The filming of the fifth and final season of Stranger Things was completed last December after nearly 12 months of work, something many of those involved have posted emotional messages about on social media throughout January. However, the Duffer Brothers are far from finished, as they are still working intensely to finalise the season.
Even though the two are fully focused on completing the final season, they are already looking toward the future. In a recent conversation with Entertainment Weekly, it was confirmed that Stranger Things will continue—though in the form of various spin-off series.
"We spent a full year filming this season. By the end, we had captured over 650 hours of footage. So, needless to say, this is our biggest and most ambitious season yet. It's like eight blockbuster movies. It's pretty, pretty insane."
"We're not going to tell the story with these characters anymore, with that crew or those actors."
"It's not goodbye for Stranger Things. There are more Stranger Things 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. 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."
In other words, the Stranger Things universe will continue to expand and remain alive. Exactly what form this will take remains to be seen, but fans of the franchise have little to worry about—the fifth season won't mark the end of the journey.
Are you looking forward to new stories in the Stranger Things universe, even without the characters we've come to know over the years?