The First “Upside Down” Glance

Los Angeles, July 15, 2016 – The Duffer Brothers’ Stranger Things had just dropped on Netflix, and the world was busy decoding Easter eggs, Demogorgons, and Eggo waffles. But inside a cramped Atlanta soundstage, two twenty-somethings were decoding something far less supernatural: the quiet, electric pull between Nancy Wheeler and Jonathan Byers.

Natalia Dyer, 21, fresh off indie films and a Yale drama audition tape, stepped into the role of the shotgun-wielding older sister with a precision that belied her soft-spoken demeanor. Charlie Heaton, 22, a drummer-turned-actor from Bridlington, England, brought Jonathan’s brooding sensitivity to life with a Canon AE-1 camera slung around his neck and a perpetual half-smile that never quite reached tabloid headlines.

Their first scene together was scripted to be awkward: Nancy barges into Jonathan’s darkroom, accusing him of creeping on her missing friend. Take one was a disaster—Natalia flubbed a line, Charlie’s prop camera jammed, and the crew reset. Take two, though, was magic. The directors kept the cameras rolling even after “cut” because the silence that followed felt real.

“We just… stayed there,” Natalia later recalled in a 2023 Variety Actors on Actors sit-down. “Charlie didn’t break character. He looked at me like Jonathan looks at Nancy—like he was seeing her for the first time. And I forgot my next line because I was seeing him.”

Off-set, the cast formed a family. Game nights at Winona Ryder’s rental house, midnight Waffle House runs, Millie Bobby Brown orchestrating group chats named “The Losers Club.” But Natalia and Charlie gravitated toward quieter corners. They’d sit on the prop room steps, sharing earbuds—her with Fleetwood Mac, him with The Smiths—trading stories about growing up on opposite sides of the Atlantic.

The turning point came during a rain-soaked night shoot for Season 1, Episode 6. The script called for Nancy and Jonathan to huddle under a tarp in the woods, waiting for the Monster. Between takes, the Georgia sky opened up. The crew scrambled for cover, but Natalia and Charlie stayed put, soaked to the bone, laughing until their teeth chattered.

“That’s when I knew,” Charlie told GQ in 2021. “She looked miserable, mascara running, hair plastered to her face—and still the most beautiful person I’d ever seen. I thought, ‘Yeah. I’m in trouble.’”

Nine Years of Silent Scenes & Loud Love

By the time Season 2 premiered in October 2017, the internet had already crowned “Stancy” (Steve + Nancy) and “Jancy” (Jonathan + Nancy) as rival ships. But the real romance was happening off-screen, in plain sight yet expertly private.

2017 – The Red Carpet That Wasn’t a Date Fashion Awards, London. Natalia in emerald Dior, Charlie in a velvet tux. They walked separately, posed separately—yet every photographer caught the same moment: Charlie’s hand hovering at the small of her back, guiding her through the flashbulbs like a secret service agent for her heart.

2018 – The Instagram That Never Was Neither has ever posted the other. Instead, fans became detectives: a blurred hand holding a coffee cup with Charlie’s distinctive skull ring; Natalia’s silhouette in the background of his bandmate’s story; a shared Spotify playlist titled “for n.” that vanished after 24 hours.

2019 – The Move-In That Wasn’t Announced Paparazzi spotted them unloading IKEA boxes into a Brooklyn brownstone. When asked by a fan at a Velvet Buzzsaw premiere if they lived together, Natalia smiled: “I live with someone who steals all the hot water. That’s all I’ll say.”

2020 – The Pandemic That Paused the World, But Not Them While production on Season 4 halted, Natalia and Charlie quarantined in New Mexico. Charlie learned to make Natalia’s grandmother’s lemon ricotta pancakes. She taught him to knit (he made her a lopsided scarf in Hawkins High colors). They binge-watched Normal People and argued over whether Connell’s chain was a war crime.

2022 – The Proposal That Wasn’t Planned Cornwall, England. Charlie’s childhood beach at sunset. He’d intended to wait until Season 5 wrapped, but the ring—a vintage sapphire from a Portobello Market jeweler—burned a hole in his pocket. He proposed with sand in his knees and tears in his eyes. Natalia said yes before he finished the question.

2023 – The Wedding That Wasn’t Public A 12-person ceremony in the Yorkshire Dales. Natalia wore a 1970s lace dress found in a London vintage shop; Charlie wore his grandfather’s cufflinks. Millie Bobby Brown was the flower girl (at 19, she insisted on the title). The only photo leaked: the couple’s hands intertwined, wedding bands glinting, captioned by a guest, “Love is not a plot twist.”

2025 – The Legacy That Keeps Writing Itself As Stranger Things films its final season, Nancy and Jonathan’s arc closes with a quiet promise in the Byers’ living room—mirroring, unknowingly, the promise Natalia and Charlie made years ago. On set, the directors now joke that they don’t need to direct the two anymore; they just set the scene and let muscle memory do the rest.

At the Season 5 table read, Charlie slipped a note into Natalia’s script: “Still the best plot twist I never saw coming. Love, J.” She tucked it into her pocket without looking up, but the camera caught her smile—the same one from that rain-soaked night in 2015.

Nine years. No scandals. No tell-alls. Just two actors who turned a fictional slow-burn into a real-life forever, proving that sometimes the most enduring love stories aren’t written by screenwriters—they’re lived between takes, in the margins of call sheets, in the silence after “cut.”

And when the final credits roll on Hawkins, Indiana, Natalia Dyer and Charlie Heaton will still be holding hands—off-screen, on-script, and everywhere in between.