Stranger Things Season 1 offered us monsters, evil government agents, telekinetic kids and a mysterious shadow realm mirroring our own. Though the eight episode season wrapped up a number of the series’ major mysteries, there remain plenty of loose threads for a presumptive second season for the hit Netflix Original Series. But while the confusing mythology of of Stranger Things may have the same loosely random feel of Lost , Twin Peaks or The Prisoner, there is a plan in place for the future direction of the series.
The Duffer Brothers (Matt and Ross), who created and wrote Stranger Things, spoke to Variety about the future of the Netflix series and the elaborate mythology they have built.
At the end of the first season of Stranger Things, Chief Hopper is setting out Eggos for Eleven, who disappeared after defeating the monster from the Upside Down parallel dimension adjacent to our own. It’s a dark and horrifying world that the Duffers promise would be explored in a future season.
And they already know a lot of the answers. Here’s Ross Duffer describing the unexplored mythology they’re holding in reserve for the next season of Stranger Things:
“With the Upside Down, we have a 30-page document that is pretty intricate in terms of what it all means, and where this monster actually came from, and why aren’t there more monsters — we have all this stuff that we just didn’t have time for, or we didn’t feel like we needed to get into in season one, because of the main tension of Will. We have that whole other world that we haven’t fully explored in this season, and that was very purposeful.”
“ We wanted a simple drive and a somewhat simple mystery with bizarre pops of supernatural horror and then add a larger mythology behind this rift that we only know and refer to as the Upside Down because that’s what the boys decide to call it,” Matt said. “They’re theorizing based on their knowledge from fantasy gaming and their science teacher, Mr. Clarke. That’s as much as we get to understand it.”
“If there was going to be a season two, we would reveal more of that 30 page document, but we’d still want to keep it from the point of view of our original characters,” Ross said.
It sounds like a big part of their 30-page mythology document deals with the nature of the Upside Down, suggesting the parallel universe will also play a big part in a theoretical Stranger Things Season 2. Ross explained some of the consequences that might spin out of Will’s time in the Upside Down:
“ Will’s been there for an entire week, and it’s had some kind of effect on him, both emotionally and perhaps physically. The idea is he’s escaped this nightmare place, but has he really? That’s a place we wanted to go and potentially explore in season two. What effect does living in there for a week have on him? And what has been done to him? It’s not good, obviously.”
So while Stranger Things may not offer all the answers, the Duffer Brothers have always had the complete picture in mind and will deploy more and more of their elaborate mythology as they prepare Stranger Things Season 2.
