A 'Stranger Things' spinoff is on the way

WORDS Jasmine Pirovic PHOTOGRAPHY Pinterest PUBLISHED Wed, 6 Jul 2022 - 2:30 pm

One thing that stopped me dead in my tracks upon watching the latest season of Stranger Things, was not the grand reveal of Vecna, but rather just how much these meddlesome teenagers have grown. I don't remember Eleven being so titchy and Steve has really found some depth – who'd have thought? Beneath all this development is the unavoidable fact that the series will soon come to a conclusion. Every inch Erica gains on her brother leads us closer to the end. If you're finding the prospect of life after season 5 unbearable, then the good news is you don't have to farewell the upside-down just yet. We've just caught a whiff of a Stranger Things spinoff brewing in the distance.

What will the Stranger Things spinoff focus on?

These days it's fairly common for showrunners to capitalise on the hype of a series by launching a spinoff before the original concludes. As greedy consumers of TV, this suits us just fine.

During a conversation with Josh Horowitz in his Happy Sad Confused podcast, brothers and show creators Matt and Ross Duffer confirmed that audiences can expect more from the Stranger Things universe. Although, they warned that whatever it is, it will be very different from the original series, the "connective tissue" simply being the "storytelling sensibility" we've come to know and love.

Speaking to Horowitz, the brothers said, "I’ve read these rumours that there’s gonna be an Eleven spinoff, that there’s gonna be a Steve and Dustin spinoff, or that it’s another number. 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." Any guesses as to what it could be?

Does the spinoff have a name yet?

Considering that all the information we have is extremely vague, bordering on torturous, there is no name attached to the spinoff yet. In the hopes of one-upping the last season, maybe it's Strangest Things? Or, how about Stranger's Things, a kind of MTV Cribs tour inside Vecna's gothic and rundown house? We're just spitballing here.

What about the cast?

No doubt you'll want more of Dustin and Steve, or Lucas and Max. Believe me, we do too. But seeing as the only scrap of information we have to go off is that the spinoff will be entirely different from the source material, this seems very unlikely. Still, that won't stop us from dreaming. And if it is about the upside-down, what's stopping Vecna or Papa from making another appearance?

Is there a release date?

We're not quite there yet. The next release date is for Stranger Things season 5, and until then we don't expect to have any concrete details about the spinoff series. Watch this space.