December 22, 2025
Provided Image/Netflix
Actress Cara Buono plays Karen Wheeler in Netflix's sci-fi hit 'Stranger Things,' whose fifth and final season will come to end this month. Buono says watching the show's young cast grow up helped her as a mom. Above, a production photo from Season 5.
As Netflix enters the stretch run of the Duffer Brothers' sci-fi epic "Stranger Things," the next batch of episodes in Season 5 will hit the streaming platform on Christmas Day. The finale, a two-hour feature set to screen in more than 500 movie theaters on New Year's Eve, will close the curtains on a cultural phenomenon that has spanned nearly a decade.
For a show that memorializes suburban life in the 1980s, reprising its touchstones in fashion and music, actress Cara Buono has been the embodiment of the era's highs and lows playing stay-at-home mom Karen Wheeler. She cooks all the meals, guzzles white wine, feathers and bleaches her hair, and tames her inner cougar to stay faithful in an unfulfilling marriage. (To be fair, actor Joe Chrest, who plays husband Ted Wheeler, is a pretty svelte guy in real life).
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For most of the series, Karen's comic relief comes from being utterly oblivious to the supernatural havoc unleashed on Hawkins, Indiana. Her kids and their friends go in and out of the Upside Down, often plotting their death-defying tactics from her basement, as Mrs. Wheeler carries on a dutifully mundane life.
"Karen has spent seasons being underestimated by the audience and other characters, maybe even sometimes her own kids," Buono, 54, said ahead of the Christmas release of three new episodes. "But I think of her as the backbone in the way we see a lot of homemaker moms. Everyone else in the show has these big arcs like power, monsters and trauma. Karen's is more subtle, more grounding."
Karen finally gets her breakout in the second episode of Season 5, when a prowling Demogorgon storms into the Wheeler home to kidnap her youngest daughter, Holly. Mom and daughter hide together underwater in a bathtub — a scene that required training to hold their breaths — but ultimately wind up face to face with the snarling beast in the family kitchen.
Then Karen's motherly instincts kick into overdrive. She smashes a wine bottle and slices at the monster, putting up a valiant fight before getting gashed by its claws. She survives, barely, but not before Holly is dragged into the Upside Down. The carefully choreographed scene was aided by digital enhancements to an actor in a bodysuit playing the Demogorgon, and it shook the show's cast and crew. Fans have told Buono they were moved by her performance.
"A lot of people were very emotional about it," said Buono, who was in King of Prussia this month to visit the new Netflix House. "It wasn't just this badass, hero moment for Karen. A lot of parents said to me, 'It made me cry. It brought me to tears to feel that depth that you feel for a child.' It's about ordinary people being put into extraordinary circumstances in Hawkins."
Buono has had a ranging career, first appearing on the big screen in 1992's "Gladiator" and breaking out with TV roles on "Law & Order" and "Mad Men," which earned her an Emmy nomination for playing Faye Miller. Since joining the "Stranger Things" cast, she's appeared in films including "Monsters and Men" and "She Came from the Woods," and she has another role as a mom in Hulu's crime drama "The Girl from Plainville."
Buono writes out timelines for each of her characters to put herself in their historical and cultural contexts.
"I love the humor of the clueless '80s mom, but I did want to justify it for myself," she said of playing Karen Wheeler. "She's an alcoholic. It makes it more believable that she doesn't know what's going on, and to have that be the weapon she uses to fight the Demogorgon was very satisfying."
The backdrop of the '80s is an important subtext for the Wheeler household. A "Reagan-Bush 1984" sign sits outside the home in one episode, and some fans have speculated Nancy Wheeler's name might be the Duffer Brothers' nod to first lady Nancy Reagan, signifying the family's social class in a conservative Midwest town. That year, Democrat Walter Mondale's running mate, Geraldine Ferraro, became the first woman to appear on a presidential ticket.
"That was a major thing back then. The election was not close at all. It was crushing," Buono said. "But I think it's interesting that Nancy is so strong and she encounters all kinds of obstacles with men. None of that is talked about, but it's just there."
Karen Wheeler (Cara Buono) is shown above with husband Ted Wheeler (Joe Chrest) in a production photo from the set of 'Stranger Things.'
Buono feels life on the set of "Stranger Things" helped prepare her for motherhood. She was at the first rock show for one of actor Finn Wolfhard's bands, the Aubreys, and views supporting him as an extension of being Mike Wheeler's mom on the show.
"My daughter was 2 when I got the role," Buono said. "She was my dream come true, to be a mom. I always wanted a big family, and it wasn't meant to be. I really felt like I got this show with a cast of kids, and it lasted a long time, so I got to grow with them. To me, it will always be a show that brought me this family."
In addition to Netflix streaming the "Stranger Things" finale, the company is partnering with movie theaters to screen it on both New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. Netflix has a site where fans can look up the screening locations, which include AMC's theaters in Neshaminy and Cherry Hill and Regal's Warrington Crossing multiplex. Participating theaters are selling concession vouchers starting at $11 — an apparent nod to the show's character Eleven — that serve as tickets for the screenings. A Netflix House spokesperson said the theater at the venue in King of Prussia has already sold out tickets to its Jan. 1 screening.
"Do it," Buono recommends. "The Duffers love movies. It plays like a movie, and the sound and everything — you won't regret it. And then you can rewatch it at home."
