Stranger Things’ Original Pitch Didn’t Include The Show’s Best Duo

Astoundingly, one of the most celebrated character dynamics in “Stranger Things” was nowhere to be found in the Duffer Brothers’ original vision. 

As Matt Duffer said in a 2017 interview with Variety, “My favorite this year is the Dustin-and-Steve combination, which actually wasn’t in the initial pitch to Netflix. It was something that kind of evolved as we were writing the show and Steve was kind of getting sidelined. He had nothing really interesting to do. And Dustin found himself cornered with no one to go to, and that led to this Dustin and Steve team-up.”

Who could forget the pivotal Season 2 moment when erstwhile alpha jerk Steve Harrington (Joe Keery) fully turns face by sharing his forbidden secret to perfect hair with lovable goofball Dustin Henderson (Gaten Matarazzo)? As Matt Duffer put it, “When you have that much fun writing it and the actors have that much fun shooting it, I think all bets are off. I think that translated to the screen in a really special way.”

“Stranger Things” has a knack for pairing off characters — and some of those relationships came about as the Duffers became more familiar with their actors. In fact, the Dustin-and-Steve bromance isn’t the only touchstone of “Stranger Things” lore that wasn’t discussed in any Season 1 pitch meetings.

“At the end of Season 1, we were like, ‘We’ve gotta put Hopper and Eleven together,” Matt Duffer explained, referring to David Harbour and Millie Bobby Brown’s characters. “I thought that something interesting was going to happen if we put those two [in a storyline]. You start to get a feeling about actors who are going to work together. It’s almost like a chemistry experiment.”