"Turn around" in Stranger Things: NeverEnding Story, Dustin and Suzie's duet

The scene: a duo while the world collapses

Under the Starcourt mall, Hopper, Joyce and Murray have to cut the Russian machine. They need a code: Planck's constant, a number nobody knows by heart. Dustin, posted on a hill with his Cerebro radio, calls the only person able to give it to him: Suzie, his summer-camp girlfriend, in Utah, whose existence nobody believed in.

Suzie agrees to look, on one condition: that Dustin sing "their" song. He refuses, she insists, and the duet starts, in two voices, by radio, while Hopper and Joyce wait, stunned, in front of the machine, and the flesh monster devastates the mall above them. The scene cuts between the absolute romance of the duet and the adults' panic, and it is that contrast that makes it unforgettable.

The NeverEnding Story: the song behind the “turn around”

The track is the theme of Wolfgang Petersen's film The NeverEnding Story, released in 1984, adapted from Michael Ende's novel. It is sung by Limahl, former singer of Kajagoogoo, and produced by Giorgio Moroder. The chorus, “Turn around, look at what you see, in her face, the mirror of your dreams,” is the one everyone remembers, hence the searches for “turn around.”

For children of 1985, the reference is perfect: the film had just come out, and it is about a boy who invents a world to escape his own. The Duffer Brothers, who build each season on films of the era, could not have found anything more right for Dustin.

Who is Suzie, and why nobody believed it

Dustin comes back from his summer 1985 science camp, Camp Know Where, announcing he has a girlfriend, Suzie, “prettier than Phoebe Cates,” who lives in Salt Lake City. His friends laugh, then forget. For episodes, the only proof of her existence is a radio that does not answer. The duo is therefore also a payback: at the moment Dustin needs her most, Suzie picks up, in front of Steve, Robin, and Erica who listen, stunned.

The character comes back in Season 4, this time on camera and at home, in a house full of brothers and sisters, where the California group shows up to ask her to hack a computer. There again, she negotiates. Suzie is the rarest character on the show: the one who wins every time.

The duet, a moment that became cult

The scene immediately made the rounds of social media at the Season 3 release, in July 2019, and Limahl's song climbed back into the streaming charts. It also became a recurring joke: when Suzie reappears in Season 4, Dustin and she no longer have time to sing, and fans noted it.

Suzie, for her part, has gone from imaginary girlfriend to on-call genius: in season 4, it is she who locates Project Nina from her computer.

Behind the scenes: how the scene was born

The Duffers wanted to introduce Suzie in a spectacular way and give Gaten Matarazzo, a singer trained on Broadway, the chance to show his voice. Their first choice was the Ent and his wife's song, from The Lord of the Rings; on learning a Tolkien-based series was being prepared at a competitor, they changed their mind. It is writer Curtis Gwinn who proposed the theme of The NeverEnding Story, released in 1984.

Gabriella Pizzolo, who plays Suzie, also sings on Broadway, where she held the title role in Matilda. The two actors were on neighboring stages and sang together, without music, harmonizing naturally; the result was too synchronized for two teenagers separated by hundreds of kilometers, and it had to be detuned in the edit.

The song, in detail

"The NeverEnding Story" was composed by Giorgio Moroder, the Italian producer of disco hits and 80s soundtracks, and sung by Limahl, the former Kajagoogoo singer, with a female voice in counterpoint. It opens Wolfgang Petersen's 1984 film, the adaptation of Michael Ende's novel, where a boy reads a book of which he becomes the hero. The chorus theme, "turn around, look at what you see," is the one Dustin and Suzie toss back and forth.

The choice is doubly right: the song dates from the year before the action, and its subject, a child entering a story, is that of the whole show. It had a new youth on the platforms in 2019, thirty-five years after its release, like other hits revived by the show.

Why the scene works

The scene is built on a contrast. On one side, the battle: the flesh monster in the mall, Eleven without powers, Hopper and Joyce underground in front of the machine. On the other, two teenagers singing a children's-movie theme over the radio, while Murray yells and Hopper rolls his eyes. The cut alternates, and the gap produces one of the rare moments of pure comedy in the show in the middle of a finale.

It also works because it settles a plot of the whole season: nobody believed in Suzie's existence. When she sings, Dustin is right in front of everyone, and Planck's constant she finally gives closes the Russian gate. The duo has become one of the most shared clips of the show, and the scene fans cite most often for season 3.

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