The entirety of 2025 has just been one big build-up to the main event of the year: Stranger Things season 5. That might a bit hyperbolic, but for a lot of fans, it's not at all. We have been waiting upwards of three years for the Netflix original series to return with its final season, and that's finally going to happen across three holidays in November and December.
Even though the Duffer Brothers have officially jumped ship from Netflix to Paramount with a new deal, they are still hard at work crafting a Stranger Things spinoff series as fans know. But the offshoot series might not be what some have envisioned. The creators have given a new update on the spinoff and brought what to expect from it into clearer focus.
Speaking in an interview with Variety, the Duffer Brothers revealed that the Stranger Things spinoff won't be like Star Wars. So, what does that mean? Well, it means that the spinoff won't have any of the same characters or even take place in Hawkins. The storylines won't carry over or build on the existing mythology. The spinoff will be its own thing. Is that what fans want?
It's hard to say what fans would want from a Stranger Things spinoff series without having seen the grand finale of the flagship series. While there are definitely some fans who would love to continue following some characters on a new adventure or explore the past in a prequel series, the prospect of a completely new idea from the Duffer Brothers that's somehow still Stranger Things is exciting.
Matt Duffer explained the reasoning for moving on from the show's main storylines: "We do every last remaining thing we wanted to do with the Demogorgons and Mind Flayer and Vecna and the Upside Down and Hawkins and these characters. This is a complete story. It’s done." He continued by sharing that the tone and style will be similar but won't be the exact same. We can expect the spinoff to have "kids, adventures, sci-fi/fantasy, rather than increasingly expand what could become an insanely convoluted mythology."
Meanwhile, Ross Duffer further explained why they have diverged from fellow high-profile franchises and decided to chart a new course. "They’re going to live in a bit of a different world. There’s going to be connective tissue, but you’re almost anthologizing in a way. Because we’re not Star Wars. We can’t be like, 'Oh, now we’re on this planet.'"
Arguably, the spinoff series could take place concurrently in a different corner of the United States that hasn't been explored but was going through the same impacts as Hawkins. But the Duffers obviously have a much better and more original idea that being confined by the constraints of the concept they came up with and the world they building almost 10 years ago.
The Duffers will be involved with the spinoff as creators and from creative aspects behind the scenes, but they won't be the showrunners. They're keeping the idea for the spinoff so close to the vest that even Netflix doesn't know exactly what they have planned. But the brothers admitted that they have been having a blast "starting with new characters" and a "clean slate" without having to factor in anything they have established in Stranger Things.
Whether you're annoyed that the spinoff series won't focus on a character like Steve or somehow be an Eddie Munson origin story or you're looking forward to seeing what's in store for what this mysterious spinoff entails, we'll be waiting quite some time before it hits our watch list. Currently, there's no timeframe for when the live-action spinoff will be released on Netflix.