“Stranger Things 4” has been a pop culture phenomenon for Netflix and ranks as the streamer’s most-watched English-language TV season. The show is easily the streaming giant’s most blockbuster franchise, so it’s hardly shocking to hear it will continue even after the fifth and final season. Series creators Matt and Ross Duffer are developing a “Stranger Things” spinoff, but don’t expect a series entirely centered on the likes of Millie Bobby Brown’s Eleven or Joe Keery’s Steve.
“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,” the Duffer Brothers recently said on 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.”
The Duffer Brothers said the spinoff will be “1000% different” than the flagship series. The biggest connective tissue between the original “Stranger Things” show and the upcoming spinoff will be “storytelling sensibility” and not main characters.
“Hopefully we find that right person to pass the baton to while we go on to do new stuff,” the Duffer Brothers said, adding they’re “really jazzed” about their spinoff idea. The duo said not even Netflix knows what they’re planning yet for the spinoff.
As for the upcoming “Stranger Things 5,” the Duffer Brothers said fans can expect a somewhat shorter and far quicker-paced season.
“The only reason we don’t expect it to be as long is because if you look at it, it’s almost a two-hour ramp-up before our kids really get drawn into the supernatural mystery,” Matt said. “You get to know them, you get to see them in their lives, what they’re struggling with, adapting to high school, and so forth. Steve’s trying to find a date, all of that. None of that obviously is going to be occurring in the first two episodes of [Season 5].”
“For the first time ever,” he continued, “we don’t wrap things up at the end of [Season] 4, so it’s going to be moving. I don’t know that it’s going to be going 100 miles an hour at the start of 5, but it’s going to be moving pretty fast. Characters are already going to be in action. They’re already going to have a goal and a drive, and I think that’s going to carve out at least a couple hours and make this [final] season feel really different.”
The first four seasons of “Stranger Things” are now streaming on Netflix.
