‘Stranger Things’ creators turn up the intrigue
Season 2 is coming, but it won’t be the end of this sci-fi gem
Grab the Eggos and queue up Netflix: Stranger Things 2 is almost here.
Season 2 of the retro sci-fi juggernaut arrives Friday, more than a year after the show became a word-of-mouth success that spawned countless Internet memes (Hey, Barb!) and made overnight stars of its precocious preteen actors.
The action picks up in smalltown Hawkins, Ind., in 1984, a year after Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown), a girl with telekinetic powers, sacrificed herself to save missing middle-schooler Will (Noah Schnapp) from a mysterious parallel universe known as the Upside Down. Still shaken by the experience, Will and his nerdy group of pals face new monsters and a looming, even larger threat, all while trying to talk to girls and make it home in time for dinner.
The show’s creators, twins Matt and Ross Duffer, 33, tease the new season and beyond:
Q How do you feel this week compared to when Season 1 premiered?
ROSS: It’s a very different feeling. The terror of the first season came out of, “Is it just going to vanish from the site and not find its audience?” Now, we have a different terror: People have expectations. It’s this fine line of (wanting) to please the fans, but you want it to feel different. At the same time, you want to play into what works. Even as we’re starting work on Season 3, it’s such a tough balance.
Q In the new season, Will suffers PTSD from the Upside Down. Did you set out to tell a darker story, or was that inevitable given everything he has gone through?
ROSS: It definitely was inevitable, not just in terms of Will but everyone. It’s really about them dealing with a very traumatic event in all of their lives. We wanted to see how that trauma would affect all of them, whether it’s Nancy having lost a friend and feeling deep guilt about that, or Joyce, who nearly lost a son. We want to see the repercussions of Season 1, and as a result there’s a darker undercurrent to the entire season.
Q Are you concerned about how quickly the child actors are growing up?
MATT: Yeah. Unfortunately, I can’t do anything about their aging, so you just have to come to terms with it. But I actually like that they’re getting older, because it forces the show to evolve. I like the fact that people get to watch these kids grow up, very much in the way that you did with Harry Potter. There’s something very powerful about that. You’re going to start to see them come of age and going to high school. There’s all sorts of rich stuff for us to mine.
Q How much story do you have mapped out? Are you working toward a specific
ending, or are you making it up as you go along ?
ROSS: A little bit of both. We have an end game. We don’t really know how many seasons — we know it’ll be more than three. (Netflix has not yet officially announced a third). We have rough ideas of what Season 3 will be, but we like to keep it flexible.
Q You originally envisioned Stranger Things as an anthology series but got too attached to this group of characters. Have you discussed expanding the universe, in TV or movie form?
MATT: I always say, “For about 10 minutes.” There’s no pressure from (Netflix). They have the right attitude, which is not worrying about the future of the show and just focusing on making whatever we’re working on as good as can be.