Picture Credit: Netflix
Prepare to feel old: Netflix’s Stranger Things has just turned 10. After propelling itself to the forefront of pop culture and five successful seasons, the franchise continues to endure. In this post, we look back at how Stranger Things climbed its way to the pinnacle of streaming.
Matt and Ross Duffer’s Stranger Things transports viewers into the bright neon and synth-heavy 1980s, in the fictional town of Hawkins, Indiana. There, we meet a group of teens — Mike (Finn Wolfhard), Will (Noah Schnapp), Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo) and Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin) — who sit around in a basement all night and play Dungeons & Dragons. However, on one fateful evening, when Will Byers vanishes on his bike, they set aside their twenty-sided-die and embark on a desperate, supernatural investigation — one that leads them to a mysterious runaway girl known as Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown).
When Stranger Things debuted in 2016, it proved just how successful streaming could be. Of course, while streaming was in its infancy compared to what it is today, there were still big hits, most notably House of Cards and Orange is the New Black. But Stranger Things took things to unprecedented levels. It became a monster of a series through word-of-mouth and social media hype. According to Business Insider, Stranger Things Season 1 garnered 8.2 million views its first 16 days on the streamer, which was an astronomical number back in 2016. It managed to beat other big series at the time, including Daredevil and Narcos.
Just 47 days after it premiered, Netflix renewed Stranger Things for another season. The sophomore season was even bigger, with an estimated 361,000 fans binging the entire thing in its first 24 hours on Netflix. Viewership peaked with Season 4, accumulating 140,700,000 views in its first 91 days and becoming the fourth most-successful season in Netflix history. By the time the fifth and final season rolled around in 2025, it hit 133,800,000 in its first 91 days, cementing its place as the fourth most popular season in Netflix history.
The Origins of Stranger Things
Back when the creators of Stranger Things, Matt and Ross Duffer, pitched the show to Netflix, it was completely different to what we eventually saw on the screen. In fact, the show went by the title Montauk, named after the coastal town in New York where it was originally set. It was initially sold as an 8-hour horror series.
The title was a reference to the ‘Montauk Project,’ which took place in an abandoned Air Force base in Montauk, Long Island. It became the heart of a long running string of conspiracy theories about secret government experiments exploiting children and using inter-dimensional portals. The experiments supposedly took place between 1982 and 1987, when the Cold War was nearing its end.
The decision to switch setting from Montauk to the fictional town of Hawkins ended up being logistical rather than creative. “We liked Montauk, because we liked the coastal setting, and Montauk was the basis for Amity, and Jaws is probably our favorite movie, so I thought that that would be really cool,” Matt Duffer said in a 2016 interview with The Hollywood Reporter. “Then it was really going to be impossible to shoot in or around Long Island in the wintertime. It was just going to be miserable and expensive.”
They ultimately settled on Hawkins, and the rest is history. However, before they changed the title and setting, the Duffers created a sizzle reel, offering a glimpse at the tone and feel of what Montauk would’ve been like. The reel uses clips from classic 70s and 80s sci-fi, including Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Jaws, Poltergeist, The Fog, and Halloween. Check it out below:
When Stranger Things triggered major trends
Many credit Stranger Things with reviving the 1980s, and statistics back it up. The show made the period’s aesthetics and hobbies cool again — whether that’s bringing back mullets, rekindling interest in physical media, or having everyone eating Eggo Waffles.
So what trends did it actually cause?
An uptake in Dungeons & Dragons players — According to a FanSided article in 2022, searches for Dungeons & Dragons starter kits went up by 250% following season 4.
An increase in sales of Eggo Waffles — For those who have not seen the show, this might seem like an odd one. Reports suggest that after the premiere of season 2 in 2017, Eggo Waffles got more social mentions in a single month than ever before. Such engagement naturally translated into sales, with a 14% year-over-year increase.
The biggest trend: Music revivals — Perhaps the most significant trend surge caused by Stranger Things is in the music featured. Some of the most popular songs to see a resurgence from the show include Toto’s Africa, Metallica’s Master of Puppets, and The Clash’s Should I Stay or Should I Go. However, the most significant of all has to be Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill.
While a popular song in the ’80s (peaking at No. 3 on global charts), once it debuted in Stranger Things 4, the song reached new heights. An incredible 37 years after its initial release, the song reached #8 on the Billboard Hot 100. It also surpassed 1 billion streams on Spotify in June 2023.
This is in addition to its viewership on Netflix itself. Two of the five seasons (4 and 5) still reside on Netflix’s all-time most watched list with seasons 2 and 3 occupying spots at various points in time too. According to the Netflix Engagement Reports, covering all viewership between 2023 and 2025, saw the series pull in over 4B viewing hours.
The Stranger Things main cast: Where are they now?
It was always clear that the cast behind Stranger Things were primed to move onto more major projects. Let’s take a look at where they are today, and where we can expect to see them next.
- Millie Bobby Brown (Eleven): The biggest star to come out of Stranger Things, and one of the most successful young actresses in the world today. Millie Bobby Brown has continued to work at Netflix, most recently returning as Enola Holmes for the third instalment of the trilogy. We’ve written about her career in more depth here.
- Winona Ryder (Joyce Byers): She will notably guest star in Netflix’s Wednesday Season 3.
- David Harbour (Jim Hopper): One of the key adult actors on the series, Harbour has notably joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Red Guardian, starring in Black Widow (2021), Thunderbolts* (2025), and will return in Avengers: Doomsday later this year.
- Finn Wolfhard (Mike Wheeler): He notably landed a role in the Ghostbusters reboot, and is nowadays pursuing his music career.
- Gaten Matarazzo (Dustin Henderson): In 2026, he starred in absurdist comedy Pizza Movie. Later this year, he makes his West End debut in the upcoming revival of musical Rent.
- Caleb McLaughlin (Lucas Sinclair): Started in animated movie Goat (2026) and has been cast in a Netflix AI-thriller called 2034.
- Noah Schnapp (Will Byers): He has expressed a desire to continue to star in indie films rather than blockbusters. His previous indie movies include Abe (2019) and Waiting for Anya (2020).
- Sadie Sink (Max Mayfield): Will appear in Spider-Man: Brand New Day alongside Tom Holland. She will also star in FX series The Marriage Plot.
- Joe Keery (Steve Harrington): Headlined sci-fi movie Cold Storage (2026). He’s predominantly focused on building his music career under his stage name Djo.
- Nathalia Dyer (Nancy Wheeler): She will star in Amazon’s romantic comedy Goodbye Girl.
- Charlie Heaton (Jonathan Byers): He will star in an upcoming Peaky Blinders sequel series. Heaton is also cast in an untitled Netflix series shot in Newfoundland.
- Maya Hawke (Robin Buckley): She will star in Netflix series The God of the Woods, as well as Hunger Games movie Sunrise on the Reaping.
- Jamie Campbell Bower (Vecna): He has joined the cast of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power for Season 3.
As for Stranger Things creators Matt and Ross Duffer, they will continue to produce projects under their Upside Down Pictures umbrella. We’ve already seen some Duffer-produced projects come to fruition, including Something Very Bad is Going to Happen and The Boroughs.
What’s next for Netflix’s Stranger Things Universe?
Stranger Things: Tales From ’85: Season 1. (L-R) Jolie Hoang-Rappaport as Max, Elisha “EJ” Williams as Lucas, Luca Diaz as Mike, and Braxton Quinney as Dustin in Stranger Things: Tales From ’85: Season 1. Cr. NETFLIX © 2026
Despite the mother show concluding in 2025, the Stranger Things franchise continues to live on. It already expanded into several mediums before the show wrapped up, including prose novels, comics, and even the award-winning stage play The First Shadow, which serves as an official prequel. As for on-screen spinoffs, Netflix aired animated prequel Tales From ’85 back in April 2026. The series is fully canon, taking place between the events of Seasons 2 and 3 of the main show.
Tales From ’85 will return for its second season later this year. Beyond that, there is absolutely potential for live-action spinoffs, but they are not on Netflix’s list of priorities at the moment. The most recent update we have comes from Matt Duffer, who teased to The Hollywood Reporter that he’s working away on a spinoff project that offers up “an entirely new mythology.”
“This spinoff does connect and will answer some of the lingering questions. It’s not specifically about the Mind Flayer or the Upside Down, but hopefully it provides some answers to that at least those lingering questions related to Henry’s memory.”
Stranger Things won’t be leaving our screens anytime soon. It’s established itself as one of the biggest IPs on all of streaming, and Netflix will continue to build on it. Looking ahead to the next decade, we may not see as much content, purely because the main show is no longer around, but we’ll almost certainly get that live-action spinoff.
