Netflix Announces Stranger Things Prequel Set Before the Stranger Things Prequel

SOMEWHERE WITH GOOD WI-FI — I want to start with the roadmap, because the roadmap is beautiful. On Friday, Netflix announced a live-action Stranger Things spinoff called Other Worlds: A Stranger Things Adventure. It premieres in 2028. It is set in the 1950s. And according to Netflix, it takes place “before Stranger Things and before the stage play Stranger Things: The First Shadow,” which was already a prequel.

That is a prequel to a prequel. In my industry we call that moving upstream. Most companies spend their whole lives trying to get closer to the customer. Netflix is getting closer to 1955.

Here is what was actually announced. The series is co-created by the Duffer brothers, who made the original show, and Kate Trefry, a longtime Stranger Things writer who wrote The First Shadow and will serve as showrunner. Joe Wright is directing the first three episodes. A teaser went out the same day, with a date, April 19, 1955, a place, Marion, Nevada, an abandoned bicycle by a restricted area at night and something wrong with the sky, according to Deadline. The announcement landed on Stranger Things Day, November 6, the date Will Byers disappeared in the first season.

The traction

Let me give you the numbers like a box score, because that is how numbers want to be read. The original series pulled more than 1.2 billion views across its first four seasons, per Deadline. The final season wrapped last year. Since then the franchise has shipped an animated spinoff, Tales From ’85, which has two seasons out and is waiting on a renewal decision, plus a Tony-winning stage play that Netflix filmed in February for a screen version that does not have a release date yet.

Other Worlds is the second TV spinoff and the third spinoff overall. That is not a show. That is a platform. You do not end a platform. You sunset the old version and push everybody to the new one.

The teaser

What I admire most is the go-to-market. The show comes out in 2028. There is no cast. The Duffers said so themselves, in a statement that ended the pitch exactly the way a founder ends a pitch: “new… actually, we’re not allowed to say any more. Now, on to casting.”

That is a waitlist. That is a landing page with a countdown on it. In my world you put up the teaser before you build the product, you count the sign-ups and you show the sign-ups to the next round. Netflix has simply done this with a bicycle and a wormhole, which is more innovation than my last landing page, which was a gray box and the word “Soon.”

Last November, Ross Duffer told Deadline that whatever came next would not be set in the ’80s. “I think we’re done with the ’80s,” he said. Then the teaser put a bike in the desert. Deadline noticed. I noticed. That is not a contradiction. That is a pivot that kept the core feature, which is bikes.

A quick call

I had a quick call with my co-founder, who has been building in this space since about Tuesday. He thinks the Stranger Things model can be taken all the way down.

“Every franchise has a prequel,” he said. “We’re building the prequel to the prequel to the prequel. It’s set in 1890. It’s a horse.” He has already registered the domain. He does not have a horse yet. He says the horse is a casting problem, and casting comes later. It always comes later. That is the whole method.

My own app, which reminds your other apps to drink water, does not have a prequel. Investors have flagged this.

The disruption

So I am calling it. Other Worlds is a game-changing move, and the model scales. Keep the brand, keep the bikes, move the clock. Each new show is set earlier than the last one, so the timeline never runs out of room behind it, and the future is always available for the next announcement. There will be a teaser for that one too, two years before anyone is in it.

The only thing that does not move upstream, now that I lay it all out, is the part where somebody has to make something new. That is still due in 2028.