‘Stranger Things’ Actress Says Final Season Could Have Secured Her Health Insurance Amid Cancer Treatment

Stranger Things actress Jennifer Marshall has questions surrounding her absence from the fifth and final season of the Netflix hit.

Marshall, who played Max’s mom Susan, took to Instagram on Tuesday with a video touching on where her character was in Season 5 and explaining that if she had been included in the final season, she would have been able to secure her union health insurance amid her battle with cancer.

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“I had cancer, I get it. But I was in remission during the shooting of season five. Shooting would have helped me obtain my health insurance through the union,” Marshall wrote in the caption on Instagram. “Maybe they had too many characters, idk but obv Susan Hargrove is THE WORST MOTHER EVER LMAO.” She then tagged the video, “#cancersucks #butwhy.”

Marshall announced her cancer diagnosis in 2022, sharing in a Facebook post at the time that a stage 1 melanoma on her foot had become stage 3 cancer after spreading to her lymph nodes.

“During all this, I was in the middle of shooting season four of Stranger Things,” she wrote. “When I showed up to shoot, a few people subtly commented about how much weight I had lost, not realizing the reason why. Someone pulled me aside jokingly and asked if I was ‘method,’ given my character’s descent into cigarettes and alcohol abuse. … Once I revealed why I was so thin, people were so understanding and supportive and went out of their way to help anyway they could.”

“I confided in certain people on set, including Sadie [Sink], who plays my daughter, Max. Her kindness and compassion overwhelmed me and I’m forever thankful for those moments we shared behind the scenes,” she wrote. “She’s an incredible talent, but more importantly, a caring and kind human being.”

Marshall, who is in remission from cancer, previously spoke out about her exclusion from the season, writing on Instagram on Jan. 1, “Okay folks! It’s over…but where was she? What kind of mother isn’t there for her child while she’s in the hospital? Give me all your theories…”

Sink also addressed Susan’s absence to Vulture, noting, “It’s kind of common for the parents on the show: You just don’t know where they are except for Karen Wheeler [Cara Buono]. My theory is that Max’s mom must have disappeared or died at some point in the rift at the end of Season 4, because it goes through the trailer park.”