Series creators Matt and Ross Duffer confirmed during the “Happy Sad Confused” podcast that a spinoff show is in the works, but fans should not expect a standalone story for Millie Bobby Brown’s Eleven or Joe Keery’s Steve. Instead, the upcoming series will be “1,000 percent different” than the current flagship show. “I’ve read these rumors that there’s going be an Eleven spinoff, that there’s going be a Steve and Dustin spinoff or that it’s another number,” the Duffer Brothers said. “That’s not interesting to me because we’ve done all that. We’ve spent I don’t know how many hours exploring all of that. So it’s very different.” The Duffer Brothers added that the spinoff will maintain the same “storytelling sensibility” fans have come to love from “Stranger Things,” but the search is on for the next up-and-coming star to take over.
“Hopefully we find that right person to pass the baton to while we go on to do new stuff,” the Duffer Brothers explained while gushing that they’re “really jazzed” about the spinoff concept, which Netflix doesn’t even know about yet. However, before any spinoff is officially in the works, “Stranger Things 5” will have to wrap up the series — with a shorter runtime than the whopping Season 4 movie-length episodes. “For the first time ever, we don’t wrap things up at the end of 4, so it’s going to be moving,” Matt Duffer said. “I don’t know that it’s going to be going 100 miles an hour at the start of [Season] 5, but it’s going to be moving pretty fast. Characters are already going to be in action. They’re already going to have a goal and a drive, and I think that’s going to carve out at least a couple hours and make this season feel really different.” IndieWire’s Ben Travers wrote in his review of the Season 4 finale that the series installment is “too long, too serious, and too repetitive to pay off with a bit of wacky violence,” adding, “It’s as if every time the late Dr. Brenner (Matthew Modine) told Eleven she wasn’t ready, he was really just saying, ‘Hold on. You can’t save the day yet. We have 13 hours of total runtime to fill.’” Sign Up: Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Sign up for our Email Newsletters here.
