Stranger Things is an American television series created by the Duffer Brothers for Netflix. Produced by Monkey Massacre Productions and 21 Laps Entertainment, the first season was released on Netflix on July 15, 2016. The second and third seasons followed in October 2017 and July 2019, respectively, and the fourth season was released in two volumes in May and July 2022. The fifth and final season was released in three volumes, including the finale, in November and December 2025. The show combines elements of horror, science fiction, mystery, coming-of-age, and drama.
Set in the 1980s, the series centers on the residents of the fictional town of Hawkins, Indiana, after a young girl with psychokinetic abilities named Eleven inadvertently creates a wormhole known as the Upside Down at a nearby secretive government research facility, connecting Earth to a hostile realm called the Abyss. The ensemble cast includes Winona Ryder, David Harbour, Finn Wolfhard, Millie Bobby Brown, Gaten Matarazzo, Caleb McLaughlin, Natalia Dyer, Charlie Heaton, Cara Buono, Matthew Modine, Noah Schnapp, Sadie Sink, Joe Keery, Dacre Montgomery, Sean Astin, Paul Reiser, Maya Hawke, Priah Ferguson, Brett Gelman, Linda Hamilton, Jamie Campbell Bower, and Nell Fisher.
The Duffer Brothers developed Stranger Things as a blend of investigative drama and supernatural horror, infused with childlike wonder and references to the popular culture of the 1980s. Several thematic and directorial elements were inspired by the works of Steven Spielberg, John Carpenter, David Lynch, Stephen King, Wes Craven, H. P. Lovecraft, and FromSoftware. The show also drew inspiration from Cold War-era experiments and conspiracy theories involving secret government programs.
Stranger Things has received positive reviews throughout its run, with praise for its characterization, atmosphere, acting, direction, writing, and homage to 1980s cinema, making it a touchstone of 1980s nostalgia. It is a flagship series for Netflix, drawing record viewership with each season's release and garnering numerous accolades. The series has expanded into a media franchise, including an animated spin-off, Tales from '85 (2026), and a prequel stage play, The First Shadow (2023). It has also inspired several books, comics, tie-in media, a pop-up shop, and a Dungeons & Dragons role-playing starter set game based on the series.
Overview
Stranger Things takes place in the 1980s, with the main setting being the fictional rural town of Hawkins, Indiana, described as "the town where nothing ever happens". The nearby Hawkins National Laboratory ostensibly performs scientific research for the United States Department of Energy, but also secretly experiments with the paranormal and supernatural, sometimes with human test subjects. They inadvertently create a portal to an alternate dimension referred to as the Upside Down, whose presence begins to affect the residents of Hawkins in unusual ways.
The first season begins on November 6, 1983, when Will Byers is abducted by a creature from the Upside Down, dubbed the "Demogorgon". His mother Joyce, police chief Jim Hopper, and a group of volunteers search for him. A young psychokinetic girl named Eleven escapes from Hawkins Lab and is found by Will's friends, Mike Wheeler, Dustin Henderson, and Lucas Sinclair. Eleven befriends and assists them in their efforts to find Will. Mike's older sister Nancy and Will's older brother Jonathan learn about the Demogorgon and the existence of the Upside Down. Will is eventually found alive, while Eleven disappears after killing the Demogorgon.
The second season is set 11 months later, between October and November 1984. Joyce is dating her former classmate Bob Newby, but they discover that Will is still affected by a shadowy entity from the Upside Down. Will's friends and family learn that anything connected to the Upside Down is part of a hive mind known as the Mind Flayer. Lucas earns the affection of a new classmate, Max Mayfield, while Dustin teams up with Nancy's ex-boyfriend Steve Harrington to fend off a horde of adolescent Demogorgons—dubbed "Demodogs"—which kill Bob and threaten the rest of their friends. Eleven reappears and closes the gate to the Upside Down underneath Hawkins Laboratory.
The third season is set nine months later, in the days leading up to the Fourth of July celebrations in 1985. The new Starcourt Mall becomes the center of attention for Hawkins residents. Hopper adopts Eleven and becomes increasingly concerned about her relationship with Mike. Dustin, Steve and his coworker Robin Buckley, and Lucas's younger sister Erica discover that a secret Soviet laboratory beneath Starcourt is attempting to reopen the gateway to the Upside Down. Meanwhile, the Mind Flayer possesses Max's stepbrother, Billy Hargrove, and begins creating physical vessels made of melted flesh to carry out its will. Eleven loses her powers, Billy dies, and Hopper seemingly dies when the Soviets' gate is closed.
The fourth season is set eight months later, in March 1986. The Byers family and Eleven have moved to Lenora, California for a fresh start. In Hawkins, three teenagers are murdered by the Mind Flayer's partner and Hawkins Laboratory's first test subject—later dubbed Vecna—to open gates between Hawkins and the Upside Down. Vecna frames Dustin's friend Eddie Munson for the murders and targets Max as his fourth victim. To help Eleven regain her powers, Dr. Sam Owens takes her to a secure facility. Joyce and Murray Bauman learn that Hopper survived but was captured by Soviets, so they rescue him from a gulag in the Kamchatka Peninsula. Eleven regains her powers, but Eddie dies, Max is rendered comatose, and rifts open throughout Hawkins.
The fifth and final season is primarily set in November 1987. The military puts Hawkins under quarantine and hunts for Eleven, while the group tracks down Vecna until he kidnaps Nancy and Mike's younger sister, Holly, alongside 11 other children. The Upside Down is discovered to be a wormhole between Hawkins and another dimension known as the Abyss; Vecna plans to use the children to merge the Abyss with Hawkins. The group ultimately rescues the captured children, kills Vecna and the Mind Flayer, and destroys the Upside Down. To prevent the military from creating new psychic test subjects with her blood, Eleven seemingly stays behind in the collapsing Upside Down. 18 months later, in May 1989, Mike, Will, Dustin, Lucas, and Max graduate from high school, and Hopper proposes to Joyce. Mike theorizes that Eleven faked her death, and the rest of the group chooses to believe him.
Cast and characters
Winona Ryder as Joyce Byers, the mother of Will and Jonathan Byers. She is divorced from their father, Lonnie Byers. Protective and strong-willed, she becomes determined to find Will after he goes missing, convinced that his disappearance is paranormal in nature.
David Harbour as Jim Hopper, the chief of Hawkins Police Department. After his young daughter Sara died of cancer, Hopper divorced and lapsed into alcoholism. He becomes more responsible, helping Joyce investigate the truth behind Will's disappearance, and adopting Eleven as his daughter. He and Joyce have feelings for each other.
Finn Wolfhard as Mike Wheeler, middle child and the only son of Karen and Ted Wheeler, brother of Nancy and Holly, and one of Will Byers's three close friends. He is an intelligent and conscientious student and is committed to his friends. He develops romantic feelings for Eleven and later dates her.
Millie Bobby Brown as Jane "El" Hopper (née Ives) / Eleven, a girl with telepathic and psychokinetic abilities as a result of being one of Dr. Brenner's subjects from Hawkins National Laboratory. She escapes the lab and eventually becomes an adoptive daughter to Jim Hopper and takes his surname, and adjusts to living a normal life with the help of Mike (whom she later dates) and his friends.
Gaten Matarazzo as Dustin Henderson, one of Will Byers's friends. His cleidocranial dysplasia causes him to lisp. In the second season, he is proud of his new front teeth and is attracted to Max. In season three, he gets a girlfriend, Suzie, who he met at summer camp.
Caleb McLaughlin as Lucas Sinclair, one of Will's friends. He is wary of Eleven but later befriends her. In season two, he is one of Max's love interests and eventually becomes her boyfriend. In season four, he becomes more popular at school after joining the Hawkins High basketball team, which briefly puts him at odds with his regular friend group.
Natalia Dyer as Nancy Wheeler, daughter of Karen and Ted and older sister of Mike and Holly. Studious and rule-abiding, Nancy finds another side of herself while investigating Hawkins Lab and the death of her friend Barbara. In the first two seasons, she is the girlfriend of Steve Harrington, but breaks up with him and then dates Jonathan Byers. She is an aspiring journalist.
Charlie Heaton as Jonathan Byers, the older brother of Will Byers and the son of Joyce Byers. He is a quiet and kind-hearted teenager, an outsider at school, and an aspiring photographer. He is close with his mother and brother, and he becomes the boyfriend of Nancy Wheeler.
Cara Buono as Karen Wheeler (seasons 1–3 and 5; also starring: season 4), mother of Nancy, Mike, and Holly, who is mostly unaware of her children's activities for much of the series.
Matthew Modine as Dr. Martin Brenner (seasons 1 and 4; recurring: season 2), the scientist in charge of Hawkins Laboratory and training Eleven. Manipulative and remote, he and his team search for Eleven in season one after she escapes. He is referred to as "Papa" by Eleven. In season four, he returns to help Eleven regain her powers and protect her from the government agents hunting her down.
Noah Schnapp as Will Byers (seasons 2–5; also starring: season 1), the son of Joyce Byers and younger brother of Jonathan Byers. He is captured by a monster from the Upside Down in season one. He later develops a connection to the Upside Down and the Mind Flayer due to his capture. He struggles with his sexuality and unrequited feelings for Mike, and comes out as gay in season five.
Sadie Sink as Max Mayfield (seasons 2–5), Billy's younger stepsister and a tomboy who catches the attention of both Lucas and Dustin, eventually dating Lucas. In season four, she becomes one of the teens targeted by Vecna.
Joe Keery as Steve Harrington (seasons 2–5; also starring: season 1), a popular high school student and the boyfriend of Nancy Wheeler. He ostracizes Jonathan Byers but later befriends him. He and Nancy break up in season two but remain friends. He is known as the "babysitter" of the group, often left to look after the kids, particularly Dustin, with whom he forms a strong rapport.
Dacre Montgomery as Billy Hargrove (seasons 2–3; also starring: season 4), Max's violent, unpredictable, and abusive older stepbrother. He challenges Steve's popularity. In season three, he is controlled by the Mind Flayer and dies in the process.
Sean Astin as Bob Newby (season 2; guest: season 3), a former schoolmate of Joyce and Hopper who runs the Hawkins RadioShack. He is Joyce's boyfriend, putting him at odds with Hopper. He dies after being attacked by creatures from the Upside Down.
Paul Reiser as Dr. Sam Owens (seasons 2 and 4; guest: season 3), a Department of Energy executive who replaces Brenner as director of Hawkins Laboratory. He is committed to scientific research yet empathetic to the residents of Hawkins, and he helps Hopper adopt Eleven as his legal daughter. He returns with Brenner in season four to help Eleven regain her powers and to protect her from government agents hunting her.
Maya Hawke as Robin Buckley (seasons 3–5), Steve's co-worker at Starcourt Mall's Scoops Ahoy ice cream shop, who later comes out as a lesbian. Becoming close friends, she and Steve work together at Scoops Ahoy and later at Family Video. In season five, she begins dating her classmate Vickie, a volunteer nurse.
Priah Ferguson as Erica Sinclair (seasons 3–5; recurring: season 2), Lucas's younger sister who helps the group. She is very smart and has an avid interest in D&D.
Brett Gelman as Murray Bauman (seasons 4–5; also starring: seasons 2–3), a conspiracy theorist, private investigator, and old acquaintance of Hopper who assists Nancy and Jonathan, and later Hopper and Joyce.
Linda Hamilton as Dr. Kay (season 5), the sinister leader of the military unit dispatched to Hawkins after the opening of rifts to the Upside Down. She oversees a research base installed within the Upside Down itself.
Jamie Campbell Bower as Henry Creel / One / Vecna / Mr. Whatsit (season 5; also starring: season 4), a murderous psychic being from the Upside Down. Having attained supernatural abilities as a child, he murdered his family and was subsequently placed under Brenner's care. Flashbacks in season four reveal that an eight-year-old Eleven banished him to another dimension, where he was disfigured and joined the Mind Flayer's hive mind.
Nell Fisher (season 5) and Anniston and Tinsley Price (recurring: seasons 1–4) as Holly Wheeler, Nancy and Mike's younger sister and Karen's youngest child.
Episodes
Production
Development
Stranger Things was created by Matt and Ross Duffer, known professionally as the Duffer Brothers, who also serve as showrunners and head writers and direct many of the episodes. They wrote and produced their 2015 film Hidden, in which they emulated the style of M. Night Shyamalan. However, due to changes at Warner Bros., its distributor, it did not see wide release and the Duffers were unsure of their future. To their surprise, television producer Donald De Line approached them, impressed with Hidden's script, and offered them the opportunity to work on episodes of Wayward Pines with Shyamalan. The brothers were mentored by Shyamalan during the episode's production so that when they finished, they felt they were ready to produce their own television series.
The Duffers prepared a script similar to the series' eventual pilot episode, along with a 20-page pitch book to help shop the series to networks. They pitched the story to about 15 cable networks, all of whom felt a plot with children as leading characters would not work and asked the brothers to either make it a children's series or drop the children and focus on Hopper's investigation into the paranormal.
In early 2015, Dan Cohen, the VP of 21 Laps Entertainment, brought the script to his colleague Shawn Levy. They subsequently invited the Duffer Brothers to their office and purchased the rights for the series, giving the brothers full authorship. After reading the pilot, the streaming service Netflix purchased the whole season for an undisclosed sum, and in April of the same year, the series was announced for a 2016 release.
The Duffer Brothers stated that at the time they pitched to Netflix, the company had already been recognized for its original programming in shows such as House of Cards and Orange Is the New Black, with well-recognized producers behind them, and were ready to start giving upcoming producers like them a chance. The brothers started casting and brought Levy and Cohen in as the other executive producers to discuss storylines, with Levy also directing for the show.
The series was originally known as Montauk. The setting was then Montauk, New York, and nearby Long Island locations. Montauk figured into several real-world conspiracy theories involving secret government experiments. The brothers had chosen Montauk as it had further Spielberg ties with the film Jaws, where Montauk was used for the fictional setting of Amity Island. After deciding to change the narrative of the series to take place in the fictional town of Hawkins instead, the brothers felt they could now do things to the town, such as placing it under quarantine, that they really could not envision with a real location.
With the location change, they had to come up with a new title for the series under direction from Netflix's Ted Sarandos, so that they could start marketing it to the public. The brothers started by using a copy of Stephen King's Firestarter novel to consider the title's font and appearance, and came up with a long list of potential alternatives. Stranger Things came about as it sounded similar to another King novel, Needful Things, though Matt noted they still had a "lot of heated arguments" over this final title.
To pitch the series, the Duffer Brothers showcased images, footage and music from classic 1970s and 1980s films such as E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Poltergeist, Hellraiser, Stand by Me, Firestarter, A Nightmare on Elm Street and Jaws, to establish the tone of the series.
Writing
The idea of Stranger Things started with how the brothers felt they could take the concept of the 2013 film Prisoners, detailing the moral struggles a father goes through when his daughter is kidnapped, and expand it out over eight or so hours in a serialized television approach. As they focused on the missing child aspect of the story, they wanted to introduce the idea of "childlike sensibilities" they could offer, and toyed around with the idea of a monster that could consume humans. The brothers thought the combination of these things "was the best thing ever".
To introduce this monster into the narrative, they considered "bizarre experiments we had read about taking place in the Cold War" such as MKUltra, which gave a way to ground the monster's existence in science rather than something spiritual. This also helped them to decide on using 1983 as the time period, as it was a year before the film Red Dawn came out, which focused on Cold War paranoia. Subsequently, they were able to use all their own personal inspirations from the 1980s, the decade in which they were born, as elements of the series, crafting it in the realm of science fiction and horror.
Other influences cited by the Duffers include: Stephen King novels; films produced by Steven Spielberg, John Carpenter, David Lynch, Wes Craven, and Guillermo del Toro; films such as Star Wars, Alien, and Stand by Me; Japanese anime such as Akira and Elfen Lied; and several video games including Silent Hill, Dark Souls and The Last of Us. The Duffers believe that they may have brought influences from other works unintentionally, including Beyond the Black Rainbow and D.A.R.Y.L., discovered by reviewing fan feedback on the series. Several websites and publications have found other pop culture references in the series, particularly references to 1980s pop culture. The primary antagonist for the final two seasons, Vecna, was inspired by the villains that scared the brothers when they watched the movies and miniseries as children: Freddy Krueger, Pinhead, and Pennywise.
With Netflix as the platform, the Duffers were not limited to a typical 22-episode format, opting for the eight-episode approach. They had been concerned that a 22-episode season on broadcast television would make it difficult to "tell a cinematic story". Eight episodes allowed them to give time to characterization in addition to narrative development; if they had less time available, they would have had to remain committed to telling a horror film as soon as the monster was introduced and abandon the characterization. Within the eight episodes, the brothers aimed to make the first season "feel like a big movie" with all the major plot lines completed so that "the audience feels satisfied", but left enough unresolved to indicate "there's a bigger mythology, and there's a lot of dangling threads at the end", something that could be explored in further seasons if Netflix chose to greenlight more.
Regarding writing for the children characters of the series, the Duffers considered themselves outcasts from other students while in high school and thus found it easy to write for Mike and his friends, and particularly for Barb. Joyce was fashioned after Richard Dreyfuss' character Roy Neary in the 1977 film Close Encounters of the Third Kind, as she appears "absolutely bonkers" to everyone else as she tries to find Will.
Casting
In June 2015, it was announced that Winona Ryder and David Harbour had been cast as Joyce and the unnamed chief of police, respectively. Ryder's sole condition to the Duffers in accepting the part was that, if a sequel to Beetlejuice (1988) ever materialized as she and Tim Burton had been discussing since 2000, they had to let her take a break to shoot it, a condition the Duffers agreed and ultimately proved to work out when Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024) was greenlit. The brothers' casting director Carmen Cuba had suggested Ryder for the role of Joyce, which the two were immediately drawn to because of her predominance in 1980s films.
Levy believed Ryder could "wretch up the emotional urgency and yet find layers and nuance and different sides of [Joyce]". Ryder praised that the show's multiple storylines required her to act for Joyce as if "she's out of her mind, but she's actually kind of onto something", and that the producers had faith she could pull off the difficult role. The Duffer Brothers had been interested in Harbour before, who until Stranger Things primarily had smaller roles as villainous characters, and they felt that he had been "waiting too long for this opportunity" to play a lead, while Harbour himself was thrilled by the script and the chance to play "a broken, flawed, anti-hero character". Billy Crudup was the first choice for the role, but he passed on it.
Additional casting followed two months later with Finn Wolfhard as Mike, Millie Bobby Brown in an undisclosed role, Gaten Matarazzo as Dustin, Caleb McLaughlin as Lucas, Natalia Dyer as Nancy, and Charlie Heaton as Jonathan. In September 2015, Cara Buono joined the cast as Karen, followed by Matthew Modine as Martin Brenner a month later. Additional cast who recur include Noah Schnapp as Will, Shannon Purser as Barbara "Barb" Holland, Joe Keery as Steve Harrington, and Ross Partridge as Lonnie, among others.
Actors auditioning for the children's roles read lines from Stand by Me. The Duffers estimated they went through about a thousand different child actors for the roles. They noted that Wolfhard was already "a movie buff" of the films from the 1980s period and easily filled the role, while they found Matarazzo's audition to be much more authentic than most of the other audition tapes, and selected him after a single viewing of his audition tape.
As casting had begun immediately after Netflix greenlit the series, and prior to the scripts being fully completed, this allowed some of the actors' takes on the roles to reflect on the script. The casting of the young actors for Will and his friends had been done just after the first script was completed, and subsequent scripts incorporated aspects from these actors. The brothers said Modine provided significant input on the character of Dr. Brenner, whom they had not really fleshed out before, as they considered him the hardest character to write for given his limited appearances within the narrative.
Filming
The brothers had desired to film the series around the Long Island area to match the initial Montauk concept. However, with filming scheduled to take place in November 2015, it was difficult to shoot in Long Island in the cold weather, and the production started scouting locations in and around the Atlanta, Georgia, area. The brothers, who grew up in North Carolina, found many places that reminded them of their own childhoods in that area, and felt the area would work well with the narrative shift to the fictional town of Hawkins, Indiana.
Filming for the first season began in November 2015 and was extensively done in Atlanta, Georgia, with the Duffer Brothers and Levy handling the direction of individual episodes. Jackson served as the basis of the fictional town of Hawkins, Indiana. Other shooting locations included the Georgia Mental Health Institute as the Hawkins National Laboratory site, Bellwood Quarry, and Patrick Henry High School in Stockbridge, Georgia, for the middle and high school scenes.
Filming locations included Emory University's Continuing Education Department, the former city hall in Douglasville, Georgia, the Georgia International Horse Park in Conyers, Georgia, the probate court in Butts County, Georgia, Old East Point Library and East Point First Baptist Church in East Point, Georgia, Fayetteville, Georgia, Stone Mountain Park, Palmetto, Georgia, and Winston, Georgia. Set work was done at Screen Gem Studios in Atlanta and the first season was filmed with a RED Epic Dragon camera. Filming for the first season concluded in early 2016.