The final season of “Stranger Things” is arriving on Netflix sometime this year. The creators of the show, Matt and Ross Duffer, aka The Duffer Brothers, were part of the Next on Netflix 2025 event on Wednesday to introduce a new, sigh, behind-the-scenes promo. But, like a ComicCon, D23, or, in Netflix’s case, a Tudum event, they teased other projects on the horizon.
READ MORE: “Stranger Things”: The Duffer Brothers say season 5 will be the “Biggest” yet and confirm the end of specific characters’ stories
First, The Duffer Brothers hyped “Stranger Things: The First Shadow,” the Olivier Award-winning play that is headed to Broadway in March. Ross Duffer said the show running on Broadway is “really surreal and just a dream come true for us.” Speaking directly from prepared remarks off a teleprompter (can’t say anything off the cuff), Matt Duffer also said that while the main “Stranger Things” series is coming to an end, there are more stories to tell and “in the works.”
“It’s a bit early at this point to talk about them, but we’re deeply involved in every one — it’s very important to us that anything with the ‘Stranger Things’ name on it is of the highest quality and not repetitive — that it has a reason to exist and always blazes its own path,” Duffer noted. “And also, it needs to basically just be… awesome. Or we need to think it’s awesome. And there are a lot of what we think are awesome things in the pipeline.”
The Duffer Brothers company, Upside Down Pictures, has a strategic partnership with the streamer, and two new series have already finished production so far. First up, “The Boroughs.”
“Of the two projects, ‘The Boroughs’ probably shares the most DNA with ‘Stranger Things’ because it’s about a group of misfits who fight an otherworldly evil,” Matt Duffer says, “Only unlike ‘Stranger Things,’ it’s set in a retirement community, so that’s something different. This time our misfits are a little on the older side. They ride golf carts, not bikes. It stars Alfred Molina, Geena Davis, Alfre Woodard, Bill Pullman, and a host of other screen icons who we’re obsessed with. We’ve seen the first three episodes, and we’re really pumped about it. It’s fun, scary, and touching too, and we can’t wait for you to see it.”
Other reported members of the cast include Jena Malone and Denis O’Hare. In material provided to the press, Netflix did not have “The Boroughs” listed as a release for 2025.
The other new series on deck is “Something Very Bad is Going to Happen” and it also was not included as a 2025 drop. Ross reveals that the series “follows a bride and groom in a chaotic, anxiety-filled week leading up to their wedding. It dives into the horror and dread that often comes with making a lifelong commitment to someone — something that anyone who’s ever been in a relationship can definitely relate to. We don’t want to say too much more about the story yet — but the title is accurate. Bad things do happen.”
Matt adds, “The show’s written by Haley Z. Boston. This is her first show, and she is a major new talent, we think, as are the stars of the show — Camila Morrone and Adam DiMarco — and the director, Weronika Tofilska, who recently directed a little show you may have heard of called ‘Baby Reindeer,’ you should check it out.”
“Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen” also stars Jennifer Jason Leigh (“Fargo”), Ted Levine (“Monk,” “Big Sky”), Gus Birney (“Shining Vale”), Jeff Wilbusch (“Unorthodox”), Karla Crome (“Lazarus”), and Zlatko Burić (“Triangle of Sadness”).
And, needless to say, the siblings have no plans on leaving the streamer anytime soon. Ross adds, “We’re gonna be hanging around at Netflix, which has been our home for the past 10 years. We couldn’t ask for better partners. If you want to tell original stories like we do, this is really the place to be.”