Netflix announce details of Stranger Things spin-off and release tense teaser

It's set in the 1950s

Stranger Things

Author: Anna Sky MagliolaPublished 6th Nov 2026

It's been a long time coming, but as the world celebrates Stranger Things Day (on the 6th November), fans have been delighted to find out more about the highly-anticipated spin-off. Also created by The Duffer Brothers - the pair behind the original series - along with longtime writer Kate Trefry, Netflix have announced details of what's to come.

News was announced on social media, along with the trailer, with fans getting super excited about it, with many quoting lines from the main series.

One commented: 'Friends don’t lie, and I honestly can’t wait for this!', another said: 'Please release it on 6th Nov 2028.'

Another just said: 'Conformity gate !!!' referencing the theory that circulated earlier this year, in which it was actually all an illusion by Vecna.

What is the name of the Stranger Things spin-off?

Earlier this year, Stranger Things: Tales From ‘85 was released, the animated series was set between seasons two and three of Stranger Things. However, this new spin-off is a live-action series, called Other Worlds: A Stranger Things Adventure.

When is it set?

The prequel is set in 1955, before the award-winning stage show, Stranger Things: The First Shadow, which followed Henry Creel's past in Hawkins - set in 1959.

What is it about?

Not a lot is known about the series, however The Duffer Brothers told Tudum: "We’ve been dreaming of Other Worlds: A Stranger Things Adventure for many years now, and to see it become a reality is surreal and exhilarating.

"It’s Stranger Things, but also thrillingly fresh, with a new setting, new heroes and villains, and new … actually, we’re not allowed to say any more. Now, on to casting. In the meantime — watch the skies, nerds!"

Is there a trailer?

Yes, there is! Netflix announced details of the new show with a teaser trailer. While the trailer doesn't reveal much, fans get to hear a 50s song playing on a radio, as it pans towards a kid's bike, with the radio attached, before revealing it's next to a restricted area.

We are soon introduced to a new world, as the words 'APRIL 19, 1955, MARION, NEVADA', appear on the screen.

Where is the series set?

The series is set in Marion, Nevada. Production will take place in New Mexico.

When will it be released?

We don't have an exact date for the release, however the teaser revealed it will be out in 2028 - so we have quite a while to wait!

Here are some facts you probably didn't know about Stranger Things:

1) Who composed the soundtrack?

The composers of the Stranger Things soundtrack (Michael Stein and Kyle Dixon) are two members of an Austin synth band called SURVIVE; their music was featured in the soundtrack of the 2014 film The Guest, starring Dan Stevens.

2) The original trailer was based on Hollywood horror films

To help sell the show, the Duffers edited a mock 'trailer' combining clips from over 25 feature films, including E.T., Nightmare on Elm Street, Super 8 and Halloween. They found the music of US band SURVIVE and thought it'd be the perfect soundtrack for the trailer, so they requested to use it, with the band members telling Billboard in August 2016: "They had a preliminary mock trailer they made to pitch the idea and they used the last song on our first LP, 'Dirge'. They sent it to us and said, 'We have this show we're working on, are you still a band?' We hadn't released anything in a couple years and when they asked if we were available we were like, 'Yeah!' That was July 3 of last year. They asked if we had any other music and... we sent them 50 songs the next day. They responded with a bunch of exclamation points. We had a couple calls to get to know each other and we knew we were pitching against a couple other composers."

3) Winona Ryder's hairstyle inspiration

Winona Ryder wanted her hairstyle modelled after Meryl Streep's hair in Silkwood, with Stranger Things Hair Designer Sarah Hindsgaul writing on Instagram: 'Winona is the reason I'm on Stranger Things. For this look we pulled inspiration from Meryl Streep in Silkwood. We almost cut her real hair, but a last-minute switch to a wig gave us the style you see here. And to this day, I'm grateful for her trust, her kindness, and her friendship. She's pure magic.'

4) The title sequence was 80s inspired

The title sequence was inspired by the work of Richard Greenberg, who designed a number of classic 80s title sequences including Alien, Altered States, Superman and The Goonies - which starred a young Sean Astin, who later appeared in Stranger Things as Joyce's boyfriend Bob Newby. The Duffer Brothers told Typeroom: 'What (Greenberg) specialised in was using just graphics: title graphics, titles over titles. That's something we really wanted to do. Part of it was, it felt it represented the show well. What if we just go back to the simplicity of these great titles we loved growing up? There's something to us that feels epic about those titles.'

5) The writers had an 80s movie marathon

Before starting the show, the writers all watched (or rewatched) a large list of films, including E.T., Stand By Me, The Goonies, The Thing and A Nightmare on Elm Street. They also created a 'look book' which was designed in the style of a vintage Stephen King novel, to help sell the show. They told The Hollywood Reporter how they'd created the font, with Matt saying: "We were working with this company called Imaginary Forces, and I think we sent them 14 or 15 different covers, not all Stephen King, but 90 percent Stephen King paperback covers, that we really liked. They came back with that font, and that was really close to what is in the show."

Ross added: "When we sold the show to Netflix, and when we were pitching it around to companies, we made a little look book. In the front cover, we made it look like an old Stephen King book, and we had a very similar font in the red and the outline and there was a bike that was just on the ground that was lost. It's funny, it's a year and a little bit later and I'm seeing these billboards with this bike on the ground. It's actually amazing how much, and it's exciting that Netflix just embraced the tone and they embraced what we wanted to do, that it stayed true to that feeling from beginning to end."

6) Which two stars worked together before?

Winona Ryder and Matthew Modine (Dr. Martin Brenner) have appeared together once before, in the music video for Roy Orbison's 'A Love So Beautiful'. Matthew told The Guardian about working with her: "Roy Orbison had passed when we made the music video, so no, I didn't get to meet him. It really was a tribute to him. I knew Winona from her work and vice versa – she is a passionate fan of Birdy. It was a pleasure to meet and work with her. The song is so tragically beautiful."

7) Which child stars were on Broadway?

Gaten Matarazzo (Dustin), Caleb McLaughlin (Lucas) and Sadie Sink (Max) have all acted on Broadway. Gaten played Gavroche in Les Miserables, Caleb played Young Simba in The Lion King and Sadie played the title role in Annie. The two boys knew each other but they didn't become close friends until after working on Stranger Things.

8) A few of the actors aren't actually American

Charlie Heaton (Jonathan Byers), Millie Brown (Eleven), Joseph Quinn (Eddie Munson), Jamie Campbell Bower (Vecna/Henry Creel) and Nell Fisher (Holly Wheeler S5) are all from the UK. Charlie is from Bridlington, East Yorkshire and Millie is from Bournemouth, Dorset. Although she was originally born in Marbella, Spain to British parents, the family moved back to the UK when she was four and lived in Bournemouth for four years. They then relocated once more to Orlando, Florida four years later - so although she was brought up in a British family, she lived a lot of her life in the US as a child. Meanwhile Joseph, Jamie and Nell are all from London.

9) Gaten's voice changed throughout the first season

Gaten's voice changed so much by the time production ended that the sound team were unable to use him for additional dialogue recording. Finn Wolfhard (Mike) told GQ in 2023: "I think even in season one, people were changing pretty rapidly. Another shout out to Gaten. His voice changed halfway through filming - probably episode four. His voice is completely different. If you go back, you can tell that his voice changed, which is really funny. I guess that's the nature of working with kids for an extended period."

10) Caleb's idea on his costume

It was Caleb's request to wear a camouflage bandana in the show. He told GQ in 2019: "The bandana was my idea. I felt like Lucas would want a bandana because he was into combat and the army. So I just asked, 'Can I get a bandana over here?' I had the privilege to do that." He also told Flaunt in 2020: "When I was younger, I would go out and play with my sister in our backyard. I would put on the Captain America mask and put a cape on to get ready, and it was Lucas' moment to put on the bandana and utility belt. If he had the utility belt and wrist rocket, he definitely had a bandana."

11) How was the Demogorgon made?

The monster was achieved through a combination of prosthetics, animatronics, performance and CG. The Duffer Brothers told Entertainment Weekly: "It has always been something of a lifelong dream to create a monster and bring it to life on-screen. Not in the computer, but for real. To build it. Like so many filmmakers our age and older, we grew up on genre films that existed before computer graphics. There was something about the effects being so tangible in those films that made them especially terrifying to us when we were kids. We're specifically thinking about Ridley Scott's Alien, John Carpenter's The Thing, and Clive Barker's Hellraiser. So from very early on we knew we wanted to build an animatronic monster."

They hired concept designer Aaron Sims to help them get their initial design ideas down, then worked with company Spectral Motion who've worked with Guillermo del Toro to make the animatronic creature. They added: "It is an interdimensional being that has more in common with the shark from Jaws than Pennywise from It."

12) Monsters Inc. helped children on set

The toddlers on set were very scared by the 'monster', but they were calmed when told that he was just like the monsters in Monsters Inc. In the same Entertainment Weekly interview, they explained: "We loved it, and so did the actors. Well… not all of them. There were some toddlers on set: Millie's little sister, Ava, as well as Anniston and Tinsley, the twins who play toddler Holly. As you can expect, these little girls were all terrified by the monster. Finally someone had the clever idea to tell them that the monster was not a bad monster at all; rather, he came from world of Monstropolis in Monsters, Inc. And it worked! The monster wasn't scary to them anymore, he was a friend! This was even more satisfying given that Millie's little sister looks and behaves exactly like Boo."

13) How did they get Millie to float in the water?

The gang really did create a salt bath, and Millie Bobby Brown actually floated - there were no effects used! To get Millie to float in a kiddie pool, twelve hundred pounds of epsom salt were dissolved into the water. She told Variety in 2022: "I'm not gonna lie, that was hard. The amount of salt that they put in there in order for me to float is real. They actually do get an egg and put it in the water, and if it floats, then that's when I can get in. I'm in there for a few days, 10 to 12 hours a day. Everyone's moving around you and you can't get out. I couldn't hear anyone, because obviously my ears were underwater. So when I'd get notes, I was just hoping that I was doing what maybe they were saying. We had to use a microphone in order for them to actually get their note across to me. Also, I suffer from claustrophobia, so when we closed the tank, I definitely felt like, 'Oh my gosh, I am Eleven, I am really going through this.' Obviously, what she has to go through, reliving those memories, was probably harder, though, than a tank."

14) Millie's incredible water tank stunt

For some of the laboratory scenes, Millie (Eleven) was fully submerged in an underwater immersion tank. She was able to breathe by wearing a Sea Trek helmet, which weighs approximately 70 lbs above water; it weighs 15 lbs beneath the surface of the water. The helmet was designed for shallow 'underwater walking'.

15) Did Millie really shave her head for Stranger Things?

Millie had to shave most of her hair off for the show and as can be expected of any 11-year-old girl this was a terrifying prospect. The Duffers showed her how cool Charlize Theron looked in Mad Max: Fury Road after which Millie agreed to it. In 2025, she called it a "liberating experience" that she would "love" to do again now that she's older. However, Millie did not shave her head again for season four, with the Stranger Things Instagram page sharing a video in 2022 of a wig being applied to her head.

16) Stand By Me was a pivotal film for auditions

The Duffers had all the boys audition with scenes from Stand By Me. Casting director Carmen Cuba told Casting Frontier: "We made a real effort to find kids that could embody the idea of being an outsider. We hoped that interesting kids would bring the material to life. And the truth is the material was so great, so set, the tone was all clear. Sometimes when you're casting, it's a little ambiguous, and you sort of find it while you're auditioning. And that wasn't the case with this. We just needed to match the kids to the quality of the characters as written."

17) David Harbour did NOT think the show would be a success

David Harbour appeared on The One Show in 2022, and was asked if he thought it would be a success. He said: "Not at all. I remember when we were shooting the first season. We were down in Atlanta, Netflix had given us a budget of about $20 and we thought halfway through... I remember my hair person coming up to me, about episode 4 we were shooting, and she said, 'I don't think it's going to work'."

The actor continued: "So by the time we wrapped, I thought we wouldn't get a second season, we'd be the first Netflix show ever to never get a second season. We thought no one would watch it, it was going to be a disaster."

His co-star Natalia Dyer (AKA Nancy Wheeler) added to The Independent in 2020: "Nobody knew if it was going to get picked up again after we finished filming season one. There was really an air of, 'We might never see each other again'. No-one had any idea how successful the show would be. There was no preparation – there couldn't have been, even if we'd known. It was a surprising and overwhelming shock. Then it was like, 'OK, this is how it is now'."

Author: Anna Sky Magliola

Anna Sky Magliola is a Digital Content Editor at Rayo, creating content for brands including Hits Radio, Greatest Hits Radio, KISS, Cool FM and Magic Radio. She began her career at Bauer Media in 2007 and has spent almost two decades creating engaging digital content for millions of readers, specialising in music news, celebrity interviews and TV features. A passionate dance music fan, Anna Sky has travelled the world to experience some of the biggest festivals and is always looking for the next great music story.