16. Natalia Dyer and Charlie Heaton, who play love interests Nancy and Jonathan, began dating in 2016, but have mostly kept their relationship private.
“That’s something important to me—with my family, with my friends, I really like to keep it for me,” Dyer told Refinery 29 in 2019, though she did admit, “It’s an interesting thing to work with somebody who you go home with. It’s always really fun.”
17. Believe it or not, two fan-favorite characters were not supposed to make it out of seaso one alive, including Joe Keery’s well-coiffed Steve Harrington, who was initially scripted to be the bad boyfriend before the actor was cast.
“We love Joe. We fell in love with him during the making of season one, which is why we ended up writing that arc for him where he’s helping to save the day with Jonathan [Charlie Heaton] and Nancy,” Ross told The Hollywood Reporter in 2017. “Steve was supposed to be this jocky douchebag, and Joe was so much more than that.”
18. Also slated to perish was Eleven. Yes, really.
“Eleven was going to sacrifice herself to save the day,” Ross said in the 2018 book Stranger Things: Worlds Turned Upside Down. “That was always the end game. But once we realized that the show was potentially going to go on longer than one season, we needed to leave it more up in the air, because deep down we knew the show just wouldn’t really work without Eleven. And at that point, we knew how special Millie was. If there was going to be more Stranger Things, Eleven had to come back.”