Gaten Matarazzo admits ‘deep fear’ of work beyond Stranger Things

'It's been pretty great job security for a while!'

The next season of the hugely popular Netflix show, created by the Duffer brothers, will be the fifth and final installment, with filming set to get underway later this year.

Matarazzo, who plays Dustin, has grown up on the show, alongside his co-stars Millie Bobby Brown, Finn Wolfhard, Noah Schnapp and Caleb McLaughlin.

All five have starred in the show since the very first episode in 2016. During filming for the first season, the child stars were in the their early or mid teens, but by the time show comes to an end they will all be in their twenties.

Reflecting on this, Matarazzo told Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show: “It’s something that’s so important to all of us and has just been essential to the growth that I’ve had over all of my teenage years into my twenties.

“It’s the defining aspect of the past 10 years of my life, practically the past decade.”

But he admitted that he felt a "deep fear" about having to find other work once the show ends, joking that Stranger Things had been "pretty great job security" for him.

"There's an excitement there because you always want to wrap it up and see how these characters are finally going to develop one last time and how they're going to finish their journeys," the 20-year-old actor continued. "But also, there's like a deep fear of - not only has it been amazing, but it's been pretty great job security for a while!"

When asked about what he hopes the ending has in store for Dustin, Matarazzo said he trusted the show's creators.

He said: “I think it’s in the best hands it can be. Matt and Ross [Duffer] know these characters better than I think we might. And it’s really interesting because they trust us all very much to make our own decisions and go about the scenes the way we’ve always instinctually wanted to.

"I’ve never really given myself an opportunity to think of what they might want to do and now’s the best time to start.”

In February last year, the Duffer brothers confirmed the show would come to an end after five seasons. They shared that they had “planned out the complete story arc for Stranger Things” from the very beginning and “predicted the story would last four to five seasons.”

“It proved too large to tell in four but — as you’ll see for yourselves — we are now hurtling toward our finale,” they wrote in an open letter to fans.

There seems to be widespread agreement amongst the cast as well that the time has come to wrap up events in Hawkins.

David Harbour, who plays Jim Hopper, recently said it was "definitely" time to end the show after five series.

He told Discussing Film: “What’s funny is when I started the show, I never ever wanted it to end. That’s why I love the show. I think it’s a great show, even if I wasn’t in it.

“Now we’re almost nine years from filming the first season, and I think it is time for it to end."

Meanwhile, Millie Bobby Brown, who plays the role of Eleven, said in an interview with Seventeen magazine that she was "ready to wrap up."

“I feel like there’s a lot of the story that’s been told now, and we know of it, it’s been in our lives for a very long time," she said.

Whilst the script for the fifth and final season has already been written, Harbour revealed that filming won't get underway until June this year.

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