"I just wish things would have gone a different way"
By Max Pilley 8th January 2026
Jennifer Marshall on December 01, 2019 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Michael Tullberg/Getty Images)
Stranger Things actor Jennifer Marshall has said she was “surprised” not to be invited back for the fifth and final season of the show.
- READ MORE: ‘Stranger Things’ season five, volume one review: the big, bold beginning of the end
Marshall played Susan Hargrove, the mother of Sadie Sink’s Max Mayfield, in the second and fourth seasons of Netflix’s hit show, but Susan did not return for the last run of episodes, which concluded with a much-discussed finale on New Year’s Eve.
AdvertisementMarshall took to Instagram to share her disappointment about being overlooked for the season, adding that her inclusion might have helped with her health insurance, since she was diagnosed with cancer in 2022.
“I had cancer, I get it,” Marshall wrote. “But I was in remission during the shooting of Season 5. Shooting would have helped me obtain my health insurance through the union. Maybe they had too many characters, idk but obv Susan Hargrove is THE WORST MOTHER EVER LMAO.”
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Marshall later told Variety that her post was meant in jest. “I just made the reel as a funny thing and it blew up,” she explained. “I hold no ill will toward anyone and just wish things would have gone a different way. I was surprised to not be called back but cannot confirm why that decision was made. Regardless, I am grateful for the opportunity to be in the previous seasons.”
After the final episode aired on December 31, some fans were left disappointed that Millie Bobby Brown’s character Eleven’s fate remained ambiguous, with some plot points being left unanswered.
RecommendedOthers subscribed to the Conformity Gate theory, which speculated that the final episode was not the true ending, and that the characters of Hawkins had been held in an illusion by the evil Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower) and that they had not saved the world at all.
Fans pointed to “clues” in the final episode, such as a graduation scene where all the students have their hands crossed in a similar way to Vecna, and Dungeons & Dragons books on a shelf reading “X A LIE”, implying their dimension could not be trusted.
They believed a surprise final episode would depict the real showdown on January 7, but that day passed without a new ending.
The final episode made waves musically, too, with streams of Prince’s ‘Purple Rain’ and ‘When Doves Cry’ more than doubling on Spotify after their inclusion in the episode. Iron Maiden have since celebrated their track ‘The Trooper’ being included, while David Bowie’s ‘Heroes’ has also seen a huge streaming surge.