Other Worlds: the Stranger Things prequel series coming in 2028
Spin-off · Other Worlds · Coming in 2028
An abandoned bike, a restricted area, a sky tearing open: the teaser comes down to three images. In this article: what was announced, what the teaser shows, who is making the series, what the Duffers said about it beforehand, what the announcement does not say, and where 1955 fits in the Stranger Things universe. By the end, you will know what is confirmed and what remains to be proven.
Other Worlds: A Stranger Things Adventure is the live-action series announced on November 6, 2026, for release in 2028. This prequel leaves Hawkins behind for the 1950s, with entirely new characters.
The essentials
- Full title: Other Worlds: A Stranger Things Adventure
- Announcement: November 6, 2026, the anniversary of Will's disappearance
- Release: 2028, with no month or day given
- Time and place: the 1950s; the teaser reads Marion, Nevada, April 19, 1955
- Created by: Kate Trefry, showrunner, and the Duffer Brothers
- Directed by: Joe Wright, for the first three episodes
- Filming: in New Mexico
- Cast: no actors named in the announcement
Contents
What was announced on November 6, 2026
On November 6, 2026, the show's streamer confirmed the project the Duffers had been talking about since 2022: a live-action spin-off. It is called Other Worlds: A Stranger Things Adventure and is due out in 2028. Neither the month nor the day was given.
The announcement came on Stranger Things Day, the annual fan celebration. The date marks Will's disappearance on November 6, 1983.
Other Worlds is a prequel. The story takes place in the 1950s, before the show and before the play The First Shadow. The press release promises a new setting, new heroes, and new villains. Variety adds that the series has been ordered and is no longer just in development.
Deadline counts it as the second spin-off on screen, after the animated series, and the third if you include the play. That makes it the first live-action one on screen.
The rusted-look Welcome to Hawkins sign, tagged with a red “Hell”: the town the prequel leaves behind for a new setting.
In the shopWelcome to Hawkins metal sign26,90 €See the product
The teaser: Marion, Nevada, April 19, 1955
The teaser runs about forty seconds and shows no characters. At night, the camera comes upon an abandoned bike with a radio attached to it. It follows barbed wire to a restricted-area sign: photography prohibited, use of deadly force authorized. Then it rises toward the sky. A title card appears: April 19, 1955, Marion, Nevada. A great crash then tears the clouds apart, before the title and the year 2028.
The song is “Sh-Boom,” by The Chords, a doo-wop track released in 1954. It starts at full volume, then turns garbled and grating as the camera moves toward the restricted area.
Not every write-up sees the same thing. Deadline describes the lights of a town in the distance and a disturbance resembling a wormhole. GeekTyrant mentions a small military base, GamingBible a vast facility behind the fence, with a blue flash, far from the red of the Upside Down. On the streamer's page, the image description text mentions city lights in the distance; beyond that, nothing is confirmed. In fact, Marion and 1955 do not appear in the press release. They come from the teaser's title card; the video's caption adds: “Before Hawkins, there was Marion.”
Nevada in April 1955 has a history of its own. Operation Teapot ran fourteen nuclear tests there between February 18 and May 15, three of them in April. That same month, the CIA set up a test site for the U-2 spy plane at Groom Lake, in what would become Area 51. Like the one in the teaser, a sign on the edge of that area prohibits photography and authorizes deadly force. The press release does not make this connection and does not say whether these historical facts will feed into the plot.
Kate Trefry in charge, Joe Wright directing
The series was created by Kate Trefry and the Duffer Brothers. Trefry is the one running it: she is its showrunner, writer, and executive producer. In the press release, she recalls that her first paying job in Hollywood came from the Duffers. She has worked on Stranger Things since season 2, for which she wrote the sixth chapter; that season, she even wore a creature suit as a stand-in, before being replaced by CGI. She also wrote the play The First Shadow.
Joe Wright is directing the first three episodes and producing the series. Born in London in 1972, he made Pride & Prejudice in 2005, Atonement in 2007, and Darkest Hour in 2017, the three films the press release cites. On television, he directed “Nosedive,” an episode of Black Mirror, in 2016.
The Duffers are also executive producers, through their company Upside Down Pictures, but they do not run the series day to day: since their previous contract ended in April 2026, they have been tied to Paramount by an exclusive deal. Their projects set in this universe are excluded from that deal. Shawn Levy, one of the show's directors, is producing through his company 21 Laps, but is not directing this time. Paul Dichter, Shelley Meals, Andrea Sperling, and Pavlina Hatoupis round out the list of executive producers.
In September 2026, a specialized site had Stephen Daldry, who directed the play alongside Justin Martin, leading the project with Trefry. Daldry does not appear in the announcement, which names Joe Wright.
Four years of clues, from 2022 to the announcement
In July 2022, on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, the Duffers promised a series that would be 1,000% different: the link to the original show would lie in the storytelling, not the characters. They already wanted to hand the reins to someone else.
In October 2025, they talked to Variety about a clean slate, in a slightly different world that would keep ties to the show. In November, Ross Duffer told Deadline the 80s were out, and Matt joked that kids on bikes were probably done too. A year later, the teaser opens on a bike.
In January 2026, Matt Duffer described entirely new characters, a new town, a new world, and a new mythology. In May, at a live taping of Happy Sad Confused in Los Angeles, the brothers ruled out an anthology: it will be a set group of characters, without Eleven, Mike, or Dustin.
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July 2022 The project
A 1,000% different series.
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October 2025 Clean slate
New characters, in Variety.
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November 2025 Out of the 80s
Ross Duffer rules out the decade.
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May 2026 No anthology
A set group of characters.
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November 6, 2026 The announcement
The title, the team, and the teaser.
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2028 The release
No month given in the announcement.
On this black backpack, silhouettes on bikes in the forest and, in reflection, the inverted world: the party Other Worlds leaves behind in Hawkins.
In the shopHawkins upside down bikes backpack39,90 €See the product
What the announcement does not say
Casting first: as of the announcement, no actor has been named. The Duffers say that is the next step and conclude: “watch the skies, nerds!” Watching the skies is also the closing warning of The Thing from Another World, a science fiction film from 1951.
Next, the format and the schedule. The announcement gives neither the number of episodes nor the number of seasons; all we know is that Joe Wright is directing three. As for filming, planned for New Mexico, Deadline points out that a 2027 start was being discussed in September 2026, but the press release gives no date.
Finally, the plot. The Duffers say they are not allowed to say more. The announcement reveals nothing about Marion, what the fence is hiding, or who left that bike behind.
1955 in the Stranger Things timeline
Going by the teaser, the story opens four years before 1959, the year of The First Shadow, and twenty-eight years before Will's disappearance. The play recounts Henry Creel's past in Hawkins; Tales From '85, the animated series, follows the party through the winter of 1985.
In the press release, Shawn Levy speaks of a new mythology that keeps the DNA of the show and whose seeds may have been planted in Hawkins.
While you wait for 2028, our watch order already lines up the show, the play, and the animated series.
The thread leading back to Henry Creel
Warning: what follows reveals the end of season 5 and part of the plot of The First Shadow. A memory, which begins in the sixth chapter of season 5 and ends in the last, shows Henry as a child, in a mine, facing a wounded man who shoots at him. Henry strikes him, then opens his briefcase. It holds what the American press calls the rock: a material from another world, tied to the entity the show calls the Mind Flayer. In early January 2026, Variety asked the Duffers to define this rock. They did not: Matt Duffer replied that the spin-off would explain it and answer questions left hanging, while speaking of a completely different mythology. It will not be, he added, a deep dive into the Mind Flayer.
On November 6, 2026, Variety summed up those remarks this way: the series will focus on what happened before Henry was exposed to this substance. The press talks about a scientist's briefcase and caves in Nevada. On screen, Henry says only that he was in the caves and that he lives close by; the memory names neither the man nor the place.
The play, for its part, mentions an experiment carried out in Nevada, back when a very young Henry was living in Rachel, a real settlement near Area 51. Deadline places Other Worlds a few years before that experiment; GamingBible, by contrast, dates Henry's encounter with the scientist to 1955. On the evening of the announcement, the Stranger Things Wiki placed that encounter, depending on the page, in 1953 or in 1956. Marion does not appear in the play. But the production was filmed in February 2026, and Deadline relays one theatergoer's account: for this recording, which has no release date, the location has reportedly become Marion. The press release does not mention it.
Finally, Deadline notes that “Sh-Boom” already features in the fourth episode of season 5, when Max visits Henry's memory at Hawkins High. Max places it thirty years earlier; the same Wiki dates this memory to 1959, the period and setting of the play.
The white Hawkins Indiana sweatshirt, with its retro stripes and a Demogorgon silhouette among the fir trees: the town of 1983, twenty-eight years after Marion.
In the shopWhite sweater Hawkins retro75,90 €See the product
Frequently asked questions
What is Other Worlds: A Stranger Things Adventure?
A live-action prequel, announced on November 6, 2026. It was created by Kate Trefry and the Duffer Brothers.
When does Other Worlds come out?
In 2028. On November 6, 2026, neither the month nor the day was known.
Where and when is the series set?
In the 1950s. The teaser reads Marion, Nevada, April 19, 1955: before The First Shadow and twenty-eight years before Will's disappearance.
Who is in the cast of Other Worlds?
No actor had been announced as of November 6, 2026. The Duffers presented casting as the next step.
Will we see Eleven, Mike, or Dustin again?
No. The Duffers said in May 2026 that the series would follow entirely new characters.
Is this a sixth season?
No. The fifth season was the last. Other Worlds is a different series, set earlier, elsewhere, and with other heroes.
Do the Duffer Brothers run the series?
Not day to day, because they are under an exclusive contract with Paramount. They remain co-creators and executive producers; the showrunner is Kate Trefry.
What is the link to Henry Creel?
In early January 2026, Matt Duffer told Variety that the spin-off would explain the object in the briefcase seen in the last chapter of season 5.
