They said it was impossible — until the final seconds proved everyone wrong. For years, one rule defined Stranger Things: Prince was untouchable. Too protected. Too legendary. Never happening. And then the finale did the unthinkable — two Prince songs. One ending. No coincidence. What viewers don’t know: this moment nearly died a dozen times. Late-night emails. Years of rejection. A last-chance creative gamble that could have shattered the show’s legacy — or elevate it forever. The Duffer Brothers didn’t just clear music. They took a risk Prince himself was famous for refusing. Why these songs? Why now? And why did the estate finally say yes? Once you know the truth, the ending hits differently — and most TV finales will never feel the same again.
If Mike Wheeler (Finn Wolfhard) had his way, the Upside Down would have blown up to the punk beat of the Butthole Surfers. But the wormhole’s collapse in the Stranger Things series finale required something more grandiose. That’s why series creators Matt and Ross Duffer, who also wrote and directed Episode 8, turned to Prince and the Revolution’s iconic 1984 album, Purple Rain.
“Once we came up with the idea that the record was going to be the trigger for the bomb, we knew we needed an epic needle drop, and so many ideas were thrown around,” Ross Duffer tells Tudum. “I think there’s nothing really more epic than Prince.”
The Duffer Brothers looked for albums that started with a celebratory song and ended with a weighty track that had emotional gravitas. Luckily, Ross Duffer notes, “Prince lined up perfectly for us.”
When Hopper (David Harbour) and Murray (Brett Gelman) set off the bomb’s remote trigger in Episode 8, the gang escapes the interdimensional bridge to the upbeat sounds of “When Doves Cry.” Later, as the mood turns somber, the song shifts to “Purple Rain” — Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) appears at the MAC-Z gate, seemingly still in the Upside Down as it falls apart. (The Duffer Brothers have left it up to viewers to determine what really happens to Eleven.)
The Duffer Brothers had “never talked about a song choice as much as we did for that moment,” Ross Duffer explains. “What is also very exciting about it is it just has not been used. [Prince’s] estate does not generally allow that song to be licensed outside the Purple Rain movie.” The song choice was also thrilling “because I think it summed up the emotion of the moment.”
“And then, thanks to Kate Bush, we were able to acquire the rights,” Matt Duffer notes. Bush’s 1985 classic “Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God)” saw a huge resurgence in popularity — it shot up to No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 in July 2022 — after it was used in the fourth season of Stranger Things.
When the Stranger Things creators said they wanted to feature the two Prince songs in the finale, “we were told that it was a real long shot, so we just crossed our fingers,” Matt Duffer says. “Thank God they agreed.”
See how both songs play out in the Stranger Things series finale, which is streaming on Netflix. Plus, get the full rundown of every song in every season of Stranger Things
