Crack open the Dungeons & Dragons and shove those eggos in the oven – Stranger Things season 2 has been pegged for a 2017 premiere by Netflix.
Little is currently known about the show’s sophomore run beyond those nine episode titles – “Madmax”, “The Boy Who Came Back To Life”, “The Pumpkin Patch”, “The Palace”, “The Storm”, “The Pollywog”, “The Secret Cabin”, “The Brain” and “The Lost Brother” – though the Duffer brothers spoke to Entertainment Weekly just recently in a bid to remedy that. Fair warning, the series co-creators delve into spoiler territory pretty early on, so unless you’re fully caught up with all the strange things to occur in Hawkins, Indiana, bookmark this page for later.
Up first, Matt Duffer discussed the prospect of a slightly longer second season – up to nine episodes over the original eight – and why both he and Ross Duffer refrained from spinning out an entire 13-episode saga.
Even though this show has been successful, there’s no pressure to make it 13 episodes. People say, “They need to make way more episodes,” but I like to think one of the reasons it works for people is because it’s paced and it feels like a movie, and that’s because it’s not too long. I think, if we pushed it to 13 episodes, we’d have to start coming up with all these bullshit adventures they’re going on, that aren’t directly tied to the main tension. Eight felt about right. But if we’re developing Season 2 and it feels like seven or nine or eleven, Netflix would support any of those lengths.
Citing James Cameron as a big inspiration going into Stranger Things season 2, the Duffer brothers then touched base on the creepy alternate dimension known to you, I and the residents of Hawkins as the Upside Down. The demogorgon may be no more (?), but the writer-directors indicated that there’s still many mysteries yet to be uncovered.
We kinda just peeled back the curtain and revealed a tiny bit of the Upside Down. So we definitely want to explore a little bit more. There’s a lot we don’t know about the Upside Down at the end of season 1.
Ross: We obviously have this gate to another dimension, which is still very much open in the town of Hawkins. And a lot of questions there in terms of, if the Monster is dead, was it a singular monster? What else could be out there? We really don’t go in there much until they go in to find Will at the end. So we’ve opened up this doorway, and to us it’s exciting to talk about, like, what else is behind there? There’s a lot more mystery there to be solved.
Stranger Things will make its triumphant return in 2017 with nine all-new episodes. It’s a run that will seemingly herald “justice for Barb” with a “darker and weirder” arc.