an intimate setting or on the global stage. “Death is so abstract to me, I just don’t even know how to start with that,” he says, pulling his baseball hat on and off repeatedly, as though that will make it fit properly over his nearly bald head, shaved recently while in character on a small indie film, “I think about saying the wrong thing, doing the wrong thing in social situations, doing the wrong thing in my career, disappointing people. ”
Fortunately for Wolfhard, the decision-makers were almost always pleased. One of his few career disappointments was losing out to Asher Angel for the role of the teen version of the titular superhero in DC’s “Shazam!” “I was disappointed, but I was never really bummed,” he says. “I don’t think I’m a very competitive person. Part of the reason why I started acting was because maybe it felt less competitive.”
After all, his peers weren’t the problem. It was the prospect of rejection. “It’s really hard not to take it personally because they’re literally not casting you because of you. The way to do it is to separate and compartmentalize. In the last few years, I’ve auditioned for stuff. I definitely don’t enjoy that part. I like proving myself, but it’s never fun to go through the process of ‘You’re too short’ or ‘You’re too this or that.’ Because then you’re just thinking about ‘Oh, what am I?’ And then that’s why actors get so in their head and crazy.”
Over the years, he drew inspiration from “Harry Potter”’s Daniel Radcliffe and teen actor-turned-Oscar nominee Jesse Eisenberg, two performers who pivoted to showbiz adulthood effortlessly and whom Wolfhard calls “heroes.” Eisenberg cast Wolfhard to star opposite Julianne Moore in his feature directing debut, 2022’s “When You Finish Saving the World.”
“I was just kind of astounded by this young man who was so talented and also very self-aware, ambitious but smartly ambitious,” Eisenberg says. “Finn is two things that you very rarely see together. One is this unbridled, limitless confidence about what he can achieve and what he can try. But the other side of him is this incredibly self-doubting, nervous person.”
It’s the riddle that even Wolfhard — and his therapist — can’t crack.
Seven months prior, I sat down with Wolfhard at the Sundance Film Festival, where his A24 movie “The Legend of Ochi” was making its world premiere . The movie was something of a departure for A24, the studio known for edgy fare like “Moonlight” and “Midsommar.” “Ochi” earnestly depicts a group of kids roaming through forests, trying to track down an elusive mythical species. In Park City for the first time, Wolfhard seemed more at ease than in Vancouver and ready to bask in the indie-film environs. He strode over to director Boots Riley. As he filled a glass with cucumber water from a mason jar pitcher, I asked if he and Riley talked about collaborating on a project. “No, just geeking out over films,” Wolfhard said.
Talk to any director who has worked with Wolfhard and the common refrain is he’s a genuine cinephile. In Vancouver, where he lives with his parents, he can access several repertory cinemas. Later this week, he will catch a showing of “Barry Lyndon,” Stanley Kubrick’s three-hour-plus historical drama. As for his favorite director, Wolfhard names Steven Soderbergh. “Not even based on his filmography, which is obviously incredible, but just the way that he does things,” he says. “He’s so pro, just making stuff and not being precious about it and just putting it out. He’s not obsessing over one project over the other. He’s a doer.”
Richie Shazam for Variety
For the next month, Wolfhard has zero commitments and can catch up on old films before jumping into a remake of the 1999 cult horror film “Idle Hands.” He is producing it alongside Reitman but will not star or direct. Still, this summer marks the first time since he started “Stranger Things” that he doesn’t have another acting project lined up. On a personal note, he won’t be spending this sliver of downtime with a significant other. As he explains his current relationship status, Wolfhard suddenly struggles to articulate a complete sentence.
“I’m single and like … I feel like that’s something that I’m also kind of thinking about right now is just like … This is the time kind of where I have been doing the most work kind of in my life. So I feel like it’s been kind of … Maybe it’s been subconsciously — what’s the word? — deliberate? — to not have a committed partner,” he says, his pace quickening even as his thoughts do not cohere. “Just because I’m 22, I don’t really want to put my … Also considering how … At the rate that I’m traveling all the time and working and stuff, I just feel like it’s not the time to do that.”
Instead, Wolfhard is trying to hold on to the last gasp of “Stranger Things,” which will soon become a memory. He tells me that a group of 11 cast members considered a group tattoo. Sink proposed a flashlight. Others voted in favor of a simple “7-15-2016” to mark the date that the series first aired. Wolfhard liked the idea of a tiger, in a nod to the Hawkins school mascot. “No one could agree what to get because everyone had different storylines, and the show meant different things to different people,” he says with a hint of sadness. “Honestly, I think moving forward, we might still do it.”
Leading up to TV’s most-anticipated finale since “Game of Thrones,” Wolfhard is thinking about an alteration that is less permanent than a tattoo. He just wants his hair to grow back before press duties call; he’s longing for those thick waves that make him instantly recognizable.
“It was my ‘V for Vendetta’ moment — and just as powerful,” he says with a laugh, invoking Natalie Portman grabbing the electric razor and going to town on her scalp. “My fan base is predominantly girls that are younger teenagers to my age, and it became this collective ‘No!’ I really did not expect for people to care as much. But hair grows back, apparently.”
With that, Wolfhard becomes more contemplative, processing what has passed and what comes next. As the competing thoughts fight for control in his head, he arrives at a Zen moment. “The way for me to sort of advance in my life and my career is not to try to replace the show. It’s to try to really embrace it,” he says. “Because to fight it would be the wrong thing to do, because then you’re forgetting where everything started.”
Styling: Alex Badia; Senior Fashion Market editor; Emily Mercer; Senior Market editor, accessories: Thomas Waller; Fashion assistants: Ari Stark and Kimberly Infante; Grooming: Ruth Fernandez; Look 1 (gas pump): Full look: Saint Laurent; Look 2 (deer and holding tie): Shirt: Wooyoungmi; Pants: Denzil Patrick; Tie: Brooks Brothers; Boots: Acne Studios; Rings: David Yurman and Lagos; Look 3 (robot): Trench: Lanvin; Sweater: Dolce & Gabbana; Pants: Willy Chavarria; Gloves: 032c; Boots: Bally
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