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Finn Wolfhard doesn’t like to look back at the past with regret — but there is one thing he would potentially do differently, if he could, when his life changed overnight.
The actor, 22, began his career in Hollywood with small roles in episodes of The 100 in 2014 and Supernatural in 2015. But, a year later, Wolfhard became an overnight success at age 13, when Netflix released the first season of Stranger Things in 2016.
Now, looking back at how his life changed in an instant, Wolfhard tells PEOPLE in an exclusive interview, “I don’t think I’d ever go back and do something over, but maybe I would go back to when the show first came out and blew up, and I would directly put myself into therapy.”
“But it was so crazy and overnight, that there was not really any time to think about that,” he adds.
Still, Wolfhard admits that making mistakes, and learning from them, is all a part of what makes us human. “I would end up probably making a mistake in a different way anyways,” he says. “I think childhood, and life in general, is about trial and error.”
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Stranger Things, which is gearing up to release its fifth and final season sometime this year, follows a group of friends as they deal with supernatural forces and secret government plots in their small Indiana town in the 1980s.
Alongside Wolfhard, who portrays the character Mike Wheeler, the series also stars Millie Bobby Brown, Noah Schnapp, Caleb McLaughlin, Gaten Matarazzo and Sadie Sink, plus Joe Keery, Maya Hawke, Natalia Dyer, Charlie Heaton, Jamie Campbell Bower, Brett Gelman, David Harbour and Winona Ryder.
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Though Netflix has yet to reveal the official plot for season 5, it will likely follow the Hawkins kids as they try to defeat the villainous Vecna (Bower) after the Upside Down has invaded their town.
The streaming network revealed in June 2023 that Linda Hamilton also joined the cast for the ending of the series, though her role has not been disclosed.
Wolfhard previously opened up about his “crazy whirlwind career” and the effect it had on his mental health in a 2023 interview with GQ.
Though he explained that he was able to manage it all at first, and “did not talk about anything” because “there was no time, or at least we didn’t feel [there was] at the time,” the actor said things took a turn a few years later, when he started having routine panic attacks.
“Everyone was like, ‘Look at him, he’s fine. He’s having the best time,’ ” Wolfhard — whose latest release, Hell of a Summer, is in theaters now, and upcoming release, The Legend of Ochi, will hit theaters on April 25 — continued.
He added, “But in reality, I was probably also developing, and things were happening in my brain, and anxieties were forming, and [there were] things that I didn’t realize that I had to bury because of how I had to feel at work.”
Season 5 of Stranger Things is expected to stream on Netflix sometime in 2025.
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