The Upside Down is coming for you. With less than a week until the highly anticipated return of Stranger Things, “Seven Stranger Days” takes you behind the scenes and inside the lives of your Hawkins favorites with insight from the cast, the crew and even the Duffer brothers. Check back daily to secure your spot in the Hellfire Club — this is one ticking clock you won’t want to run from.

Besides the occasional Eggo, the Hawkins teens have a lot on their plates, like saving each other from evil forces, mercilessly fighting Demogorgons and protecting their bestie from diabolical scientists who’d prefer to use her as a lab rat. You know, normal teen stuff. But, like any other high school students, they’ve also got to try to look cool. That’s where Stranger Things hairstylist Sarah Hindsgaul comes in. 

Hair department head Hindsgaul has been working on the series for eight years. Collaborating with the Duffer brothers and the actors, she and her team created the memorable hairstyles you know and love in the first three seasons, including Eleven’s (Millie Bobby Brown) buzz cut, Will’s (Noah Schnapp) bowl cut, Steve’s (Joe Keery) glam-rock mane, Dustin’s (Gaten Matarazzo) curls, and Nancy’s (Natalia Dyer) gravity-defying volume. 

Sarah Hindsgaul teases Eleven’s tresses.

Courtesy of Sarah Hindsgaul/Netflix

Hawkins’ telekinetic superhero has been through it all — and so has her hair.

Ursula Coyote/Netflix

Back behind the salon chair for Season 4, Hindsgaul not only iterated on the OG characters’ looks as they made their way through the hairiest (heh) parts yet of their supernaturally spiked adolescence but also styled a whole new crop of California characters. When you consider exactly how many on-trend ’80s-teen looks Hindsgaul and her team have to create each season, the resulting looks are pretty mind-blowing. Or should we say mind-flaying?

In conversation with Tudum, Hindsgaul lays out what it takes to create Stranger Things hairstyles, her approach to creating retro looks, which new character’s coif was inspired by an actual ’80s icon and her favorite Stranger Things hair moment of all time. 

READ MORE: We Recap ‘Stranger Things’ Seasons 1–3 in a Handy A to Z

Our idea of ’80s hair relies so heavily on certain stereotypes. How do you create hair that’s authentic but not cliché? It is stereotypical, to a certain degree, because the haircuts of the ’80s were the haircuts of the ’80s. I’ve been living in the ’80s for almost eight years. [laughs] It’s not about me showing off as many hairdos from the ’80s as possible, though. You want Steve to be Steve. And if he gets a haircut, it’s a haircut that Steve would get. It has to make sense for them as people.

From bowl cuts to bangs, the ‘80s provide plenty to work with.

Courtesy of Sarah Hindsgaul/Netflix

Mrs. Wheeler (Cara Buono) could still be Nancy’s older sister in Season 4. 

Courtesy of Sarah Hindsgaul/Netflix

When did you get the idea for what each character’s hairstyle was going to look like?  I have my own ideas of a character after reading [the script]. I’ll start talking with my actors about it to see where they’re coming from. Sometimes they might be in a different place, or they might have something to add. And the same with the Duffer brothers. I’m like, “Does this feel organic to you guys?” I fall back on them to make sure that my intuition is right.

Here’s something I realized recently: If you close your eyes and imagine each character as floating hair, with no face or anything, you can still instantly recognize each character based on the hair.  We got lucky... building [the hairstyles] from Season 1, letting it grow [with the characters]. The hair has been getting bigger, but it’s been organic. It progresses so slowly, you get used to looking at it. And I do think hair should move and have a life of its own, even if, sometimes, it means continuity isn’t perfect. 

The Demogorgon is no match for Steve Harrington’s hair.

These kids go through a lot — anything from going to high school to fighting monsters from an alternate dimension. How do you create the looks that get them through anything? Matt and Ross [Duffer] really like when the hair has a big breakdown through the show. We start very clean, and then we just pull them apart as we go towards the end. So, they look really badass with stringy, dirty, fighting, fighter hair. We design all of it in the beginning of the show, and I decide every single look [ahead of time]. Millie might have four or five looks through a season. That’s where we start [at the beginning of the season], then [she has] a breakdown where it’s getting a little bit more messy, then another breakdown and we get to an end result. [This season,] we had to just wig most people, so we could switch the wigs up. There was no time to like shampoo and clean, or keep people up between these different breakdowns. So, we would just pop one wig off and put the next one on. Everybody would have about three to four wigs that would be changed as we were shooting.

Coiffed and ready for camera.

Courtesy of Sarah Hindsgaul/Netflix

Don’t let the fluffy perm fool you, Nancy braves some hair-raising scenarios in Season 4.

One major hair moment I noticed from Season 4: Nancy’s volume was next level. We wanted it to be more frizzy like a real perm, not like a pretty television perm. We really wanted that fluffy ’80s perm. Basically, all Nancy’s wigs are just kind of burned to different levels. We burned those perms into the wigs, like it had been left on a little too long, just so we got that crispness, and then we just brushed it out. That’s how you get all that beautiful volume. It’s always a little bit dangerous when you have somebody that’s so petite to put big hair on them. [Natalia Dyer] sells it.

WATCH: ‘Stranger Things’ Season 4 Trailer

Speaking of volume, who inspired the hair for Vickie [Amybeth McNulty], one of the new characters? Molly Ringwald from Sixteen Candles, and the story behind it is so amazing. I sent Amybeth to wig fittings, sending the stylist all the images of colors I like, trying to figure out Molly Ringwald’s color. And then, one day, my wigmaker calls, and he’s like, “Oh, my god, guess who’s here for a wig fitting? Molly Ringwald.” He told her we were trying to make a wig [like her hair], and she actually gave us her real color. I think it was called Firefly Red or something like that. She was so excited about it, which I thought was just the sweetest thing ever. We sent photos back to her, and she’s like, “A little off here, but really good.” 

Steve Harris, is that you? Ah, no, it’s Hawkins new boy Eddie Munson (Quinn).

Tina Rowden/Netflix

Another great new character hair moment is Eddie, played by Joseph Quinn. What was the inspiration for him? We looked at a lot of heavy metal bands. It was quite a scary look. It’s so new — completely different than what we’d been doing before. We started a good bit shorter... but it became a little too Billy [Dacre Montgomery] feeling. And that’s not at all what we are going for. Matt and Ross were like, “Everything needs to be black.” But I was like, “I just don’t think it’s about the darkness." In the end, what he really needed was that frizzy and dusty [rocker look].

Was the look inspired by any actual metal gods? Yes — Iron Maiden and Venom. I liked Ozzy Osbourne, but I didn’t want [Eddie] to look like he had colored his hair. I don’t think he’s vain like that. Not because Osborne is vain, but I feel like [Eddie’s character] would have wanted that look, but he wouldn’t know how to get it right. It would have been him just cutting his own hair at home. That’s what I’m always trying to keep in mind — like, these are not rock stars. They wouldn’t nail a look perfectly.

The Californian crew sport some ​​tubular hairdos this season.

Plus, growing up in Hawkins, Indiana, is a lot different than growing up in California, where some of the new characters are from. How did you approach that differentiation?  We are talking the Midwest versus coastal US — and in the ’80s. Back then, there was definitely just a little bit of a delay [in finding out about trends] if you were not in the big city. So, in California, we have bigger, looser hair shags, and Hawkins would be sticking to the tighter perms, the shorter hairdos... they’re a little bit stuck. There’s still a little bit of that ’70s influence going on in Hawkins, whereas as soon as we go to California, you are just in the ’80s — full-blown.

Looking back (or ahead), do you have a hairstyle you’d consider your absolute favorite of all time?  Eleven’s buzzcut. I love her with short hair. I think it’s so kick-ass. I cried when they asked me to do a ponytail instead.