Then they surrounded Holly with friends of her own, who were given their own character arc.
“Derek started out as kind of a generic bully character, but then we found this kid, Jake Connelly, who we felt was very special. He was just so charming and hilarious that we started to gradually increase the size of his role throughout the season,” said Duffer.
“So, not unlike Steve Harrington, Derek started out as a stereotypical bully, but grew into something much more compelling, all thanks to Jake.”
Pointing to what he believed was a big reason for the show’s continued success, Keery added that the creators – Matt Duffer and Ross Duffer, professionally known as the Duffer Brothers – had taken a genre that was “known for one thing”, as well as “certain types of character tropes and arcs”, and turned it on its head.
“I know for my own character (Steve), they did that, and I think that’s why it resonated with people,” he told CNA Lifestyle over Zoom.
“It’s a show about both feeling like outcasts or excluded, and all sorts of different people feeling that way – and how through that, you can come together.”
3. Stranger Things makes deeply relatable characters
It seems that no matter where or when someone is introduced to Stranger Things, there is usually one character that they instantly resonate with.
For actress Sadie Sink, the more people she meets who are fans of the show, the more she realises that “they always have a certain character who represents them when they were a kid or who they are now”, she said in Netflix’s press notes.
“There’s always someone who resonates with them, and I think that’s what people always look for in a TV show.”
Sink plays Max Mayfield – a character introduced in Season 2 who navigates her own grief and trauma after the death of her stepbrother and a bully in the show Billy Hargrove, played by actor Dacre Montgomery.
