The first season of the American science fiction horror drama television series Stranger Things premiered worldwide on the streaming service Netflix on July 15, 2016 . The series was created by the Duffer Brothers, who serve as showrunners alongside Karl Gajdusek. All three also served as executive producers along with Dan Cohen and Shawn Levy. The principal cast includes Winona Ryder, David Harbour, Finn Wolfhard, Millie Bobby Brown, Gaten Matarazzo, Caleb McLaughlin, Natalia Dyer, Charlie Heaton, Cara Buono, and Matthew Modine, while the recurring cast includes Joe Keery, Noah Schnapp, and Shannon Purser.
Set in the 1980s, Stranger Things follows the supernatural adventures of the residents of the fictional Indiana town of Hawkins. The first season, set in 1983, revolves around the citizens' search for the missing Will Byers (Schnapp), during which they inadvertently discover the supernatural forces present in the town. In the process, the citizens become entangled in a series of events involving the local laboratory, an apparent parallel dimension known as the Upside Down, and a human test subject possessing superpowers named Eleven (Brown).
The season was produced by Levy's 21 Laps Entertainment and the Duffer Brothers' Monkey Massacre Productions. Filming began on September 25, 2015, and concluded in early 2016, with principal photography taking place in Atlanta, Georgia. Several episodes featured writing by Jessica Mecklenburg, Justin Doble, Alison Tatlock, Jessie Nickson-Lopez, and Paul Ditcher. Two soundtrack albums were released in August, and the home video sets arrived in late 2017 for Region 1. The season received critical acclaim for its direction, performances (particularly those of Ryder and Brown) and soundtrack. It also received several accolades and awards nominations, most notably for its cast.
Premise
In November 1983, in the fictional town of Hawkins, Indiana, 12-year-old Will Byers goes missing. His disappearance is noticed by his hardworking mother Joyce and his antisocial older brother Jonathan, sparking a town-wide search led by police chief Jim Hopper. Meanwhile, a human test subject from the nearby Hawkins Laboratory—a girl with psychokinetic and telepathic abilities known as "Eleven" based on her numerical designation—escapes the laboratory. Will's friends, Mike Wheeler, Lucas Sinclair, and Dustin Henderson, shelter her in the hope she can help find Will. Joyce experiences a series of supernatural encounters involving Will, who is trapped in a parallel dimension known as the Upside Down, an apparent alternate reality that is the subject of experiments at the laboratory. Mike's sister, Nancy, who is dating popular student Steve Harrington, turns to Jonathan for help after her childhood friend Barbara Holland mysteriously vanishes as well. Hopper investigates conspiracy theories surrounding Hawkins. These ultimately lead to the townspeople discovering the supernatural forces at work in Hawkins and an attempt to rescue Will from the Upside Down.
Cast and characters
Main cast Winona Ryder as Joyce Byers David Harbour as Jim Hopper Finn Wolfhard as Mike Wheeler Millie Bobby Brown as Eleven Gaten Matarazzo as Dustin Henderson Caleb McLaughlin as Lucas Sinclair Natalia Dyer as Nancy Wheeler Charlie Heaton as Jonathan Byers Cara Buono as Karen Wheeler Matthew Modine as Martin Brenner
Recurring Noah Schnapp as Will Byers Joe Keery as Steve Harrington Shannon Purser as Barbara "Barb" Holland Joe Chrest as Ted Wheeler Ross Partridge as Lonnie Byers Rob Morgan as Officer Powell John Paul Reynolds as Officer Callahan Randy Havens as Scott Clarke Catherine Dyer as Connie Frazier Aimee Mullins as Terry Ives Amy Seimetz as Becky Ives Peyton Wich as Troy Tony Vaughn as Principal Coleman Charles Lawlor as Mr. Melvald Tinsley and Anniston Price as Holly Wheeler Cade Jones as James Chester Rushing as Tommy H. Chelsea Talmadge as Carol Glennellen Anderson as Nicole Cynthia Barrett as Marsha Holland Jerri Tubbs as Diane Hopper Elle Graham as Sara Hopper Chris Sullivan as Benny Hammond Tobias Jelinek as lead agent Robert Walker-Branchaud as repairman agent Susan Shalhoub Larkin as Florence ("Flo")
Episodes
Production Development
Stranger Things was created by Matt and Ross Duffer, known professionally as the Duffer Brothers. They had completed writing and producing their 2015 film Hidden, which they had tried to emulate the style of M. Night Shyamalan, however, due to changes at Warner Bros., its distributor, the film did not see a wide release and the Duffers were unsure of their future. To their surprise, television producer Donald De Line approached them, impressed with Hiddens script, and offered them the opportunity to work on episodes of Wayward Pines alongside Shyamalan. The brothers were mentored by Shyamalan during the episode's production so that when they finished, they felt they were ready to produce their own television series.
The Duffer Brothers prepared a script that would essentially be similar to the series' actual pilot episode, along with a 20-page pitch book to help shop the series around for a network. They pitched the story to a number of cable networks, all of which rejected the script on the basis that they felt a plot centered around children as leading characters would not work, asking them to make it a children's show or to drop the children and focus on Hopper's investigation in the paranormal. In early 2015, Dan Cohen, the VP of 21 Laps Entertainment, brought the script to his colleague Shawn Levy. They subsequently invited The Duffer Brothers to their office and purchased the rights for the series, giving full authorship of it to the brothers. After reading the pilot, the streaming service Netflix purchased the whole season for an undisclosed amount; the show was subsequently announced for a planned 2016 release by Netflix in early April 2015. The Duffer Brothers stated that at the time they had pitched to Netflix, the service had already been recognized for its original programming, such as House of Cards and Orange Is the New Black, with well-recognized producers behind them, and were ready to start giving upcoming producers like them a chance. The brothers started to write out the series and brought Levy and Cohen in as executive producers to start casting and filming. Karl Gajdusek served as a showrunner alongside Duffer Brother and executive producer for the first season.
The series was originally known as Montauk, as the setting of the script was in Montauk, New York and nearby Long Beach locations. The brothers had chosen Montauk as it had further Spielberg ties with the film Jaws, where Montauk was used for the fictional setting of Amity Island. After deciding to change the narrative of the series to take place in the fictional town of Hawkins instead, the brothers felt they could now do things to the town, such as placing it under quarantine, that they really could not envision with a real location. With the change in location, they had to come up with a new title for the series under the direction from Netflix's Ted Sarandos so that they could start marketing it to the public. The brothers started by using a copy of Stephen King's Firestarter novel to consider the title's font and appearance and came up with a long list of potential alternatives. Stranger Things came about as it sounded similar to another King novel, Needful Things, though Matt noted they still had a "lot of heated arguments" over this final title.
Writing The idea of Stranger Things started with how the brothers felt they could take the concept of the 2013 film Prisoners, detailing the moral struggles a father goes through when his daughter is kidnapped, and expand it out over eight or so hours in a serialized television approach. As they focused on the missing child aspect of the story, they wanted to introduce the idea of "childlike sensibilities" they could offer and toyed around with the idea of a monster that could consume humans. The brothers thought the combination of these things "was the best thing ever". To introduce this monster into the narrative, they considered "bizarre experiments we had read about taking place in the Cold War" such as Project MKUltra, which gave a way to ground the monster's existence in science rather than something spiritual. This also helped them to decide on using 1983 as the time period, as it was a year before the film Red Dawn came out, which focused on Cold War paranoia. Subsequently, they were able to use all their own personal inspirations from the 1980s, the decade they were born, as elements of the series, crafting it in the realm of science fiction and horror. The Duffer Brothers have cited as influence for the show (among others): Stephen King novels; films produced by Steven Spielberg, John Carpenter, Wes Craven, Robert Zemeckis, George Lucas and Guillermo del Toro; films such as Alien and Stand by Me; Japanese anime such as Akira and Elfen Lied; and video games such as Silent Hill and The Last of Us.
With Netflix as the platform, The Duffer Brothers were not limited to a typical 22-episode format, opting for the eight-episode approach. They had been concerned that a 22-episode season on broadcast television would be difficult to "tell a cinematic story" with that many episodes. Eight episodes allowed them to give time to characterization in addition to narrative development; if they had less time available, they would have had to remain committed to telling a horror film as soon as the monster was introduced and abandon the characterization. Within the eight episodes, the brothers aimed to make the first season "feel like a big movie" with all the major plot lines completed so that "the audience feels satisfied", but left enough unresolved to indicate "there's a bigger mythology, and there's a lot of dangling threads at the end", something that could be explored in further seasons if Netflix opted to create more. The Duffers intentionally left the show's mythology vague in the season finale. When Netflix asked for an internal explanation, the writers' room developed a 20-page document about the show's universe, much of which would not be seen onscreen until the final season.
Regarding writing for the children characters of the series, The Duffer Brothers considered themselves as outcasts from other students while in high school and thus found it easy to write for Mike Wheeler and his friends, and particularly for Barbara "Barb" Holland. Joyce Byers was fashioned after Richard Dreyfuss's character Roy Neary in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, as she appears "absolutely bonkers" to everyone else as she tries to find her son Will Byers. Other characters, such as Billy in the second season, have more villainous attributes that are not necessarily obvious from the onset; Matt explained that they took further inspiration from Stephen King for these characters, as King "always has really great human villains" that may be more malicious than the supernatural evil.
Casting