The Duffer Brothers have effectively ruled out eventually revisiting Mike, Eleven and co. in a “Stranger Things” sequel as a “gross cash grab,” despite a spinoff of the Netflix hit on the horizon.
Matt Duffer told The Hollywood Reporter that “there’s no plan or intention to tell the story because it’s a coming-of-age story. Ultimately, that’s what it’s supposed to be. That’s what the show always was.”
SPOILER ALERT: This article contains spoilers from the “Stranger Things” series finale.
The Emmy-winning show’s conclusion arrived in theaters and on the streamer Wednesday night, and featured the expansive gang defeating Henry/Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower). Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) sacrificed herself to collapse the Upside Down and eradicate all the horrors that have to do with it. Eighteen months later, newly minted high school graduates Mike (Finn Wolfhard), Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin), Max (Sadie Sink), Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo), and Will (Noah Schnapp) play one last round of Dungeons and Dragons, during which Mike theorizes that Eleven faked her death and is in living somewhere remote and beautiful.
“I mean, Mike’s closing the basement door. We’re closing the door on the story,” said Matt Duffer. “He’s closing the door on his childhood and he’s moving onto adulthood.”
Though Duffer acknowledged there could be a follow-up exploring “a midlife crisis” for the group, he decided it “just sounds really uninteresting! [Laughs] Grandpa Hopper? I don’t know how that would read as anything but a gross cash grab to me.”
Then again, there is a “Stranger Things” Broadway show — whose lore contributes to the fifth and final season — and a spinoff in the works, which Duffer said will center on “new characters and a new mythology.”
But, he added, “It feels like … we finished saying everything we wanted to say about these characters, this story and the Upside Down.”
