The Duffer Brothers: ‘The last series of Stranger Things is the biggest it’s ever been’

The record-breaking show made twins Matt and Ross Duffer the saviours of Netflix. They talk about bringing the show to the stage and ‘landing the plane safely’ in its final season

When Matt and Ross Duffer, the affable identical twins behind the TV phenomenon Stranger Things, wrote the pilot script for that show, they did not expect it to ever become a West End play. But then that was one of quite a few things that they didn’t foresee almost a decade ago.

For starters, the Duffer Brothers, as they are known and credited, did not expect Stranger Things to exist beyond one season. They envisaged the story as being a “long-form movie” about a child who is mysteriously kidnapped in 1983 and his friends and family who try to get him back. “What would a Stephen King book look like if it were directed by Steven Spielberg,” was the pitch, says Matt now. The giant, spider-like Mind Flayer, Vecna, and even the parallel universe they call the Upside Down, so familiar now to fans after four seasons of the show on Netflix: none of these had yet been imagined.