Gaten Matarazzo hopes ‘Stranger Things’ fans will debate Dustin in season 5

Dustin’s (Gaten Matarazzo) fans gather Stranger Things Season 5 doesn’t feel like the Dustin we know from season 1.

Gone is Hawkins’ ball of sunshine, replaced by a grumpy, angry young man who will write a bully’s locker rather than belt out “The Neverending Story” over the walkie-talkie. However, this change did not just happen. Instead, it comes from a clear source of Dustin’s trauma: witnessing the tragic death of Eddie (Joseph Quinn) at the end of Season 4.

Since then, Dustin has channeled his inner Eddie, growing his hair out, wearing rings full of hand rings, and rocking his Hellfire Club shirt no matter how much the bullies bully him. But while Dustin is paying tribute to Eddie, he’s been alienating some of his closest friends, especially Steve (Joe Keery).

“She’s trying to separate herself from the person she’s most afraid of losing,” Matarazzo told Mashable at the time It means a lot interview.

Dustin’s grief causes great tension between them Stranger Things Season 5.

Matarazzo knew that the rift between Dustin and Steve would tear them apart, as the two had been apart since Season 2. He also knew that it would be the same with Dustin’s emotions as a whole.

“I was hoping there would be a mixed feeling around it,” Matarazzo said. “I didn’t want it to seem like, ‘Oh, poor thing.’ Because that’s true, and I think a lot of people can clearly see that you’re going through a lot, and you’re a slave. And I think that, no matter how sad a person is, it doesn’t excuse your behavior from other people, especially those who are in your corner, the people who are there to support you.”

That tug-of-war between sympathy and frustration for Dustin carries over into much of Season 5, beginning with Dustin’s missed episode 1 crawl to the Upside Down after fighting his tormentors. His absence puts the job at risk and damages his relationships with his friends, many of whom he has lost since Season 1.

You go through a lot. He is also a jerk.

“Dustin is in a situation where there is – it seems bad to say – but there are probably bigger fish to fry than losing your friend,” Matarazzo said. “Everybody’s lost. It’s probably the first time I feel like I’m there for Dustin, because he’s someone close to him, and it happened in front of him.”

Matarazzo contrasts Dustin’s grief over Eddie and Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin) mourning Max (Sadie Sink) who has been in a coma for over a year.

“Obviously Lucas is going through something very similar to Dustin, but he also seems to be taking it in a less selfish way,” she said, pointing to Lucas’ progression in the Season 5 crawl and the friendship group as a whole.

The contrast in the grieving processes of the two characters on screen highlights that there is no one way to deal with loss. Grief isn’t the same, and Dustin’s journey comes with no shortage of chaos and tension. That’s especially true of her relationship with Steve, which reaches its lowest point in Season 5.

The relationship of Dustin and Steve’s conflict more this season changed the way Matarazzo and Keery approached the key scenes together, as a friendly couple, dynamic more fun as the scene of Dustin and Steve’s conflict partners.

“Sometimes we’d talk before we even started and especially early on, they’d yell, ‘do,’ and I’d be like, ‘Oh, I’m not focused at all,’ because I’m still playing with him,” Matarazzo said. “That was a different approach. And so we’d look at things and look at each other and be like, ‘Man, this is really sad,’ because we just want to have fun sometimes. That’s the natural drive there.”

That doesn’t mean there aren’t some happy moments for Dustin and Steve in Season 5. Matarazzo points to the scene in episode 4 where Steve drives his car through a crack into the Upside Down, with Dustin, Nancy (Natalia Dyer), and Jonathan (Charlie Heaton) waiting for their lives.

“[In that scene] there’s the usual joy of screaming and yelling and cursing each other, but screaming, and I think it’s one of those times when [Dustin’s] strangely, a little angry, when all is said and done and when everything else is going crazy around him, he doesn’t really have time to actively try to be mean. [Steve],” said Matarazzo.

Stranger Things Season 5, Episode 2 focuses on Dustin and Steve’s relationship.

Gaten Matarazzo and Joe Keery in “Stranger Things.”
Credit: Netflix

Dustin and Steve’s drama comes to a head in Season 5, Episode 2, when the pair investigate Hawkins Lab in the Upside Down. There, the two have an intimate conversation about Eddie’s death, their harsh words resulting in a physical altercation. In previous seasons, Matarazzo would have put a lot of pressure on himself all day leading up to that shot.

“But that day, I remember I felt normal until 20 minutes before we started shooting,” he recalled. “Sometimes I just wander around the corner and put on headphones, not really to create any emotions or anything like that, but just to clear the fog in my head and be in a neutral place, because then you can be open to find out what’s going on. There’s a lot of different takes. There’s where we cry before a fight, there’s a take when we’re neutral, even when we take a neutral position, even when we take a position. We just talk about these things and see how it fits naturally, and they take a lot from each other.”

However, another scene that Matarazzo put pressure on was Dustin and Steve’s reconciliation, which led to a hug so deep I felt it in my bones.

“I was always in awe of you,” Matarazzo said. “I remember the whole season, reading it at the table read, and I was like, ‘Oh great, it’s one of those.’

Much of Season 5 was shot chronologically, so Matarazzo and Keery arrived on the scene having already gone through a lot of emotional stuff. That makes the conversation very cathartic, like Stranger Things‘ The fan-favorite duo finally put all their feelings out in the open.

“I think one of the healthiest things you can do in grief is to let go when you feel the need to and go inside and feel all you can and tend to feel,” Matarazzo said.

The reconciliation scene is for T, Steve and especially Dustin to drop any facades and just let themselves open up about how important they are to each other. It is outstanding Stranger Things a moment in a season full of them, they made all the fun with the complicated twists and turns that Steve and Dustin took to get there.

For more of Mashable’s interview with Gaten Matarazzo, watch the full episode It means a lot episode on YouTube.

Volume 1 and 2 of Stranger Things Season 5 is now streaming on Netflix. The series premieres December 31 at 8 pm ET on Netflix and in theaters.