‘Stranger Things’ Creators Clarify Plans for Spinoff: ‘New Characters’ and a ‘Clean Slate’
A Stranger Things spinoff series featuring none of the Hawkins characters fans know and love? Well, stranger things have happened…
Matt and Ross Duffer elaborated on their plans for a spinoff to the now-ending Netflix hit in a new Variety interview, saying the new show will not continue the storyline of the original.
“We do every last remaining thing we wanted to do with the Demogorgons and Mind Flayer and Vecna and the Upside Down and Hawkins and these characters,” by the end of Stranger Things’s fifth and final season, Matt said. “This is a complete story. It’s done.”
And thus, the forthcoming spinoff will start with “new characters” and a “clean slate,” but it will keep the “brand” and “style of storytelling” of Stranger Things — e.g. “kids, adventures, [and] sci-fi/fantasy.”
Presley Ann/Getty Images for Netflix
Ross added, “They’re going to live in a bit of a different world. There’s going to be connective tissue, but you’re almost anthologizing in a way.”
As Matt explained, trying to “increasingly expand what could become an insanely convoluted mythology,” would box the creators in. “It starts to get frustrating from a storytelling perspective,” he said.
Instead, with a new story, “you’re not tied up into any knots,” Matt said. “There’s something refreshing about it. … The hope is you’re not just doing something to just do it.”
Matt and Ross will create the spinoff and will be “heavily creatively involved” as they “[help] shepherd it along,” but they’ll cede showrunner duties to instead focus on their new four-year film and TV deal at Paramount, Ross said. “We’ll, hopefully, be writing and directing something new in the meantime,” he added.
As they work on the spinoff and put the finishing touches on Stranger Things Season 5 — the first volume of which hits Netflix on November 26 — the Duffer Brothers are also hyping up another offshoot, the animated series Stranger Things: Tales From ’85, developed by showrunner Eric Robles. Matt and Ross have already seen a complete episode, and Matt told Variety Robles “knocked it out of the park” with Tales From ’85 and that it “really feels like the show.”
Stranger Things, Season 5 Volume 1 Premiere, Wednesday, November 26, Netflix
Stranger Things: Tales From ’85, TBD, Netflix
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