Stranger Things Finale Spoilers Are So Real Even the Cast Isn’t Allowed to Watch It

The cast of Stranger Things won’t see the series finale before its release on New Year’s Day. They’ll have to wait, just like us.

Noah Schnapp, who plays Will Byers in the hit Netflix series, confirmed to EW that the final episode is being kept under wraps, saying that he’s watched episodes five and six, but that “the finale—they’re not gonna show any of us, so I won’t see it until the world sees it, and I’m just as excited as you guys are.”

Though many TV actors have a good understanding of the end of their own shows, the bigger the show, the more precious the spoilers. Seinfeld famously kept its ending under lock and key, to the point where script copies were destroyed immediately after a table read. Emilia Clarke, who played Daenerys Targaryen in Game of Thrones, said the cast of the HBO show had no idea how the series would end (which was probably for the best), and everyone got to have their turn shooting J.R. on the set of Dallas’ classic cliffhanger episode back in the ’80s – producers, makeup artists, continuity people – all to keep spoilers at bay.

The benefits of this kind of secrecy may be to preserve the emotional impact of the ending for everybody, including the cast. Just watching episodes five and six, Schnapp said he was “sobbing.” But there’s also a tradeoff because it limits the cast’s ability to prepare for press interviews. They can’t even take a good guess if they don’t know what went down in the edit suite.

The stakes are definitely high for Stranger Things in its final season, which is set over a year after the events of season 4. It starts with Eleven hiding from a U.S. government that wants to weaponize her, while the rest of the gang tries to track down the elusive villain Vecna amid a militarized occupation of Hawkins.

We don’t know much beyond that, but it’s clear that everyone hopes the popular sci-fi horror series sticks the landing, even its cast.