What's next after the Stranger Things finale: two spinoff shows are locked — and the Duffers' first rule is no Eleven, no Hopper
The Stranger Things finale aired on New Year's Eve, Hawkins got its sunset, and Netflix's biggest franchise did the thing biggest franchises do: it immediately kept going.
Two spinoff shows are locked in. One of them, you may have missed entirely. The other comes with a rule that's going to make a lot of fan-casting threads very sad.
Spinoff No. 1 is already in your queue
The animated series Stranger Things: Tales From '85 — Saturday-morning-cartoon aesthetic, winter of 1985, the kids between seasons 2 and 3 — premiered back in April and already dropped its second season on September 17. Eight episodes this time, a mysterious flower infestation spreading through Hawkins, and showrunner Eric Robles teasing that "there's a mine in Hawkins that we haven't explored yet." A mine. In Hawkins. What could possibly.
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Spinoff No. 2: new town, new monsters, no familiar faces
The live-action spinoff is where the Duffer brothers have drawn a hard line: no returning characters. Not Eleven, not Hopper, not one beloved Hawkins resident making a wink-wink cameo. Matt Duffer's exact framing:
"Completely new characters, new town, new world, new mythology."
It's not a nostalgia loop, either — per Matt, "It's not a deep exploration of the Mind Flayer. It's very fresh and very new, but yes, it will answer some of the loose threads that are remaining." Chief among those threads: that mysterious rock from the finale, which the spinoff will reportedly explain in full. The brothers, who've since set up a film-and-TV deal at Paramount while staying attached to the Netflix spinoff universe, headed straight back to the writers' room after the finale. As Matt put it:
"My favorite part of the show is working on it. It's not releasing it — that's just stressful."
And the bonus round
The stage play The First Shadow is still out there doing young-Vecna prequel business for anyone who needs the mythology in three dimensions. Between the cartoon, the play, and a spinoff built on a rock, the gate is closed but the universe very much is not.
Previously we wrote: Jessica Lange's first answer about returning to AHS was 'Christ, no'
