Stranger Things’ Hair Designer Reveals An "Eerie" Holly Easter Egg

The Stranger Things gang has been a little preoccupied with the Upside Down this season to make regular trips to the hair salon. The less-than-coiffed looks for each of the characters was a specific choice made by Stranger Things hair designer, Sarah Hindsgaul.

“One thing I really wanted to come across this season was a looseness and texture to everything,” the Emmy-nominated stylist tells Elite Daily. “The hair is a lot grittier this year. Even Karen Wheeler is not keeping up with her hair.” With Hawkins on lockdown, the suburban mother-of-three may have been slacking on her own ‘do, but she did make sure that her daughter Holly Wheeler (Nell Fisher) looked perfectly put together.

“As a mom, you always take care of your kids first. So even if you're going down with the boat and can't handle anything, you still try to get them to look correct for the rest of the world,” says Hindsgaul. “It's your armor, like everything is OK because look at Holly. She's good.” The only other character that has a clean look this season is Henry Creel (Jamie Campbell Bower) — and that’s no coincidence.

Holly & Henry Have A Hairy Connection

“It's kind of eerie, the way that they're both looking very clean, contrasting to everybody else,” says Hindsgaul “That gives me a feeling of, ‘What is going on here? Why are these two looking like they're in a different show?’”

The hair designer was hoping this styling choice came across to the audience, providing an early hint that Holly and Henry have a connection.

In Season 5, Episode 2, it’s revealed that Holly’s imaginary friend, Mr. Whatsit, is actually Henry (aka Vecna). After a Demogorgon kidnaps the youngest Wheeler, she’s taken to an idyllic version of the Creel house in Henry’s mind, which looks very different from the apocalyptic Upside Down that Will was forced to spend time in during Season 1. While Henry’s full plan for taking Holly hasn’t been revealed just yet, their hair was just one way production was leaving clues that these two were intertwined.

Hindsgaul even used different products to achieve these looks. “We have a little bit of hairspray, so stuff is a little more still in Henry. He is very groomed, where everybody else's hair has a lot of movement,” she says. The hair designer is more of a fan of hair mousse than spray, because it looks more realistic on screen. However, she grabbed the hairspray for these two so that it looked more presentable and there weren’t as many flyaways in the early episodes.

Even The Wigs Are Getting Messier In Vol. 2

Since production took almost a year for Season 5, Hindsgaul used wigs for most of the cast to keep their looks consistent over the many months. Each character had about three wigs. “There is a clean wig, a medium messed up wig, and then a messy, messy wig,” she says. “We might have some really messy stuff coming up.”

If you thought everyone’s hair was already rough in Vol. 1, without giving away too much, Hindsgaul teases that their looks are about to get even grittier as the epic conclusion nears. The first half of Season 5 is streaming now on Netflix, and Vol. 2 plus the finale will drop on the streaming platform Dec. 25 and Dec. 31.