Netflix’s Stranger Things ended recently, and fans are still looking back at the final season as well as the cast who brought the tale to life. Across its later seasons, the show leaned increasingly into suspended urgency as its narrative tool. Among those intense moments when characters edged between survival and loss was Max Mayfield’s return to her body.Before we dig deeper, spoiler alert for Stranger Things Season 5.Sadie Sink, the actress who plays Max in Stranger Things (Season 2 onwards), recently appeared on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, where she addressed the much-buzzed topic: Why does Max take so much time to run when a portal is clearly"Clearly I’m taking my sweet time with it."Stranger Things' Sadie Sink finally talks about Max taking her "sweet time" to run back to the real worldThe suspense was palpable when Max and Holly ran frantically away from Vecna. But then they did not give up. Trying hard to find a way finally bore fruit. A doorway appeared, but it was exclusive to Max since Lucas was playing her favorite song in the real world.Max parts ways with Holly, but before she does, she takes the time to impart some words of wisdom and motivation to Holly, who has yet to find a doorway for her return.Sink acknowledged that scene in Stranger Things Season 5 with her signature quirky energy:“When I was shooting it, I don’t know if the sense of urgency crossed my mind,” she said, later adding that watching it back, “clearly I’m taking my sweet time with it.”Why this scene felt urgent: Looking through Season 4 and Season 5Season 5 picks up after Season 4's events. In Season 4, Max was sent into a coma when Vecna attacked her. The final season finds Max physically alive but mentally absent.Her body is in the hospital, but her mind is trapped inside Vecna’s mindscape. The mindscape was a warped internal world that held Henry's traumas, memories, and more. The kids of Hawkins were also taken to this mindscape, and Max was the leading force to help them rescue them from the warped world. View this post on Instagram Instagram PostMax, however, uttered a few long dialogues before she finally ran towards her exit. Why this scene felt urgent had to do with Season 4 of Stranger Things. Viewers were already introduced to how these doorways worked: one had to be connected to something that mattered deeply to them for it to open a personal way out of Henry's fold.Season 4 of Stranger Things told us that for Max, it was a particular song that she liked. When she was attacked and sent into a coma by Vecna, the music player was destroyed, and so she was indeed harmed and got trapped inside Henry's internal world.Going into Season 5 of Stranger Things, fans already knew what happens if one misses their chance at returning to the real world. That is why, when Max and Holly were desperately hatching plans to seek a way out in Season 5, fans expected and hoped for their speedy success.The scene was tense, and the audience expected Max to take her shot and just run fast back to the real world. But Sadie Sink took the chance in her Tonight Show Interview to joke about this.In a meta-coded way, she mirrored fan emotions and said,“Like why are we doing a podcast episode right now?”But, on the other hand, when Max finally returns to her body, waking in the hospital with Lucas beside her, the emotional impact of the scene is immense. The struggle that Max had to endure felt rewarded.Viewers also felt their efforts to never miss an episode paid off. The scene lands precisely because the sequence made us wait with our hearts beating at our ears. Sink’s joke, 'Run!' unsurprisingly carried the sweet and fun charm that Stranger Things is known for.Stranger Things Season 5 finale aired on December 31, 2025. All five seasons of the show are streaming on Netflix.