Stranger Things Season 2: What we know so far

Check out the teaser trailer for Stranger Things, as the Duffer Brothers give some hint on what to expect, including a James Cameron influence

Feature by The Skinny | 01 Sep 2016

Fans of Netflix's outrageously nostalgic and entertaining sci-fi series Stranger Things were delighted yesterday as a second series was officially confirmed. The news came via Twitter with this cryptic trailer.

Taking the style of Stranger Things' opening titles, complete with Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein’s synth score, the blood red letters slowly converge to read “Season Two”, but more interesting are the mysterious words and phrases that appear in the centre of the screen as the titles converge. Here’s what pops up:

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

Could these be episode titles? They certainly have the same pulpy cadence as the episodes for series one, which had titles like “The Weirdo on Maple Street”, “The Flea and the Acrobat” and “The Body”.

If so, it suggests we’re getting nine episodes in this series, one more than the first. The phrase "The Lost Brother" also suggests a new character – could the Byers boys have a sibling we don’t know about?

There were a few more clues given by the show's creators, the Duffer Brothers, when they spoke to Entertainment Weekly yesterday.

First, Ross Duffer confirmed that this will be a continuation of series one, back in Hawkins with the original characters, and not an anthology series like True Detective or American Horror Story as some had predicted. “I don’t think we ever thought anthology,” he told EW. “I think we talked like a larger time jump where the kids are older now and it’s a different decade. That’s something we batted around from the very beginning. But for us, there’s still more story here [in the 1980s], there’s still things that are unresolved.”

So rejoice, the great young actors who played Mike, Dustin, Lucas and Will will be back, along with the older teens (Nancy, Jonathan and Steve) as well as Winona Ryder as Joyce Byers and David Harbour as Sheriff Hopper. We’re still in the dark about one key character, however. “We don’t know about Eleven,” says Ross Duffer. “We leave that up in the air.”

Matt Duffer explains that, in true 80s style, they’ve approached season two as a blockbuster sequel. “I know movie sequels get a lot of shit, but the ones we look up to aspire to pivot and do something different,” he told EW, name-checking specific examples like ...Temple of Doom, Aliens, and Terminator 2. “I guess a lot of this is James Cameron,” says Duffer. “But he’s brilliant.”

It seems, then, that if season one's key influence was Spielberg, season two's will be the Terminator and Aliens director. “I think one of the reasons [Cameron]’s sequels are as successful as they are is he makes them feel very different without losing what we loved about the original,” says Matt Duffer. “So I think we kinda looked to him and what he does and tried to capture a little bit of the magic of his work.”

One thing is for certain, get ready to have some more nightmares, because we’ll be returning to the Upside Down. “We kinda just peeled back the curtain and revealed a tiny bit of the Upside Down,” says Matt. “So we definitely want to explore a little bit more. 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.”

As the trailer says, “In the fall of 1984, the adventure continues.” We can’t wait.

Stranger Things season two will come to Netflix sometime in 2017. Season one is streaming on Netflix now.

Can't wait for season two? Here are some are some films and TV shows that might sate your appetite until series two comes along in our What to Watch after Stranger Things playlist.