Netflix Stranger Things Spinoff Predicted by Finn Wolfhard, Compared to Twin Peaks
The Upside Down is expanding beyond Hawkins, Indiana. In 2022, Netflix announced it was franchising Stranger Things, its hit series ending with its fifth and final season later this year. Creators Matt and Ross Duffer confirmed a Stranger Things spinoff series was in the works at Netflix via their Upside Down Pictures, which is also developing the animated Stranger Things: Tales From ’85, but few know anything about the live-action spinoff that’s based on an original idea by the Duffer Brothers.
But actor Finn Wolfhard, who plays Mike Wheeler, apparently predicted what the spinoff might be.
“Nobody — not Netflix, not any of the producers, not any of the directors, not any of the actors — nobody else has figured out what the spinoff is. Finn figured [it] out, which is pretty remarkable,” Ross Duffer told Variety. “We’ve mind-melded with this kid a bit.”
Wolfhard compared the Stranger Things spinoff to David Lynch’s Twin Peaks, likening it to “sort of an anthology and different tones but similar universe or same universe,” although set outside of Hawkins.
“I think set in different places and all tied together through this mythology of the Upside Down,” Wolfhard said. “Don’t even talk about Hawkins. Don’t have any mention of our characters. They were toying around with ideas in case Netflix wanted them. I’m sure they do, and I’m sure it will happen, but there’s nothing official.”
He continued, “I think the coolest way, the way that I would do it, there has to be labs everywhere. If there was one in Hawkins, there’s one in Russia. Where else could they be?”
Wolfhard is referring to Hawkins National Laboratory, where Dr. Martin Brenner (Matthew Modine) and other scientists conducted experiments as part of the CIA’s Project MKUltra. One test subject, Terry Ives (Aimee Mullins), gave birth to Jane (Millie Bobby Brown), aka Eleven, the psychokinetic-powered teenager who was Brenner’s eleventh test subject in Project Indigo (a name revealed in the official prequel novel Stranger Things: Suspicious Minds).
Other test subjects have since appeared in the show, including Kali Prasad’s Eight (Linnea Berthelsen), revealed to have escaped the Hawkins Lab in Stranger Things 2, and Henry Creel’s One (Jamie Campbell Bower), aka the villain Vecna.
The mythology of the Upside Down has expanded with the likes of Dimension X — the alternate dimension where the US Navy ship the USS Eldridge disappeared as part of the government’s Project Rainbow, as told in the stage play prequel Stranger Things: The First Shadow — and the Soviet Union’s Kamchatka laboratory in Russia, expanded upon in the comic book series.
“I’ve read these rumors that there’s gonna be an Eleven spinoff, that there’s gonna be a Steve and Dustin spinoff, or that it’s another [character],” Matt Duffer said back in 2022. “That’s not interesting to me because we’ve done all that. We’ve spent I don’t know how many hours exploring all of that. So it’s very different.”
He added without divulging details, “There is [a] story that connects to the Stranger Things world, but it really is more about how we’re telling that story.”
The three-part Stranger Things season 5 premieres Nov. 26 on Netflix.
