Stranger Things
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This article is about the television series. For other uses, see Stranger Things (disambiguation).
Stranger Things
Genre
Science fiction
Horror
Mystery
Drama
Created by The Duffer Brothers
Starring
Winona Ryder
David Harbour
Finn Wolfhard
Millie Bobby Brown
Gaten Matarazzo
Caleb McLaughlin
Natalia Dyer
Charlie Heaton
Cara Buono
Matthew Modine
Noah Schnapp
Sadie Sink
Joe Keery
Dacre Montgomery
Sean Astin
Paul Reiser
Maya Hawke
Priah Ferguson
Brett Gelman
Composers
Michael Stein
Kyle Dixon Country of origin United States
Original language English
No. of seasons 4
No. of episodes 34 (list of episodes)
Production
Executive producers
The Duffer Brothers
Shawn Levy
Dan Cohen
Brian Wright
Cindy Holland
Jessica Mecklenburg
Matt Thunell
Karl Gajdusek
Iain Paterson
Curtis Gwinn
Cinematography
Tim Ives
Tod Campbell
Lachlan Milne
David Franco
Ricardo Diaz[1]
Editors
Dean Zimmerman
Kevin D. Ross
Nat Fuller
Katheryn Naranjo Running time 42–139 minutes
Production companies
21 Laps Entertainment
Monkey Massacre Productions
Upside Down Pictures (season 5)[2]
Budget $270 million (season 4)[3]
Release
Original network Netflix
Original release July 15, 2016 – present
Stranger Things is an American science fiction horror drama television series created by the Duffer Brothers for Netflix. Produced by Monkey Massacre Productions and 21 Laps Entertainment, the first season was released on Netflix on July 15, 2016. The second and third season followed in October 2017 and July 2019 respectively, and
the fourth season aired in two parts in May and July 2022. In February 2022, Stranger Things was renewed for a fifth and final season.
Set in the 1980s, the series centers around the residents of the fictional small town of Hawkins, Indiana, as they are plagued by a hostile alternate dimension known as the Upside Down, after a nearby human
experimentation facility opens a gateway between it and the normal world.
The ensemble cast includes Winona Ryder, David Harbour, Finn Wolfhard, Millie Bobby Brown, Gaten Matarazzo, Caleb
McLaughlin, Natalia Dyer, Charlie Heaton, Cara Buono, Matthew
Modine, Noah Schnapp, Sadie Sink, Joe Keery, Dacre Montgomery, Sean Astin, Paul Reiser, Maya Hawke, Priah Ferguson and Brett Gelman.
The Duffer Brothers developed Stranger Things as a mix of investigative drama and supernatural elements portrayed with horror and childlike sensibilities, while infusing references to the pop culture of the 1980s.
Several thematic and directorial elements were inspired by the works of Steven Spielberg, John Carpenter, David Lynch, Stephen King, Wes Craven and H. P. Lovecraft. They also took inspiration from experiments conducted during the Cold War and conspiracy theories involving secret government programs.
One of Netflix's flagship series, Stranger Things has attracted record viewership on the streaming platform. It has been critically acclaimed for its characterization, atmosphere, acting, soundtrack, directing, writing, and homages to 1980s films. It has received numerous nominations and awards. An animated spin-off series, developed by Eric Robles and produced by Flying Bark Productions, is in development.[4]
Overview
Stranger Things is set in the fictional rural town of Hawkins, Indiana, in the 1980s. The nearby Hawkins National Laboratory ostensibly performs scientific research for the United States Department of Energy but secretly experiments with the paranormal and supernatural, sometimes with
human test subjects. They have inadvertently created a portal to an alternate dimension they refer to as the Upside Down, whose presence begins to affect the residents of Hawkins in calamitous ways.[5][6]
The first season begins in November 1983. Will Byers is abducted by a creature from the Upside Down. His mother, Joyce; the town's police chief, Jim Hopper; and a group of volunteers search for him. A
young psychokinetic girl named Eleven escapes from the laboratory and is
found by friends of Will. Eleven befriends and assists them in their efforts to find Will.[7]
The second season is set a year later in October 1984. Will has been rescued, but he begins having premonitions of the fall of Hawkins caused by a creature in the Upside Down. When it is discovered that Will is still being possessed by an entity from the Upside Down, his friends and family learn that there is a larger threat to their world.[8]
The third season is set several months later, in the days leading up to the Fourth of July celebration in 1985. The new Starcourt Mall has become the center of attention for Hawkins residents, putting the majority of other local stores out of business due to the mall's popularity. Hopper becomes increasingly concerned about Eleven and Mike's relationship and becomes very protective of his daughter. Unbeknownst to the town, a
secret Soviet laboratory underneath Starcourt seeks to open the gateway to the Upside Down. Meanwhile, the Mind Flayer uses mind control to make Billy do his bidding.[9][10]
The fourth season is set several months later, in March 1986. Joyce, Will, Eleven, and Jonathan have moved to Lenora, California for a fresh start.
In California, Eleven struggles with the loss of her powers and being bullied in school. Meanwhile, in Hawkins, a being from the Upside Down—
an entity later dubbed Vecna—begins killing the residents of Hawkins, opening new gates between the two worlds in the process. Planning to stop Vecna, Dr. Sam Owens takes Eleven to a facility to help her regain her powers. Simultaneously, Joyce and Murray fly to Russia to rescue Hopper from the Gulag in Kamchatka.
Cast and characters
Main article: List of Stranger Things characters
The Duffer Brothers, Shawn Levy and the main cast of season 2 of Stranger Things at the 2017 San Diego Comic-Con International
Winona Ryder as Joyce Byers,[11] the mother of Will and Jonathan Byers. She is divorced from Lonnie Byers, the father of Will and Jonathan. In season two, she dates her old high school classmate,
Bob, until his death later in the season. She and Hopper have feelings for each other.
David Harbour as Jim Hopper,[11] chief of Hawkins Police Department.
After his young daughter Sara died of cancer, Hopper divorced and lapsed into alcoholism. Eventually he grows to be more responsible, saving Will Byers after he is taken in season 1, as well as taking Eleven as his adopted daughter. He and Joyce have feelings for each other.
Finn Wolfhard as Mike Wheeler,[12] middle child of Karen and Ted Wheeler, brother of Nancy and Holly, and one of three friends of Will Byers. He is an intelligent and conscientious student and is committed to his friends. He develops romantic feelings for Eleven and later dates her.
Millie Bobby Brown as Eleven / Jane Hopper ("El"),[12] a teen girl with telepathic and psychokinetic abilities, a result of being one of Dr.
Brenner's subjects from Hawkins National Laboratory. She escapes the lab and eventually becomes an adoptive daughter to Jim Hopper taking his surname, and adjusts to living a normal life with the help of Mike (whom she later dates) and his friends.
Gaten Matarazzo as Dustin Henderson,[12] one of Will Byers' friends.
His cleidocranial dysplasia causes him to lisp. In the second season, he is proud of his new front teeth and is attracted to Max. In season 3, he gets a girlfriend, Suzie (portrayed by Gabriella Pizzolo), whom he met at Camp Know Where prior to the start of the season.
Caleb McLaughlin as Lucas Sinclair,[12] one of Will's friends. He is wary of Eleven but later befriends her. In season two, he is one of Max's love interests and eventually becomes her boyfriend in season three.
He becomes more popular in season 4 as a result of joining the Hawkins High basketball team, which briefly puts him at odds with his regular friend group.
Natalia Dyer as Nancy Wheeler,[12] daughter of Karen and Ted and older sister of Mike and Holly. Studious and rule-abiding, Nancy finds another side of herself while investigating the Hawkins Lab and the death of her friend Barbara. In the first two seasons, she is the girlfriend of Steve Harrington but breaks up with him and then dates Jonathan Byers. She is an aspiring journalist.
Charlie Heaton as Jonathan Byers,[12] the older brother of Will Byers and the son of Joyce Byers. He is a quiet and kind-hearted teenager, an outsider at school, and an aspiring photographer. He is close with his mother and brother, and he becomes the boyfriend of Nancy Wheeler.
Cara Buono as Karen Wheeler (seasons 1–3; also starring: season 4),[13] mother of Nancy, Mike, and toddler Holly. Karen has a brief fling with Billy in season 3.
Matthew Modine as Martin Brenner (seasons 1 and 4; recurring:
season 2),[14] the scientist in charge of Hawkins Laboratory and training Eleven. Manipulative and remote, he and his team are searching for Eleven in season 1 after she escapes. He is referred to as "Papa" by Eleven. In season 4, he returns to help Eleven gain her
powers back and protects her from the government agents hunting her down.[15]
Noah Schnapp as Will Byers (season 2–present; recurring: season 1),
[12] the son of Joyce Byers and younger brother of Jonathan Byers. He is captured by a monster from the "Upside Down", an alternate dimension discovered by Hawkins Laboratory scientists in season 1.
He later develops a connection to the upside down and the Mind Flayer due to his capture.[16][17]
Sadie Sink as Max Mayfield (season 2–present), Billy's younger stepsister, and a tomboy who catches the attention of both Lucas and Dustin, eventually dating Lucas. In season 4, she is one of the teens that is targeted by Vecna.[17]
Joe Keery as Steve Harrington (season 2–present; recurring: season 1), a popular high school student and the boyfriend of Nancy Wheeler.
He ostracizes Jonathan Byers but later comes to befriend him. He and Nancy later break up in season two but remain friends. He is known as the "babysitter" of the group since he is often left to look after the kids.[18][17]
Dacre Montgomery as Billy Hargrove (seasons 2–3; guest: season 4), Max's violent, unpredictable, and abusive older stepbrother. He challenges Steve's popularity. In season 3, he is controlled by the Mind Flayer and later sacrifices himself to protect the kids.[17]
Sean Astin as Bob Newby (season 2; guest: season 3), a former schoolmate of Joyce and Hopper who runs the
Hawkins RadioShack[19] and is Joyce's boyfriend, putting him at odds with Hopper. He dies at the end of season 2 after being attacked by Demodogs.[20]
Paul Reiser as Sam Owens (seasons 2 and 4; guest: season 3), a Department of Energy executive who replaces Brenner as director of Hawkins Laboratory. He is stubborn and committed to scientific research, yet empathetic to the residents of Hawkins and helps Hopper adopt Eleven as his legal daughter. He returns with Brenner in season 4 to help Eleven gain back her powers and protects her from the government agents hunting her.[19]
Maya Hawke as Robin Buckley (season 3–present), a girl who works alongside Steve at the ice cream store in the mall who later comes out as a lesbian. She and Steve Harrington are close friends, having worked together at the Scoops Ahoy ice cream shop and later the video store.[21]
Priah Ferguson as Erica Sinclair (season 3–present; recurring:
season 2), Lucas's 10-year-old sister who helps the group. She is revealed to be very smart and have avid interest in D&D.[21]
Brett Gelman as Murray Bauman (season 4; recurring: seasons 2–3), a conspiracy theorist, private investigator, and longtime friend of Hopper's who helps Nancy and Jonathan in season 2 and Hopper and Joyce in seasons 3 and 4.
Jamie Campbell Bower as Henry Creel / One / Vecna (season 4), a murderous psychic being from the Upside Down revealed to have created the Mind Flayer. He was born as a human named Henry
Creel with psionic abilities. After murdering his family and falling into a coma, he was put under the care of Dr. Brenner. Flashbacks in season 4 reveal he was sent to the Upside Down by Eleven when she was nine years old, where he was disfigured by lightning, causing his appearance as Vecna. After exploring the Upside Down, he created the Mind Flayer and took control of the dimension.[22]
Episodes
Main article: List of Stranger Things episodes
Season Episode
s Originally released
1 8 July 15, 2016
2 9 October 27, 2017
3 8 July 4, 2019
4 9
7 May 27, 2022
2 July 1, 2022
5 8[23] TBA
Production
Development
Ross (left) and Matt Duffer, the creators and showrunners of the series
Stranger Things was created by Matt and Ross Duffer, known professionally as the Duffer Brothers,[24] who also serve
as showrunners and head writers and direct many of the episodes. They wrote and produced their 2015 film Hidden, in which they emulated the style of M. Night Shyamalan. However, due to changes at Warner Bros., its distributor, it did not see wide release and the Duffers were unsure of their future.[25] To their surprise, television producer Donald De
Line approached them, impressed with Hidden's script, and offered them the opportunity to work on episodes of Wayward Pines with Shyamalan.
The brothers were mentored by Shyamalan during the episode's
production so that when they finished, they felt they were ready to produce their own television series.[26]
The Duffers prepared a script[when?] similar to the series' eventual pilot episode, along with a 20-page pitch book to help shop the series to networks.[27] They pitched the story to about 15[28] Cable networks, all of whom felt a plot with children as leading characters wouldn't work, and asked the brothers to either make it a children's series or drop the children and focus on Hopper's investigation into the paranormal.[26]
In early 2015, Dan Cohen, the VP of 21 Laps Entertainment, brought the script to his colleague Shawn Levy. They subsequently invited the Duffer Brothers to their office and purchased the rights for the series, giving the brothers full authorship. After reading the pilot, the streaming
service Netflix purchased the whole season for an undisclosed sum,[29] and in April of the same year, the series was announced for a 2016 release.[30]
The Duffer Brothers stated that at the time they pitched to Netflix the company had already been recognized for its original programming in shows such as House of Cards and Orange Is the New Black, with well- recognized producers behind them, and were ready to start giving upcoming producers like them a chance.[27] The brothers started casting and brought Levy and Cohen in as the other executive producers to discuss storylines, with Levy also directing for the show.[31]
Montauk is an eight-hour sci-fi horror epic. Set in Long Island in 1980 and inspired by the supernatural classics of that era, we explore the crossroads where the ordinary meet the extraordinary...emotional, cinematic and rooted in character, Montauk is a
love letter to the golden age of Steven Spielberg and Stephen King – a marriage of human drama and supernatural fear.
— The Duffer Brothers' original pitch for Montauk[32]
The book cover the Duffer Brothers created to pitch Montauk. For this, they took inspiration from Stephen King book covers such as Firestarter.
The series was originally known as Montauk. The setting was
then Montauk, New York, and nearby Long Island locations. Montauk figured into a number of real world conspiracy theories involving secret government experiments.[30][33] The brothers had chosen Montauk as it had further Spielberg ties with the film Jaws, where Montauk was used for the fictional setting of Amity Island.[34] After deciding to change the narrative of the series to take place in the fictional town of Hawkins instead, the brothers felt they could now do things to the town, such as placing it under quarantine, that they really could not envision with a real location.[34]
With the change in location, they had to come up with a new title for the series under direction from Netflix's Ted Sarandos so that they could start marketing it to the public. The brothers started by using a copy of Stephen King's Firestarter novel to consider the title's font and appearance, and came up with a long list of potential alternatives. Stranger Things came about as it sounded similar to another King novel, Needful Things, though Matt noted they still had a "lot of heated arguments" over this final title.[35]
To pitch the series, the Duffer Brothers showcased images, footage and music from classic 1970s and 1980s films such as E.T. the Extra-
Terrestrial, Close Encounters of the Third
Kind, Poltergeist, Hellraiser, Stand by Me, Firestarter, A Nightmare on Elm Street and Jaws, in order to establish the tone of the series.[32]
Writing
The idea of Stranger Things started with how the brothers felt they could take the concept of the 2013 film Prisoners, detailing the moral struggles a father goes through when his daughter is kidnapped, and expand it out over eight or so hours in a serialized television approach. As they focused on the missing child aspect of the story, they wanted to introduce the idea
of "childlike sensibilities" they could offer, and toyed around with the idea of a monster that could consume humans. The brothers thought the combination of these things "was the best thing ever".[26]
To introduce this monster into the narrative, they considered "bizarre experiments we had read about taking place in the Cold War" such as Project MKUltra, which gave a way to ground the monster's existence in science rather than something spiritual. This also helped them to decide on using 1983 as the time period, as it was a year before the film Red Dawn came out, which focused on Cold War paranoia.[26] Subsequently, they were able to use all their own personal inspirations from the 1980s, the decade they were born, as elements of the series,[26][36] crafting it in the realm of science fiction and horror.[37]
Other influences cited by the Duffer Brothers include: Stephen
King novels; films produced by Steven Spielberg, John Carpenter, David Lynch, Wes Craven,[38][39][40][41] and Guillermo del Toro;[35] films such as Star Wars, Alien, and Stand by Me;[35][39][42] Japanese anime such
as Akira and Elfen Lied;[35][38] and several video games including Silent Hill, Dark Souls and The Last of Us.[43][44][38] The Duffer Brothers believe that they may have brought influences from other works unintentionally, including Beyond the Black Rainbow and D.A.R.Y.L., discovered by reviewing fan feedback on the series.[34] Several websites and publications have found other pop culture references in the series, particularly
references to 1980s pop culture.[45][46][47][48] The main villain for the last seasons was inspired by the villains that scared the brothers when they watched the movies and miniseries as children: Freddy
Krueger, Pinhead and Pennywise.[49]
With Netflix as the platform, the Duffer Brothers were not limited to a typical 22-episode format, opting for the eight-episode approach. They had been concerned that a 22-episode season on broadcast television would be difficult to "tell a cinematic story" with that many episodes. Eight episodes allowed them to give time to characterization in addition to narrative development; if they had less time available, they would have had to remain committed to telling a horror film as soon as the monster was introduced and abandon the characterization.[27] Within the eight episodes, the brothers aimed to make the first season "feel like a big movie" with all the major plot lines completed so that "the audience feels satisfied", but left enough unresolved to indicate "there's a bigger
mythology, and there's a lot of dangling threads at the end", something that could be explored in further seasons if Netflix opted to create more.[50]
Regarding writing for the children characters of the series, the Duffer Brothers considered themselves as outcasts from other students while in high school and thus found it easy to write for Mike and his friends, and particularly for Barb.[35] Joyce was fashioned after Richard Dreyfuss'
character Roy Neary in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, as she appears "absolutely bonkers" to everyone else as she tries to find Will.[51]
