Stranger Things Drops A Screen-Shattering Teaser For Its Next Iteration

By Charlie Mason
stranger-things-review-season-3-netflix Courtesy of Netflix

Stranger Things knows that to be kind is to rewind — and that's exactly what the Netflix phenom does in a teaser released Wednesday for The First Shadow, the stage play offshoot of the series that is set to premiere on November 17 at the Phoenix Theatre in London's West End.

In the screen-shattering promo, which you can watch below, we are taken by way of a vintage television set back, back, back in time — all the way to the days when the villainous Vecna was merely poor, disturbed Henry Creel. The stage experience "will take you right back to the beginning of the Stranger Things story," reads the accompanying tweet, "and it might hold the key to what comes next."

Based on an original story by the series' creators Matt and Ross Duffer, as well as Jack Thorne and Kate Trefry, and directed by Stephen Daldry, the play will be set roughly 25 years before the events of the Netflix show. Its main characters will be (obviously) younger versions of Jim Hopper, Joyce Maldonado, Bob Newby and the aforementioned Henry, played on screen by David Harbour, Winona Ryder, Sean Astin and Jamie Campbell Bower, respectively.

The official logline for Stranger Things: The First Shadow tells us that we'll be transported to "Hawkins, 1959: a regular town with regular worries. Young Jim Hopper's car won't start, Bob Newby's sister won't take his radio show seriously, and Joyce Maldonado just wants to graduate and get the hell out of town. When new student Henry Creel arrives, his family finds that a fresh start isn't so easy... and the shadows of the past have a very long reach."

"Kate Trefry has written a play that is at turns surprising, scary and heartfelt," the Duffer Brothers exclaimed in March. "You will meet endearing new characters, as well as very familiar ones, on a journey into the past that sets the groundwork for the future of Stranger Things. We're dying to tell you more about the story but won't — it's more fun to discover it for yourself." (For tickets, visit StrangerThingsOnStage.com.)

The fifth and final season of Stranger Things was set to begin filming this summer. But the Writers Guild of America strike stopped those wheels of progress from turning. "Writing does not stop when filming begins," the Duffers tweeted in May. "While we're excited to start production with our amazing cast and crew, it is not possible during this strike. We hope a fair deal is reached soon so we can all get back to work. Until then — over and out."

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