The series goes pretty heavy on the 1980s nostalgia, with nods to classic horror and sci-fi movies of the era, including A Nightmare on Elm Street and E.T. the Extraterrestrial. It evokes some Stephen King vibes, too.
So what will become of Stranger Things? Don't expect it to go the way of True Detective, American Horror Story and other anthology series, which start brand-new narratives each season.
Co-creators Matt and Ross Duffer, twin brothers, told Entertainment Weekly the show sticks with the same storyline, picking up in the fall of 1984.
"We talked like a larger time jump where the kids are older now and it's a different decade," Ross Duffer told EW. "That's something we batted around from the very beginning. But for us, there's still more story here (in the 1980s), there's still things that are unresolved."
That's not too much of a surprise; the creators said in July that they left the series open-ended and wanted to explore another season with Netflix.
"We wanted it to feel like a big movie, so we wanted to resolve that main tension of where Will went and what happened to him," Matt Duffer said at the Television Critics Association's July summer press tour.
This new season will include four new characters, plus Mike (Finn Wolfhard), Joyce (Ryder) and Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo) are all expected to return, EW reported.
But Ross Duffer told the outlet that it's still "up in the air" as to whether Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown), the girl with the supernatural powers, will return.
A few other details, per EW: The opening scene of season two's premiere doesn't take place in Hawkins, and the creators are looking to re-create some of that James Cameron-sequel magic (think Aliens and Terminator 2).
"One of the reasons his sequels are as successful as they are is he makes them feel very different without losing what we loved about the original," Matt Duffer told EW. "So I think we kind of looked to him and what he does and tried to capture a little bit of the magic of his work."
In case you want to start imagining what's next for the folks in Hawkins, here are the season two episode titles for inspiration:
1. Madmax
2. The Boy Who Came Back to Life
3. The Pumpkin Patch
4. The Palace
5. The Storm
6. The Pollywog
7. The Secret Cabin
8. The Brain
9. The Lost Brother
