When fans obsess over the spectacle of Stranger Things, they’re focusing on monsters bursting through walls, a parallel dimension bleeding into the town of Hawkins, or a seemingly impossible “one-shot” battle sequence stacked with chaos.
For visual effects supervisor Betsy Paterson, those moments were achievements three years in the making. Bringing the Stranger Things monsters and magic alive in Season 5 took an intense mix of special effects, stunt work, pre and post production, and digital wizardry.
“This was the most challenging thing I could possibly do,” Paterson says.
From the start, Paterson knew her mission was amplification. Show creators Matt Duffer and Ross Duffer insisted that each season double the visual complexity of the previous one.
After the spectacle of Season 4, that mandate was daunting. Paterson took on the complex challenge by keeping hundreds of artists, technicians, and vendors aligned.
One of the first risky sequences of Stranger Things Season 5 was also one of the most subtle: creating a digitally de-aged version of Will Byers (Noah Schnapp).
“It was the thing I was most worried about,” Paterson explains. “We know what Will looked like at that age, so there was a lot of pressure.”
The team spent months in research and development before cameras even rolled, followed by another year of post-production work to perfect the effect.
Betsy Paterson on the Stranger Things Demodogs, Upside Down Expansion, and MAC-Z Battle
Paterson and her core team — including visual effects art director Michael Maher Jr. — reviewed between 200 and 500 shots per day during post-production.
“It’s not like we’re spending an hour on each shot,” she says. “But some of the harder ones definitely take that long.”
She worked alongside top-tier vendors, including Weta FX and Industrial Light & Magic, who split the season’s creature work.
The fan-favorite demodogs returned – but this time bigger, faster, and more expressive. “They got a glow-up,” Paterson says. “More muscular, a little bigger. The animators gave each one a personality, even if it goes by too fast to notice.”
Another favorite for Paterson was the Upside Down’s expansion into Hawkins. “Everybody thought it was so detailed and incredible — at the end, when the Upside Down explodes, that’s gorgeous,” she says. “The level of detail and the high school exploding. If you look closely, there’s a school bus that goes by.”
The season’s most technically complex moment — and Paterson’s proudest — is the sprawling MAC-Z Battle sequence, designed as a continuous shot that tracks intense action involving demogorgons, gunfire, flying debris, 75 soldiers, 15 child actors, and extensive visual effects.
The scene was created from eight pieces of footage, requiring months of planning, meticulous choreography and coordination across departments. “It’s not just visual effects,” Paterson says. “It’s stunts, special effects, lighting, choreography — everything.
“Then we stitch it all together. We do subtle speed-ups here and there. And then a lot of detail, CGI, animation and lighting work to really feel like they’re reacting to the real world,” Paterson adds.
Few shows invite the level of intense scrutiny that Stranger Things does. Fans look out for even the smallest continuity errors, details visible for just a frame or two. Fan discoveries led to immediate fixes by her team.
“They’ll find an undershirt peeking out for two frames,” she says. “It’s great that people are so invested.”
After more than 30 years in visual effects, Paterson calls Stranger Things one of the most fulfilling projects of her career.
“It’s the biggest combination of loving the work and being challenged,” she says. “It was important that we really do justice to how much Stranger Things has meant to everybody.”
Stranger Things is now streaming on Netflix. You can read more of our interviews with 2026 Emmy FYC contenders here.
Main image: Stranger Things. Netflix