David Harbour didn't think Stranger Things would get a second season, let alone four

It’s safe to say that David Harbour didn’t always expect Stranger Things would one day single-handedly catapult a certain art-pop angel back atop the charts, be Netflix’s most-watched English language series ever, and have a Spotify feature in its name. In fact, Harbour shares on BBC’s “The One Show” that when he was filming the show’s first season back in late 2015, he didn’t even think the show would be picked up for renewal.

“I remember when we were shooting the first season. We were down in Atlanta, Netflix had given us a budget of about $20,” the actor says. “Halfway through I remember my hair person coming up to me, like about episode four we were shooting, and she was like, ‘I don’t think it’s gonna work.’”

Whether it was the measly budget, the Atlanta heat, his hairstylist’s doubt in the project or a combination of all three, Harbour reveals at that point he figured Stranger Things would be dead on arrival.

“By the time we finished, we wrapped, I thought we wouldn’t get a second season, we’d be the first Netflix show kind of ever to never get a second season,” Harbour recalls. “We thought no one would watch it, it was going to be a disaster.”

As is apparent now, Harbour couldn’t have been more wrong. Not only is Stranger Things gearing up for a fifth and final season, but an entire Stranger Things universe helmed by the Duffer Brothers is currently in the works at Netflix. Under their new Upside Down production banner, the duo is working on a series spin-off, a stage play, and even an adaptation of Stephen King’s novel The Talisman, another fantastical coming-of-age tale about scrappy kids in an alternate universe.

Although there’s still not much known about the series’ fifth season (after all, the fourth is still hot off the press), so far it seems we can safely expect shorter episodes, a Return Of The King-style finale, and of course, [tentacles roiling wetly].