- - Charlie Heaton Says Last Day on “Stranger Things” Set Will ‘Forever Live in My Memory’ (Exclusive)

Brian Anthony Hernandez, Alexandra SchonfeldJanuary 11, 2026 at 2:30 AM

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Cindy Ord/Getty; Courtesy of Netflix

Charlie Heaton on Jan. 8, 2026; Heaton as Jonathan Byers in the ‘Stranger Things’ series finale

Warning: This story contains spoilers for Stranger Things season 5.

Charlie Heaton recalled how he felt during the final day on the Stranger Things set, where he filmed his emotional last scene

“It’ll forever live in my memory,” he told PEOPLE while attending the season 4 premiere of his latest gig, HBO’s Industry

Industry season 4 premieres Jan. 11 on HBO and HBO Max

Charlie Heaton is “sad to say goodbye” to his Stranger Things family.

Speaking with PEOPLE in an exclusive interview at the season 4 premiere of his latest TV gig — HBO’s Industry — on Jan. 8, the 31-year-old actor recalled his last day on the set of the Netflix phenomenon.

“It’ll forever live in my memory,” Heaton said of filming season 5 scenes for the emotional series finale. “Just like gratitude for the people that I was working with. Love, not gratitude. It’s really rare.”

Eighteen months after the last group battle with Vecna in the Abyss in the series finale, Jonathan (Heaton), Nancy (Natalia Dyer), Steve (Joe Keery) and Robin (Maya Hawke) reunite on a rooftop for a tearful catch-up.

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Heaton recalled to PEOPLE, “You’re always looking for the truth in a scene, and you’re always looking to have these relationships. And that last day on set, the things we were shooting, it was just real honesty.”

Heaton’s Jonathan moves to New York City to pursue filmmaking at NYU and to work on an anticapitalist cannibal movie. Steve stays in Hawkins to become a Little League coach, Nancy drops out of Emerson College to take a job at The Herald in Boston, and Robin attends Smith College.

At the end, the foursome promises to keep in touch and cheers each other.

“I’m sad to say goodbye. It was a really special experience,” Heaton said.

Charlie Heaton as Jonathan Byers in the ‘Stranger Things’ series finale

In an interview on Netflix’s Tudum site, show creators Matt and Ross Duffer elaborated on the ending for Heaton’s character.

“We set up that he’s been wanting to go to NYU for a very long time. That’s all the way back to season 1. So it made us happy to see him finally realize his dream,” Ross explained.

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Cindy Ord/Getty

Charlie Heaton (far left) and the cast of ‘Industry’ season 4 on Jan. 8, 2026

Matt added, “The teens had called us the day before we were gonna shoot that scene. I think Charlie, in particular, wanted some more specifics about what he was doing at NYU, so we all worked together to cook up this movie idea.”

“Even on that day, we kept elaborating on what this movie is. The movie we made at film school in college was not an anticapitalist movie, but it was a cannibal movie about a shape-shifting cannibal, so that was the idea behind that,” Matt said of what inspired the premise of Jonathan’s film project in Stranger Things.

Stranger Things is available to stream on Netflix. Fans can next see Heaton in Industry season 4, which premieres Jan. 11 on HBO/HBO Max.

on People

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Source: “AOL Entertainment”