A blue bicycle lies on its side in dry grass at night, a portable radio perched on it and its small orange dial glowing. That one picture does most of the work in the teaser for “Other Worlds: A Stranger Things Adventure”, which Netflix posted to its own YouTube channel on Friday, November 6th, Stranger Things Day. The streamer announced the same day that it has ordered a live-action prequel to its hit sci-fi series for release in 2028. Set in the 1950s, decades before the original show, the story also comes before the stage play “Stranger Things: The First Shadow”, according to Netflix. Stranger Things Day is the annual celebration of the day Will Byers (Noah Schnapp) disappeared in the original show, November 6th, 1983. It is Netflix’s first look at the project, and not one person appears in it, which makes it a teaser about a place and a date rather than about the heroes who will fill them.
Kate Trefry, a “Stranger Things” writer since the second season who also wrote “The First Shadow”, is the showrunner, co-creator and writer. Matt and Ross Duffer, who created the original series, are co-creators and executive producers through their Upside Down Pictures banner, alongside Shawn Levy’s 21 Laps, Paul Dichter, Shelley Meals, Andrea Sperling and Pavlina Hatoupis. Joe Wright, the director of “Pride & Prejudice”, “Atonement” and “Darkest Hour”, will direct the first three episodes and executive produce, and production will take place in New Mexico. Netflix has named no cast and has not said how many episodes there will be, and the Duffers’ statement answers the question of casting only with “Now, on to casting.” Warning beyond this point there are spoilers for everything shown in the “Other Worlds” teaser.
It is Netflix’s first look at the project, and not one person appears in it, which makes it a teaser about a place and a date rather than about the heroes who will fill them.”
The camera starts low over the grass, drifting past a dark object in the stalks that is too blurred to identify, while a doo-wop vocal fades up from near silence. Deadline and Yahoo both name the song as “Sh-Boom” by The Chords, and about three seconds in, the frame lifts to show the bicycle lying in front of a wire fence. The radio’s amber dial is the brightest thing in the picture, and a thin strip of town lights glimmers far off on the horizon. The shot then eases in along the bike, the radio growing larger each time the camera moves. At about the 11-second mark the song arrives at “Life could be a dream, sweetheart”, the line behind its subtitle. Whether the music is meant to be coming from the radio is never made explicit, though it is hard not to read it that way.
Around the 12-second mark the radio slides out of frame and the camera turns toward the barbed wire, where a weathered metal sign hangs. It reads “WARNING” in red, then “RESTRICTED AREA”, then a notice that entering without the permission of the installation commander is unlawful, followed by a line of fine print that appears to cite the Internal Security Act of 1950. Two bold lines finish it off, “PHOTOGRAPHY IS PROHIBITED” and “USE OF DEADLY FORCE AUTHORIZED”, and neither needs translation. As the sign fills the screen, a low swell of sound rises under the song. The camera then drops past it onto a wide, empty stretch of scrub beneath heavy storm clouds, the same thin line of lights still glowing on the horizon.
The camera tilts slowly upward until the horizon settles at the bottom edge of the frame and the song thins out behind it. At about 22 seconds a card fades in over the clouds, dating the scene to April 19th, 1955, and placing it in Marion, Nevada. The card fades away, and the sound falls to complete silence for a beat. Then a loud, sustained burst of noise lands at about the 28-second mark, just as the cloud cover opens on a pale, circular glow, and the picture cuts to black. Deadline reads the moment as something like a wormhole opening, which is plausible, though it is an interpretation, since nothing in the footage is shown passing through it.
Out of the black comes the title, “OTHER WORLDS” in heavy pale slab letters ringed by glowing red loops, with “A STRANGER THINGS ADVENTURE” set beneath it on a field of faint stars. The title fades and “2028” fades in, and at about 40 seconds the numerals flip into a mirror image, a small wink toward the Upside Down that the teaser leaves viewers to catch for themselves. Netflix’s sound-and-logo sting closes the footage at about 42 seconds, and a YouTube end card then stretches the upload to 58. “Before Hawkins, there was Marion” is the line that opens the video’s description.
The setting is where the teaser connects most directly to what Netflix has already built. Variety, citing an interview the Duffers gave around the series finale, reports that they teased a spinoff focused on events before Henry Creel was exposed to the otherworldly substance that gave him his powers. Gizmodo quotes Matt Duffer telling Variety that the spinoff “will answer some of the loose threads that are remaining” even as it stands apart as “a completely different mythology”, which suggests a narrow connection rather than a sweeping one. Deadline adds that “Sh-Boom” also plays in Season 5, in a scene set inside Henry’s memory of Hawkins High, a setting that began in the stage play. Netflix, for its part, describes “The First Shadow” as exploring Henry’s troubled past in Hawkins in 1959. None of that is confirmed as the plot of this prequel, and the teaser itself offers only a year, a town, a sign and a song.
The Duffers were never going to run the series day to day, Deadline reports, because they are under an exclusive overall deal at Paramount, with their “Stranger Things” work carved out of it. That leaves Trefry, who by Deadline’s count is making her first series after a first staff-writing job and a first play, in charge of the room. The three films Netflix cites for Wright are all period dramas, an unexpected pick for a franchise built on monsters, or possibly a deliberate one. Ross Duffer told Deadline a year ago that “I think we’re done with the ’80s”, and a bicycle sits at the center of the teaser anyway.
There is still a great deal Netflix is not saying. It has not announced a cast, an episode count or a release date beyond the year, and Deadline notes that word in September had the project nearing a greenlight for a production start in 2027. The Hollywood Reporter reads the title and the Duffers’ “watch the skies” sign-off as hints of a UFO or outer-space story, though the teaser shows no craft, creature or figure to back that up. Jinny Howe, Netflix’s head of scripted series for the US and Canada, promises “new heroes and all the heart, mystery, and spectacle of the original series”, though the teaser shows none of them yet. Trefry says she hopes the story will “blow your minds and break your hearts all over again”, a promise the footage does not yet attempt to keep. In the meantime the franchise has two other outposts running. The animated “Stranger Things: Tales From ’85” is set in the winter of 1985 and has its first two seasons streaming now. “The First Shadow” ends its run in London on December 27th and on Broadway on January 3rd, 2027, according to Netflix.
What Do You Think? Does a prequel with no familiar faces and no Hawkins still feel like “Stranger Things” to you, or does the franchise need its kids and their bikes to work? Is a restricted-area sign and a mirrored year enough to get you excited for 2028, and would you rather see this story tie back to Henry Creel or stand entirely on its own?
See you on the next binge!
