'Stranger Things': Final Season, Spinoff, Stage Show Planned

Stranger Things

Netflix

With Stranger Things season four wrapped up, and the recent announcement that season five will be the final season of the show, fans want to know what else will be coming from the world that the Duffer Brothers (Matt and Ross) created.

In a press release from Netflix today, the brothers announced their production company, fittingly named Upside Down Pictures, and that it will be led by Hilary Leavitt, who has previously worked on Orphan Black and Ozark. They say in the press release that they are working on a stage show set in the world of Stranger Things, as well as a live-action spin-off series.

Besides that, Upside Down Pictures is planning a live action television adaptation of manga/anime series Death Note, and an adaptation of Stephen King and Peter Straub's The Talisman. They have not yet announced when fans should expect the final season of Stranger Things, however.

Stranger Things is about to get stranger... and horrifying. The first look at Season 4 shows Netflix’s beloved teens of Hawkins, played by Millie Bobby Brown, Finn Wolfhard, Gaten Matarazzo, Caleb McLaughlin, Noah Schnapp, and Charlie Heaton in the aftermath of the Battle of Starcourt.

Per IndieWire, Stranger Things 4 picks up six months after season 3's terror and destruction at the Starcourt mall. A new and horrifying supernatural threat surfaces this upcoming season, which is split into two parts, with Volume 1 premiering May 27 and Volume 2 premiering July 1.

“They’re not kids anymore — they really are full-blown teenagers,” co-creator Matt Duffer told Netflix’s Queue magazine. “That’s why this season we leaned more into horror. We figured they should be in their own [version] of A Nightmare on Elm Street basically.” So much so, that the the Duffer Brothers showrunners enlisted Nightmare on Elm Street's Freddy Krueger, Robert Englund for a guest appearance in the season that will be a “really dramatic departure” from any other Stranger Things installment.

Eleven, aka Jane Hopper (Brown), has since relocated to California with the Byers family: Joyce (Winona Ryder), Jonathan (Heaton) and Will (Schnapp). Back in the Midwest, Mike (Wolfhard), Dustin (Matarazzo), and Lucas (McLaughlin) have to navigate the changes of high school, while in Russia, the fate of presumed-dead Jim Hopper (David Harbour) hangs in the balance.

Season 4 will introduce new cast members as well, including Joseph Quinn as metalhead Eddie Munson, the greatest dungeon master at Hawkins High, and Eduardo Franco as Argyle, a laid-back California stoner who becomes Jonathan’s best West Coast pal.

“If we look back at our favorite movie sequels — whether it’s Aliens or Terminator 2: Judgment Day, or The Godfather: Part II, or The Empire Strikes Back — the greatest movie sequels always do change it up. The tone feels different,” Ross Duffer told Queue. “So that’s what we’ve been trying to do each season to challenge ourselves and give everyone something new to try.”

Matt Duffer added, “That’s important to make sure we don’t get bored, and the cast doesn’t get bored.”

The decision to split Season 4 into two parts was also due to just how much detail and storytelling the Duffers wanted to accomplish in a season. “With nine scripts, over 800 pages, almost two years of filming, thousands of visual effects shots, and a runtime nearly twice the length of any previous season, Stranger Things 4 was the most challenging season yet, but also the most rewarding one,” the co-creators said. “Everyone involved is incredibly proud of the results, and we can’t wait to share it with you.”

The series is set to conclude after five seasons. See stills from the upcoming season below:

Gangs All Here

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Courtesy of Netflix

STRANGER THINGS. (L to R) Joe Keery as Steve Harrington, Gaten Matarazzo as Dustin Henderson, Maya Hawke as Robin Buckley, Sadie Sink as Max Mayfield, Natalia Dyer as Nancy Wheeler, and Caleb McLaughlin as Lucas Sinclair in STRANGER THINGS. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2022