Season two of Stranger Things ends with (spoiler!) what might be the purest scene in all of pop-culture: The gang attending the Snow Ball together. They’re ostensibly there to have fun, but the kids treat the occasion with the gravitas of a life-or-death situation. Weeks earlier, these adolescents were fighting off a pack of demon monster dogs—but here they’re just as stressed, if not more so, about all the hallmarks of a school dance: first crushes, first dances, first kisses, first heartbreak. It’s so human to watch it hurts.

The plan was always to end the season this way. “Literally, from the beginning, from the very first moment talking about season two, we knew this had to end at the Snow Ball,” executive producer Shawn Levy told us at the Stranger Things premiere in Los Angeles. “We kept our mouth shut for over a year, but this was destiny. This is about all these characters coming together, and we were careful not to do things just because audiences wanted it. But you can’t deny the world Eleven and Mike at the Snow Ball! I don’t know that it gets better than that.”

No, it really doesn’t—especially because the dance allows for two important kisses to take place: one between Max (Sadie Sink) and Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin) and one between Mike (Finn Wolfhard) and Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown). It’s a telling moment about where these characters are at heading into season three: The feelings between Max and Lucas may be newer, but their rapport is more comfortable than the more reserved (but still so, so passionate) affections between Mike and Eleven. “Neither kiss was firmly scripted,” Shawn explained. “But we really agonized over, ‘Does one kiss take away from the other kiss?’ And yet, Caleb and Sadie are so winning, so charming. It kind of finishes that storyline. Mike and Eleven, though, that’s almost the beginning of something. It’s a reunion, but it’s also a bit of a promise. Maybe there’s some of the answer as to what’s in season three in that kiss.”

Sadie agrees the relationship between Max and Lucas might end there. “If we’re being realistic here, what eighth grade relationship lasts longer than a few months?” she said. “Even that’s long! At my school, people date for two weeks and are like, ‘It’s not working out.’ But it’s cute, so maybe they’ll explore that.” Millie, meanwhile, thinks that Eleven’s hesitation comes from her being so laser focused: “I think it was her objective! She has a method!”

But regardless of how the characters were feeling, their IRL counterparts weren’t quite as invested. “The kids were mortified shooting those kisses,” Shawn joked. “Mortified! We had to do it a lot of times because the steady cam was going around and around. If the camera was in the wrong place, you wouldn’t see the kiss.”

But this wasn’t the first time Millie and Finn have kissed on screen—they had a moment in the finale of season one, too—so they’re basically pros at this point. “Finn is the only boy I’ve ever kissed,” Millie shared. “It’s easy to kiss him now! [Laughs] I know that sounds really weird, but it’s easy to kiss him!”

So easy, in fact, that Caleb sought some advice from Finn before the big scene. “He’s the master at it!” he explained. “He was like, ‘Just like that…[makes a smacking sound]. The kiss wasn’t that bad. It was cool, but it wasn’t like, ‘Oh my gosh, I loved it.’” It was, though, a big milestone for him: “It was my first kiss! I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m kissing Sadie. She’s my friend! Whoa! So I was like, ‘I’m just gonna kiss.’ But she came in for the kiss, so it wasn’t me making the first move.”

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