Spoilers for previously aired episodes of Stranger Things, mild spoilers for next season
Although Netflix seemed to take their time announcing that Stranger Things would get a second season it was pretty much a foregone conclusion given how much buzz it’s getting. Now we have sweet confirmation that the show is coming back in 2017. EW also has an interview with the show’s co-creators, brothers Ross and Matt Duffer, who give us a vague idea of what will be happening next season. If you’re the kind of person who hates even minor spoilers, please just skip this post and don’t yell at us, but these don’t read like spoilers to me. (I’m ok with learning plot details as long as a show’s ending is not revealed though, so I have a higher tolerance than most.) The good news is that the next season will be slightly longer with at least one more episode, that the Duffer brothers sound thoughtful about it and are trying to create a worthy season two, and that there’s not going to be a time jump at all. Time jumps can be the worst, so I’m glad they’re picking up where they left off. Here’s more:

Four new characters are coming
The Duffers reveal there are four new characters popping up in season 2. “There’s going to be a lot of new and interesting dynamics that we didn’t see in season 1,” says Matt Duffer. There are nine titles in the recently released teaser, including one called “The Lost Brother.” Could that be one of the new characters?

They won’t say whether Eleven is coming back
While some, including EW’s own James Hibberd, have argued the series should be an anthology, the Duffers opted to tell a continuing story in the fictional town of Hawkins, Indiana. Still, the pair toyed around initially with flashing forward a bit before settling on continuing the story in 1984. “I don’t think we ever thought anthology,” says Ross Duffer. “I think we talked like a larger time jump where the kids are older now and it’s a different decade. 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.” So, expect to see the return of Mike (Finn Wolfhard), Joyce (Winona Ryder), Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo), etc. “We don’t know about Eleven,” says Ross Duffer. “We leave that up in the air.”

They’re trying to learn from good movie sequels
“I know movie sequels get a lot of s—, but the ones we look up to aspire to pivot and do something different,” explains Matt. “There’s Temple of Doom, Aliens, Terminator 2. I guess a lot of this is James Cameron. But he’s brilliant. And I think 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. So I think we kinda looked to him and what he does and tried to capture a little bit of the magic of his work.”

[From EW via Dlisted]

Last week the Duffers promised that there would be some kind of tribute to mousy Barb, the sensible best friend who met her demise in the Upside Down. It didn’t sound like they were going bring her back though. Luckily the actress who plays Barb, Shannon Purser, got a new job in a CW series based on the Archie comics, so she’s in demand now. She also is grateful for the fan’s support of her character and told People that it’s been nice to see. Purser said that “I never even hoped that Barb would be received the way she has been. She’s kind of a sad character in her mom jeans, but I think everyone feels like a Barb sometimes.” She added that Barb does her own thing and that she’s “unapologetic about who she is.”

The Duffers also told EW that we’ll learn more about the realm of the Upside Down and whatever lurks there. They’re sticking to nine episodes so far for season two because they don’t want it to get unwieldy and they want to tell a “movie-like story where it’s never treading water.” They did that so expertly in this series that I have a lot of hope that they’ll bring us another incredible season.

photos credit: Netflix and via WENN