Much as night follows day, the creators of TV and movies always promise that the sequel or follow up will be grittier than what came before. So it should come as no surprise that the Duffer Brothers have advised that Stranger Things Season Two will be “darker and more eerie” when it lands on October 31st.
The breakout hit of 2015, the 80s-set sci-fi adventure show proved hugely popular with audiences all over the world, proving Netflix was right to take a gamble on a show that had been turned down by everyone else in Hollywood.
Plenty of hints have already emerged about the sophomore season being darker than what preceded it, and sadly it spells more bad news for the show’s punching bag, Will Byers.
Played by Noah Schnapp, the plot of the first season revolved around Will’s disappearance, only for his mother (Winona Ryder) to discover through the medium of fairy lights that he’d wound up in a parallel dimension. Known as the Upside Down, Will spent most of the season hiding from the monstrous Demogorgon and when all seemed safe, the finale flipped things back upside down with a final-frame reveal of a rather sinister nature.
And from the sounds of it, the debut episode dropping on Halloween will see Will once again finding himself in a spot of bother.
“Something happens to Will in the first couple of episodes that’s very, very disturbing,” said Finn Wolfhard, who plays Mike in the award-winning series. Speaking at Netflix’s FYSee Space in Beverly Hills, the young actor said Will endures some “flat out scary” stuff to set the ball rolling on the S2 mysteries.
“They know [Will] is not well,” added Gaten Matarazzo (Dustin), “But they are just trying to pretend [nothing] happened.”
The Duffer Brothers have also revealed that the scares come with the new episodes will be bigger than ever before, saying the “horror is more up-close and personal.” The new monster, assumed by online fans to be called the Thessalhydra in another nod to Dungeons & Dragons, will have considerably more screen time than the Demogorgon.
But fans of the show’s charming sense of humour need not be worried, as Season Two “maintains that sense of fun, which was so important to the first season,” said Matt Duffer.
“We didn’t want to lose that sense of wonder,” he added.
