Jennifer Marshall, who portrayed Max’s (Sadie Sink) mom in Seasons 2 and 4, says being involved in Season 5 would have helped her financially with her cancer battle — and claims she filmed a scene that wasn’t used.
While many of the characters and storylines of Stranger Things were wrapped up by the series finale, one character was wholly absent, creating an odd and unexplained absence in the lives of one of its main characters.
On Tuesday, Jennifer Marshall took to her Instagram to talk about her absence from Season 5 after she’d appeared in two previous seasons. Her role? She portrayed the alcoholic mother of Sadie Sink’s Max, who spent much of the final season in a dreamscape while her real body was in a coma at the hospital.
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Writing about her character in the caption to her share, Marshall joked, “Susan Hargrove is THE WORST MOTHER EVER LMAO.” That’s in regards to the fact that fans never got to see Max’s mother by her side while she was recovering and in a coma at the hospital.
Marshall also explained how her being included would have done more than close an unusual character hole for the series. It would have helped her out personally. “I had cancer, I get it,” she said of the apparent decision to exclude her. “But I was in remission during the shooting of season five. Shooting would have helped me obtain my health insurance through the union. Maybe they had too many characters, idk.”
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The actress had previously opened up about her stage 3 cancer diagnosis in October 2022 via Facebook, as noted by Us Weekly, after what had originally been stage 1 cancer in her foot had spread to her lymph nodes. She explained in comments that she was battling cancer in Season 4, but was in remission by the time Season 5 was filming.
The video portion of Marshall’s post was a cheeky reaction to Susan’s absence. In it, she had a screen caption that read, “How often I think about where TF Max’s mom was during season five lmao.” To this she said to the camera, “Every day. Not all day, every day, but every day.”
The post was a follow-up to a previous post she’d shared shortly after the finale with a similar sentiment about Max’s absent mother. In this one, she shared a shot of Max in her hospital bed and asked fans to share their best theories as to where her character was.
“Okay folks! It’s over…but where was she?” Marshall wrote of Susan. “What kind of mother isn’t there for her child while she’s in the hospital?”
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There were theories given in the comments ranging from lazy writing to the fact that as her character was an alcoholic, it might have been in character for Susan to not step up for her daughter in this moment.
In the comments of her latest post, Marshall chimed in after one fan lamented their surprise that a hospital scene hadn’t been filmed with her and Sink together. To this, Marshall replied, “we shot one! I think the writers were afraid I’d die so they omitted it? Idk”
When another fan shared they were shocked it wasn’t included, Marshall clarified that she’d shot one scene at Max’s bedside during the filming of Season 4, so it wasn’t something new filmed for Season 5 and, as she put it, “it wasn’t a full fledged scene.”
Another fan lamented that Marshall didn’t even appear in the graduation scene with all of the other parents, with the fan lamenting, “yet Ted ‘Do Nothing’ Wheeler was there. I was so mad!”
Marshall proved she was taking the whole thing in stride, commenting, “he’s so funny tho lol.”
Stranger Things is streaming in its entirety on Netflix.
