Stranger Things creators reveal the biggest question answered in the final season and tease future spin-offs

Over one billion hours streamed of the most recent season; sold-out West End and Broadway shows; 15 million Funko Pop action figures bought by obsessed fans.

Stranger Things is, by any metric, a runaway success, a bona fide pop culture phenomenon for under-20s to rival Star Wars or Marvel. One can only imagine the dream team of top writers, big-name stars and slick executives who brainstormed Netflix’s mega-hit into existence. Or perhaps not…

“We were all failures. Complete failures,” says Matt Duffer, one half of the twin writer-director duo known as The Duffer Brothers, who created the drama. “Before we made this, we had only experienced heartbreak. We thought it was going to happen again.”

From where they’re sitting as we speak, the star attraction at one of Europe’s biggest pop culture conventions in Lucca, Italy, his words seem ridiculous. Attended by 280,000 guests, the festival – which saw the 41-year-old brothers and the cast swamped by hordes of screaming fans – is but a modest first stop on a worldwide press tour for Stranger Things 5, the culmination of their franchise nine years after it began.

But back in 2016, it was a different story. The Duffers weren’t sought-after creatives – they were 30-something wannabe film directors whose first projects had stalled. The story of Stranger Things and Will, a young boy who disappears in the 1980s while a terrifying monster attacks his friends, was deemed uncommercial. And while Winona Ryder (who plays the missing boy’s mother, Joyce) had been a star in her day, the rest of the cast was largely filled with unknowns and untested child stars.

“None of us had had a success,” says Matt’s brother Ross. “We were a group of misfit toys.”

It’s a familiar feeling for them. Born in North Carolina in 1984 – a few months after the first season of Stranger Things is set – the Duffer brothers remember themselves as uncool, movie-obsessed nerds, bullied and overlooked in much the same way as the heroes of their series.

“One reason Ross and I loved film so much was because it was transportive,” says Matt. “You get to experience worlds and characters that you wouldn’t otherwise. We lived in a medium-sized town in North Carolina, but we got to go on all these incredible adventures.”

As adults, after trying and failing to make it in movies, the pair turned to TV, where those childhood experiences came in handy. “We always felt like outsiders growing up,” says Ross. “Obviously, we didn’t have monsters thrown in our way, or anyone kidnapped. But you still have so many obstacles growing up, and it can feel hard to fit in, and it can be so scary at times.”

Those feelings of not belonging, of endless childhood possibility – plus their formative love of 70s and 80s creatives like Steven Spielberg, Stephen King and John Carpenter – would form the nucleus of what became Stranger Things.

At first, their script for Montauk – as the series was originally called – was rejected “15 to 20” times. Eventually, Hollywood director Shawn Levy (Night at the Museum, Deadpool & Wolverine) took a chance and backed the young creatives. But even then, no one seriously expected the show to last long.

“When we were working on season one, we weren’t expecting there to be a season two,” Matt says. “I would say David Harbour was the least confident that the show would be successful.”

That’s putting it mildly. Harbour, who has played gruff police chief Jim Hopper since the first episode, was so downhearted at the lack of promotion for Stranger Things that he locked himself away in his apartment, stayed off the internet and shaved his head.

“He loved doing the show, and he was proud of it, but he was discouraged by the lack of subway ads that Netflix put out,” Matt laughs.

But despite starting slowly, the first season became a word-of-mouth hit, snowballing into a pop culture behemoth. It went viral online, attracting celebrity fans and huge viewing figures. Soon, people were dressing up as Millie Bobby Brown’s telekinetic pre-teen Eleven for Halloween, buying action figures of the monstrous Demogorgon and raiding their parents’ wardrobes to copy the 80s fashion.

The fictional town of Hawkins, Indiana, where the show is set, now has its name plastered on millions of T-shirts around the world.And with each subsequent season, the buzz and cultural power only grew. The use of Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill in a pivotal scene in Stranger Things 4 saw the song shoot to number one in the UK for the first time.

But unquestionably, the biggest boost was felt by the show’s youngest cast members, catapulted from relatively ordinary lives to stardom incredibly quickly. Just 12 when she started filming, British actor Millie Bobby Brown – who as Eleven, became the face of the series – is now one of the world’s most in-demand actors. Her similarly-aged co-stars Gaten Matarazzo, Caleb McLaughlin, Noah Schnapp, Finn Wolfhard and Sadie Sink, who form the core “party” of the series, have also gone on to become Hollywood fixtures.

“Millie says she doesn’t remember life before Stranger Things,” Matt says. “That’s how much of a part of their lives this show is. So, moving past it, I think it’s both freeing and exciting, but also sad and scary for them.”

“Any time we see them out doing other films and working with other great film-makers, it’s such a thrill,” adds Ross. “It’s amazing to discover someone and sort of show them to the world.”

“You hear horror stories,” continues Matt. “You know, you create a star and they turn into a monster. That wasn’t the case. I wouldn’t say we feel like parental figures to the cast, more like older brothers. That makes me feel less old.”

Of course, while not quite as baby-faced as their cast, the Duffers were just 32 when Stranger Things debuted. Today, it’s hard to imagine a pair of unproven writer/directors being given the keys to a show as big as this.

“When you look back at season one,” says Ross, “it feels quaint and small compared to now – but it felt like a massive undertaking.”

“We’ve certainly learnt a lot about visual effects,” adds Matt. “I rewatch season one and I cringe. It looks so much worse.”

“We also had a lot less money,” interjects Ross.

“True – but we also didn’t know what we were doing!” Matt concludes. “And did we know it was going to take 10 years? Absolutely not. We’ve sometimes had to turn down interesting opportunities, but we have no regrets about staying on and telling this particular story.”

Their story comes to an end with Stranger Things 5. We return to a Hawkins transformed – after the evil Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower) literally cracked open the town in the previous season, its residents are now under quarantine. Meanwhile, a military group is conducting experiments on the Upside Down, an alternate dimension, which has been leaking into the real world since season one. It’s up to our heroes to track down Vecna and save their town.

“Every season, we would run out of time or space to explore everything,” says Matt. “We’d say, ‘we’ll deal with that next season’. There wasn’t that luxury any more.”

“The big one is, what is the Upside Down, exactly?” adds Ross. “That’s the biggest question that we wanted to answer.”

Four episodes drop this week, followed by three more on Boxing Day. The feature-length finale, which is being screened in some cinemas in America, comes to Netflix on New Year’s Eve. “The scale is bigger than anything we’ve had before,” says Matt. “Hopefully it’s fun, exciting, scary – everything you want out of the show.”

The Duffers are good at keeping secrets. They won’t be drawn on plot hints, character deaths or even details on the other hot topic among fans – a long-rumoured spin-off that remains a mystery. But following the prequel stage play in London and New York, Stranger Things: The First Shadow, anticipation is high for more Stranger Things stories.

“I don’t want to say too much,” says Ross. “We’ve had the idea for a live-action spin-off for a few years, and only recently have we actually had the time and bandwidth to work on it. That’s sort of the next big thing in the Stranger Things universe. But it’s not a continuation of the story of any of these characters in the flagship show, or of Hawkins. We really are trying to close the door on all of that with this final season. So it’s a new story, but one that works in this universe.”

“It very much feels like Stranger Things,” agrees Matt. “As soon as Stranger Things 5 releases we’re going to jump into working properly on the spin-off. We’re really excited about it.”

Sometimes, however, success can be as much of a burden as failure. “I liked in season one that we felt we were under the radar,” Matt muses. “I liked the underdog status that we had. So it’s been hard losing that.

“But it’s worth the trade-off. You have so many people watching the show, it allows us to tell exactly the story that we want to tell.”

Subconsciously or not, he slips back into the language of Stranger Things to conclude his point. “There’s definitely more upside than downside.”

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