Sadie Sink’s Max had been in a coma since season four, leaving her red hair to grow long like a weed. However, in real life, Sink has been wearing her hair cropped short, making wigs a necessity for Max’s look. “I think that was my favorite hair from this season, just because she has beautiful hair and I’ve always downplayed it to make her look more plain than [Sadie] really is. It would look like a L’Orèal commercial if I didn’t tone it down,” Hindsgaul says. For this season, though, “I wanted it to be large, but I wanted to make sure that it was gritty enough to fit the show.”
A wig was applied behind Sink’s natural hairline so they could add length and texture—even if her hair had been long enough, it would have been hell on Sink’s natural hair to have teased it each day. Hindsgaul said Max required the most wigs (and therefore the highest hair budget) given that her hair had to be long and braided in some scenes and voluminous and frizzy in others.
In order to get the hair texture and color perfect, Hindsgaul always asks the actors to cut off a piece of their hair from their undermost layers so she can compare them to hair samples for wigs. “It’s a lot to ask—it has to be fairly thick,” she explains. “That way, we can see how curly it is, because [the actors’] hair keeps changing. They’re young people. They have a lot of hormones, so their curl patterns change constantly. It had to be a perfect color match.”
Karen Wheeler Takes Hair Cues from Nancy
STRANGER THINGS: SEASON 5. : Season 5. Cr. COURTESY OF NETFLIX © 2025Photo: Courtesy of Netflix
One way you can tell which trends have reached Hawkins, Indiana, is to watch Karen Wheeler’s evolution—she’s the tell of where the sleepy town is at culturally. In 1983, when the first season was set, her hair was dark and still had ‘70s layers. By season five, in 1987, her hair is bleached and permed, and she ends with a shorter cut that looks similar to her daughter Nancy’s [played by Natalia Dyer]. Typically, Nancy mimics her mother’s hair, but Hindsgaul says Karen, played by Cara Buono, took a note from her daughter instead for the time jump. As Hindsgaul recalls, “I sent this one photo to [Dyer] that I really liked of this woman with blonde, shorter hair, and she was like, ‘That’s it. This is where I think I’m going.’ Five minutes later, Cara sent me the same photo and said, ‘This is where I’m going.’”
