The Stranger Things Spinoff... Won't Really Be A Spinoff, Creators Say

When "Stranger Things" returns for its fifth and final season in November, savor your time with the kids, Joyce, Hopper — all of Hawkins, really: Matt and Ross Duffer, the show's creators, say that an upcoming offshoot of the wildly popular Netflix series essentially will be a spinoff in name only.  

The next series, first announced in 2022, will have the look and feel of the original but won't feature any of its characters, the Duffer brothers said in a recent interview with Variety. Matt Duffer elaborated that the new show will be of a piece with their original series in its "style of storytelling."

"Kids, adventures, sci-fi/fantasy, rather than increasingly expand what could become an insanely convoluted mythology," he said.

The Duffers added that the new show would feature new characters ("it's like [a] clean slate. You're not tied up into any knots. There's something refreshing about it") and that the spinoff and future series will "live in a bit of a different world. There's going to be connective tissue, but you're almost anthologizing in a way."

The Duffers first hinted at a spinoff in 2022, when they announced that "Stranger Things" would end with Season 5. "There are still many more exciting stories to tell within the world of Stranger Things: new mysteries, new adventures, new unexpected heroes," they said via statement at the time. "But first we hope that you stay with us as we finish this tale of a powerful girl named Eleven and her brave friends, of a broken police chief and a ferocious mom, of a small town called Hawkins and an alternate dimension known only as the Upside Down."

Later that year, they gave an interview in which they said they were "super excited" about their idea for a continuation of the "Stranger Things" story, which they teased was "very, very different" but which, somehow, "Stranger Things" star Finn Wolfhard ("who is one crazy smart kid," they said) had correctly guessed. 

Are you into the idea of a "clean slate" "Stranger Things" spinoff? Hit the comments with your thoughts!