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 Stranger Things finale.)
“Once we came up with the idea that the record was going to be the trigger for the bomb, we knew we needed an epic needle drop, and so many ideas were thrown around,” Ross Duffer told Netflix editorial site Tudum about the scene where Murray Bauman (Brett Gelman) rigs a record player to play side B of Purple Rain, which opens with “When Doves Cry,” in the lead-up to the most dramatic moment to date.
“I think there’s nothing really more epic than Prince,” Ross Duffer said of the siblings’ search for an album that started off with a celebratory song (“Let’s Go Crazy”) and then ended with one that had the appropriate dramatic gravitas (“Purple Rain”). “Prince lined up perfectly for us.”
“When Doves Cry” was the spot-on emotional pump-up in the run-up to the bomb’s remote triggering, when the gang takes off to escape the collapse of the interdimensional bridge, before the switch to the more emotionally churning Purple Rain title track as viewers are left to ponder Eleven’s (Millie Bonnie Bongiovi) fate. The only issue was the biggest issue: getting Prince’s music approved for TV is kind of impossible.
Ross said the brothers had never spent so much time talking about a musical cue for the show as they did for that sequence of events and what made their final choice even more alluring was that you pretty much never hear Prince’s music licensed for TV or movie soundtracks. “It just has not been used,” he said. “[Prince’s] estate does not generally allow that song to be licensed outside the Purple Rain movie.”
But for the Duffers, using “Purple Rain” was so exciting “because I think it summed up the emotion of the moment,” Ross Duffer said, with brother Matt noting that thanks to Kate Bush — whose “Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God)” got a massively unexpected chart glow-up in 2022 thanks to its vital placement in season four of the series — the pair were able to secure the Prince rights.
When the Duffers said they wanted to feature the two songs in the finale, Matt Duffer said, “we were told that it was a real long shot, so we just crossed our fingers… Thank God they agreed.” In addition to the Prince songs, the finale episode, “The Rightside Up,” also featured tracks from Fleetwood Mac (“Landslide”), the Pixies (“Here Comes Your Man”), Iron Maiden (“The Trooper”), Cowboy Junkies (“Sweet Jane” cover), Etta James (“At Last”), Queen (“Who Wants to Live Forever”) and David Bowie (“Heroes”).
