‘Stranger Things’ Star Says Cast Was ‘Worried’ Final Season Would Get ‘Torn to Shreds’ Like ‘Game of Thrones’

As Stranger Things fans prepare to return to the Upside Down for the final time, the cast of the Netflix smash hit hopes to give the show a proper ending.

Finn Wolfhard, who has played Mike Wheeler on Stranger Things since its debut in 2016, admitted to TIME that he was “pretty worried” the upcoming fifth and final season would be “torn to shreds” like Game of Thrones‘ series finale did in 2019.

“I think everyone was pretty worried, honestly,” Wolfhard told the outlet in a wide-ranging interview published Thursday. “The way that Game of Thrones got torn to shreds in that final season, we’re all walking into this going, ‘We hope to not have that kind of thing happen.’ But then we read the scripts. We knew that it was something special.”

Stranger Things co-creator Matt Duffer agreed that it was “a little scary” ramping up the series in terms of cost and ambition with every new iteration. “It puts pressure on every season because it has to perform better than the one prior to it in order to continue to justify growing the scale of the show,” Duffer said.

In Season 5 of Stranger Things, “Hawkins is scarred by the opening of the Rifts, and our heroes are united by a single goal: find and kill Vecna,” the official synopsis reads. “But he has vanished — his whereabouts and plans unknown.”

“Complicating their mission, the government has placed the town under military quarantine and intensified its hunt for Eleven, forcing her back into hiding,” the summary continues. “As the anniversary of Will’s disappearance approaches, so does a heavy, familiar dread. The final battle is looming — and with it, a darkness more powerful and more deadly than anything they’ve faced before. To end this nightmare, they’ll need everyone — the full party — standing together, one last time.”

Season 5: Volume 1 premieres on Nov. 26 on Netflix, followed by Volume 2 on Dec. 25 and the movie-length finale on New Year’s Eve. It was Netflix executives who suggested splitting the finale off into its own event, Netflix Chief Content Officer Bela Bajaria told TIME. “Everybody thought it was a good idea,” Bajaria explained, “for people to be caught up and have that shared experience of watching it together.”