The ‘Stranger Things’ Spinoff Is ‘1000% Different,’ Say the Duffer Brothers

While there’s still one more season of “Stranger Things” to go before the end of the Netflix series, the Duffer Brothers are already hard at work developing a spinoff series. But the creators have revealed that the connective tissue between “Stranger Things” and this proposed spinoff may be looser than some fans are expecting.

Appearing on Josh Horowitz’s Happy Sad Confused podcast, Matt and Ross Duffer confessed that Netflix doesn’t even know what the Duffers’ spinoff idea is yet, as they’re keeping it close to the vest. But the brothers are developing it with the intention of handing it off to a different showrunner to spearhead the ship.

“Hopefully we find that right person to pass the baton to while we go on to do new stuff,” the Duffer Brothers said, adding they’re “really jazzed” about this idea, which they describe as “1000% different” from “Stranger Things.”

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“It’s not following – I’ve read these rumors that there’s gonna be an Eleven spinoff, that there’s gonna be a Steve and Dustin spinoff, or that it’s another number,” they added. “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.”

While there will be links between the two shows, the Duffer Brothers said they’re more focused on the tonal through lines between “Stranger Things” and this proposed spinoff.

“The most important connective tissue I would say is the storytelling sensibility of it,” they continued. “There is story that connects to the ‘Stranger Things’ world, but it really is more about how we’re telling that story.”

To that end, the brothers discussed the impetus for creating “Stranger Things” in the first place – as a response to the glut of “gritty and grounded” blockbuster films that permeated the 2000s.

“I get when people say [‘Stranger Things’ is] just a love letter or homage to these films, but really it was more us trying to recapture that style of storytelling, or that storytelling sensibility that seemed to have gone out of fashion,” they said. “We moved into the 2000s, and I love Chris Nolan, but everything became dark and real and grounded. We wanted to bring back that more not ironic, sincere, adventure, family storytelling that just seemed to have gone [away] – with the exception of ‘Super 8’, nobody was doing [it]. And ‘Super 8’ was kind of a one-off. I loved ‘Super 8’ but then it was just gone. No one else did it. And I do think there was an appetite – or that’s what I hoped – for this type of storytelling, so that really more than anything is what it is, is trying to stay in that zone.”

No timetable has been given for when this “Stranger Things” spinoff may come to fruition, and right now the Duffer Brothers are gearing up to start writing the fifth and final season of the flagship Netflix series. But fans will certainly be intrigued to learn that this spinoff may be less strictly connected to “Stranger Things” than many were expecting.

Listen to the podcast episode here.

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