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'Stranger Things' creators tease '1000% different' spinoff show
The first Stranger Things spinoff probably won't be about anything you've guessed.
With Stranger Things 4 complete, fans are now looking ahead to the fifth and final season of the Netflix supernatural hit, waiting to learn the final fates of all the Hawkins kids and their families in the battle against the Upside Down. But of course, even if Season 5 is the ending of the main Stranger Things story, it will not be the end of the Stranger Things franchise.
Earlier this year, when they announced that Season 5 of the series would be its last, creators Matt and Ross Duffer also teased more stories in the world of Stranger Things. That means spinoffs, and while there are undoubtedly certain avenues within the main series that could lead to more stories, the Duffer Brothers want to assure fans that what they have in mind is "1000% different" from the original show.
“It’s not following…I’ve read these rumors that there’s gonna be an Eleven spinoff, that there’s gonna be a Steve and Dustin spinoff or that it’s another number,” Matt Duffer said on a recent episode of the Happy Sad Confused podcast. "That’s not interesting to me because we’ve done all that. We’ve spent I don’t know how many hours exploring all of that. So it’s very different.”
Ross Duffer added, "There's connective tissue, but almost the most important connective tissue, I would say, is the storytelling sensibility of it. I think that that's, more than anything, is what connects. There is story that connects to the Stranger Things world, but it really is more about how we're telling that story."
The brothers went on to confirm that not even Netflix executives are aware of the premise of the spinoff yet, and that Stranger Things star Finn Wolfhard remains the only person they've really told about it, simply because he happened to guess. There's no proposed release date for the show yet, but when it happens, don't expect the Duffer Brothers to be the showrunners once again. After years of work on Stranger Things, they're hoping to find the right creative partner to spearhead the new series, while they supervise from a distance as they work on other projects.
"[U]ltimately the hope is to pass the baton to somebody else," Matt Duffer said. "Because by the time we're done with this, it's going to have been... God, it's going to almost have been 10 years. It's going to be more or less my entire 30s. So it would be another five to 10-year commitment on this thing. I don't think you can go half in. I was telling this to somebody else, there's not really a great version of us, say, doing a pilot and then abandoning it."
Stranger Things 4 is now streaming in its entirety on Netflix.
Looking for more sci-fi TV? Check out shows like Resident Alien, Brave New World, Project Blue Book, Eureka, Heroes, Intergalactic, and more streaming now on Peacock. Looking ahead, SYFY has new series The Ark in the works from original Stargate film writer/producer Dean Devlin, as well as Stargate SG-1 producer Jonathan Glassner.
