
After five seasons stretched across nearly a decade, Stranger Things has come to an end. The movie-length finale dropped on New Year’s Eve, revealing the final battle between our beloved Hawkins crew and Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower), the once-human entity also known as Henry Creel, who is eager to turn their world into a hellscape.
But does the end of Stranger Things mean saying goodbye to all of the interdimensional drama that had fans on the edge of their seats? The good news: Not quite. While we won’t get a sixth season of Stranger Things, Ross and Matt Duffer, the show’s creators, are extending the life of the interdimensional drama across different media. Here’s what to know.
The spinoff
Matt Duffer told Variety not to expect more Stranger Things — as we know it, at least. “This is a complete story,” he said in October. “It’s done.”
However, that doesn’t mean there won’t be another story to tell within the same world. Duffer told Screenrant that a spinoff, which is still early in development, “relates in some ways” to the Stranger Things we know, but that it’ll be “a completely different story” and take place in “a completely different location with completely different actors and characters.”
In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter, Ross Duffer teased that the show will also take place in a different decade than the original series. He said that while he and his brother won’t be showrunners for it, they will be heavily involved.
In a subsequent interview, Matt Duffer also revealed a scene in the series finale that connects to the spinoff.
“There’s lingering questions about the rock and where the rock came from [in Henry’s story in the finale] and the scientist and all of that,” he said. “The spinoff is not about rocks or mining rocks, but I would say that’s the loose end that’s not tied up that will be tied up.”
The animated series
An animated series, titled Stranger Things: Tales From ‘85, is expected to drop some time this year. Showrunner Eric Robles said it’ll take place between Season 2 and Season 3 of the original series.
“Welcome back to Hawkins in the stark winter of 1985, where the original characters must fight new monsters and unravel a paranormal mystery terrorizing their town,” Netflix teased.
The show was announced in November in a video featuring concept art and all of our Hawkins favorites in animated form. The goal, the Duffer brothers said, was to evoke an ‘80s cartoon.
The Dungeons & Dragons game
Ever wanted to join the Hellfire Club? Now you can with a branded Dungeons & Dragons game inspired by the show. It features everyone’s favorite dungeon master Eddie Munson (Joseph Quinn) on the box.
“The Hellfire Club started as a haven for outsiders, free spirits, and dice-slingers. But founder Eddie Munson's final campaign was left unfinished ... until now,” the DND website says. “Keep the flames of Hellfire burning in this collaborative 3-6 player board game, featuring Eddie's lost adventures. With 4 adventures and hours of play possibilities, Welcome to the Hellfire Club invites you to gather the gang — and choose how the story ends.”
The Nancy Wheeler book series
Move over, Nancy Drew — there’s a new Nancy solving mysteries. Enter Nancy Wheeler’s spinoff novel, a new mystery written by Caitlin Schneiderhan, a writer from the TV series.
Titled Stranger Things: One Way or Another, the Nancy Wheeler mystery reached the top of Amazon’s Science Fiction Crime and Mystery category on the week of its Dec. 2 release, and was even briefly out of stock. The novel follows Nancy Wheeler (Natalia Dyer), who is searching for Vecna in Hawkins when she gets pulled into a new mystery.
“When fellow classmate Joey Taft starts acting shifty at graduation, Nancy is convinced Vecna’s found his newest victim,” it reads. “Joined by fellow amateur sleuth Robin Buckley, Nancy doesn’t waste any time questioning Joey. What the girls discover leads them down the path of a bigger story than The Hawkins Post could ever have assigned Nancy. Why are people around town suddenly getting sick? Why is there a strange man tailing Nancy as she investigates? And, most important, does this even have anything to do with the Upside Down?”
The Nancy Wheeler novel is the newest in a series of other Stranger Things spinoff books that have come out in recent years. Schneiderhan previously wrote Flight of Icarus, about Eddie’s quest for rockstar fame. Other books in the universe include Gwenda Bond’s Suspicious Minds, a mystery focused on Terry Ives, the mother of Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown), and Adam Christopher’s Darkness on the Edge of Town, in which David Harbour’s Hopper tells Eleven stories about his detective work in New York City.
There are also three character-focused novels: Brenna Yovanoff’s Runaway Max, about Sadie Sink’s character Max Mayfield; A. R. Capetta’s Rebel Robin, a prequel about Maya Hawke’s Robin Buckley; and J.L. D'Amato’s The Dustin Experiment, which focuses on the character played by Gaten Matarazzo during his freshman year.
The Broadway play
Netflix debuted Stranger Things: The First Shadow on London’s West End in 2023 before also bringing the prequel production to Broadway earlier this year. The visual-effects-heavy play tells the story of Henry Creel as he tries and fails to control his disturbing psychic powers. It also features teenage versions of Joan (Winona Ryder), Hopper and even Bob (Sean Astin).
Stranger Things fans are eager for Netflix to bring the play to the streaming platform, hoping it will clear up some confusion around the final season.
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