Almost one year after the Stranger Things finale hit Netflix (and select theaters) on New Year’s Eve, Stranger Things fans have remained hopeful that more is coming, whether that’s the fan conspiracy Conformity Gate that spread like wildfire after the finale, insisting that the final episode was a fake-out and another, ‘better’ in many fans’ minds, finale was coming or hopes for a spin-off or extension of the original show. Notably, that has largely meant some sort of follow-on series set after the original show and with the original characters, rather than other Stranger Things spinoffs, including the ongoing Stranger Things: Tales From ’85, which does feature the original characters but is an animated series set between seasons 2 and 3 of Stranger Things. For now, though, no such follow-on project has been announced, if one is ever coming.
The closest we might get, therefore, is a currently untitled upcoming Netflix project in which on-screen father and daughter David Harbour, who played Jim Hopper, and Millie Bobby Brown, who played Eleven/Jane Hopper, are reuniting. As of right now, the new series is confirmed to be a spy thriller in which Harbour plays a “disgraced FBI agent turned security expert” and Brown plays his estranged daughter, “an FBI agent determined to follow in his footsteps,” who vanishes, thereby forcing Harbour’s character back into his old field of work. Little more than that has been revealed thus far, but Harbour has just given an interview addressing the show and what it’s like to play Brown’s on-screen dad once again.
Harbour and Brown’s Dynamic Has Evolved in This New Series
Speaking with Variety, Harbour said of the show, “All I can say is that we are, we do have this father-daughter dynamic that I think we play very well and are very interested in. And she’s now in her 20s, and I think in Stranger Things, we explored a lot of teen things, and now we want to explore, like, what does it mean to father someone in their 20s who’s going through all kinds of things…and what does family mean? At its core, it has an incredible propulsive engine with action and entertainment, and Jack Thorne is writing it. He’s a master, and I’m just so excited for us to start working.” Although Harbour did keep his cards close to the vest, we now know that the series seemingly isn’t yet fully written, and they haven’t begun filming, although that tells us more about the timeline than the story.
As far as the story goes, though, it’s clear that audiences will be getting to revisit Harbour and Brown’s portrayal of an on-screen father and daughter, this time with a brand-new set of characters. Yet, it will almost certainly in some ways feel like a continuation of Stranger Things. Yes, the storyline is very different, and it seems unlikely that demonic-like creatures will be coming after anyone, but this will still allow viewers to see Harbour and Brown portraying a father and daughter in an era that was never shown in Stranger Things—and, sadly, given Eleven’s fate, never happened at all, even when thinking about the story off screen. In that sense, this new Netflix series may be as close as we ever get to seeing what Eleven and Hopper’s future could have been.
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