When Esquire first spoke with Matt and Ross Duffer about their new sensation Stranger Things last summer, they weren't sure what the deal would be for a second season. Though the Netflix series was the breakout show of the year, it hadn't been officially confirmed for a second season—and if there was one, Ross said, "I do think that a lot of people feel like it should end, and a second season should be an anthology."
As we've seen from the trailers for Season Two, this next batch of nine episodes will still be about the beloved kids: Eleven, Dustin, Lucas, Will, and Mike. And, of course, the always-distraught Joyce Byers and the half-drunk chain-smoking police chief Hopper.
But back before the show was such a hit, and America fell in love with Hawkins' bravest group of Dungeons & Dragons players, the show was supposed to be an anthology in the style of Fargo and American Horror Story.
MATT: That's how we conceived of it. It was right in that period where people in television were really into the idea ... and then were less interested. So we adapted. I think if we were a year earlier—
ROSS: —maybe it would have ended up as an anthology.
MATT: Now I'm really happy that it isn't, because we found these kids that clicked. It would become a problem if we just continued to treat it like a TV show and just kept going for like seven seasons or something, but if we get out after four seasons or something, then I don't think it's going to feel that way.
And there's a lot about Stranger Things that feels like it was always meant to be that way. The plot feels pretty opened and closed, as the Duffers wanted it to be. And the idea of government experiments and the Upside Down opens the world up to monsters that could pop up anywhere in the style of '80s horror movies. Even the title has a very anthology plurality to it. But, the kids were just too damn good at saying adorable curse words, and Netflix and the Duffers couldn't let them go (Finn Wolfhard is already a movie star after last month's It).
Regardless, they're back and we (mostly) know what we're gonna get, and, as Stranger Things has undoubtedly proven, something familiar is always good.
