The final season of Stranger Things has finally arrived, and there is a lot to process in watching the first four episodes of the season. In fact, in the midst of everything going on in the episodes, you might have even missed the fact that the show quietly added a British singer to the cast in a surprise role.
Warning, we’re about to get into some spoilers for the final season of Stranger Things, so you’ll want to proceed with caution. This is because the British singer cast in the show’s final season pops up in the show playing a major character, with an unexpected twist!
UK singer Birdy plays a young Joyce in Stranger Things season 5
Joining the cast of Stranger Things season 5 is UK singer Birdy, who pops up in episode 4 via a flashback in which she plays a younger version of Winona Ryder’s character Joyce Byers.
During the episode, Max catches Holly up on how she came to be trapped in the world they’re both currently in: a world of thousands of memories; Henry’s memories. After Max was brought back to life, she woke up in the Rainbow Room in the aftermath of the Hawkins Lab Massacre, in which Henry killed all of the other kids in the lab. When she ran out into the hall, she eventually passed through a door which led her into Hawkins High. Only this wasn’t the Hawkins High of the present day.
This memory that Max ended up in was one of Henry’s memories from 1959, when he was in school with many of the adult characters in the show. Among the characters we see is a teen Joyce, who is handing out flyers to the school’s one-night-only performance of Oklahoma, which happens to be starring Henry Creel. This younger version of Joyce was played by Birdy, but not many fans were likely to pick up on this as the scene moves so quickly, and it’s a brief cameo.
For those unfamiliar with Birdy, she rose to fame in the UK at a young age after winning Open Mic UK back in 2008 at just 12 years old. Since the show, she’s released a number of EPs as well as five studio albums: Birdy, Fire Within, Beautiful Life, Young Heart, and Portraits. Her songs have been featured in a number of shows and movies including Brave, The Fault in Our Stars, Grey’s Anatomy, and Doc.
It’s unclear whether we’ll get to see Birdy appear in additional episodes of the season, but even if we don’t, it was certainly a fun and unexpected cameo!