Netflix is making a live-action Stranger Things prequel, Other Worlds: A Stranger Things Adventure, set in 1955 Marion, Nevada and due in 2028.
Netflix’s Tudum announcement, timed for Stranger Things Day, puts the show in the 1950s, decades before the gang uncovered a supernatural conspiracy in their small town. According to ABC News, a teaser shows a tipped-over bicycle with a radio and a cloudy sky, then a caption reading “April 19, 1955, Marion, Nevada”.
Matt and Ross Duffer, who created Stranger Things, are co-creating the series with Kate Trefry, a longtime writer on the show.
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.
Matt and Ross Duffer, creators of Stranger Things
Netflix hasn’t announced a cast or a plot, and 2028 is the only release window it has given.
Who’s making it
Trefry is showrunner, co-creator, and writer. She also wrote the stage play Stranger Things: The First Shadow. Joe Wright, the BAFTA and Golden Globe-winning director of Pride & Prejudice, Atonement, and Darkest Hour, will direct the first three episodes and executive produce.
The executive producers also include the Duffers through their Upside Down Pictures, Shawn Levy and his 21 Laps, Paul Dichter, Shelley Meals, Andrea Sperling, and Pavlina Hatoupis. Production will take place in New Mexico.
According to Deadline, the Duffers won’t run the show day to day, because they have an exclusive overall deal at Paramount. Their Stranger Things work through Upside Down Pictures is carved out. In September, Deadline reported the project was said to be nearing a greenlight for a 2027 production start, though Netflix wouldn’t confirm the pickup until Stranger Things Day.
Where it fits
Other Worlds predates The First Shadow, which follows Henry Creel’s troubled past in Hawkins in 1959. Deadline says the new series takes place a couple of years before the Nevada experiment in that play. Matt Duffer told Variety last November the series would answer loose threads, including the rock young Henry finds in a scientist’s briefcase in the Nevada caves. Netflix hasn’t confirmed any link to Hawkins Lab or Henry Creel.
ScreenRant reads the move to Marion as the payoff to season 3’s biggest tease, from 2019. That season revealed a Russian base under Starcourt Mall, where a new portal to the Upside Down was opened. It ended with Hopper (David Harbour) taken prisoner after his apparent death. According to ScreenRant, season 4 continued his rescue without fully exploring the Russian experiments. Netflix’s announcement doesn’t mention season 3 or the base.
Stranger Things ended in 2025 after five seasons, having debuted in 2016. Netflix says seasons 1 to 4 drew more than 1.2 billion views. Other Worlds is the second TV spin-off, after the animated Tales From ’85, which fills the gap between seasons 2 and 3. Counting the play, it’s the third spin-off overall.
The Duffers signed off with “watch the skies, nerds!”
