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Where was ‘Stranger Things’ filmed? Behind the scenes of all 5 seasons
This lovable retro-Eighties sci-fi show, Stranger Things, has grown into a true phenomenon since its debut in 2016, but now it’s time for us to say goodbye. Arriving as a quirky little throwback to Spielberg and all things pre-tech, it’s created a host of new stars, made an icon of Winona Ryder for the second time and even turned an old Kate Bush track into a monster global hit, all while managing to rescue Middle America and the world from the invasion of an alternate-dimension evil.
We have much to be thankful for already, and we haven’t even seen the no-holds-barred Season 5, released in three deliveries on 26 November, Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve. The trailer promises nothing less than a Final Battle between good and evil, with the gang we’ve come to know and love back together and back home after a previous season that saw them battling on several fronts.
Although the new season adds in a genuine ’80s star, The Terminator’s Linda Hamilton, it’s really a return to the show’s beginnings, and that includes the setting. After some recent travels, we’re back with old friends in the little town of Hawkins, revisiting some familiar haunts while also discovering new parts of the neighbourhood we’ve all come to know so well.
Here, we dig into the questions you’ll be asking when you watch, and run through all the major locations from each season, ready for our final visit.
Is Hawkins from Stranger Things a real place?
No, Hawkins was invented by series creators the Duffer Brothers as a classic all-American small-town backdrop, in the style of every Steven Spielberg or Joe Dante movie from the ’80s. In reality, it’s filmed in a series of small towns skirting Atlanta, Georgia – the state that became one of the most popular locations around the time Stranger Things began nine years ago, home to everything from The Walking Dead and Ozark up to recent hits such as horror breakout Weapons, Marvel’s Thunderbolts, The Naked Gun remake and TV comedy Chad Powers.
The notional heart of Hawkins is Jackson, a town south-east of Atlanta that gave the production a readymade, unreconstructed classic America. This provides Melvald’s General Store (really the former Jackson Drug on 2nd Street), where Joyce (Winona Ryder) works at the start of the show, the Public Library (in fact Butts County Probate Court on 3rd Street) and the local cinema, the Hawk Theater (really another empty lot on Oak Street).
