STRANGER THINGS Producer Acknowledges High Fan Expectations For Season 2

We're in November now, so that means we've had about three and a half months since Netflix's Stranger Things took the internet by storm and became a surprise smash hit. And when I say "surprise," I mean it was a surprise even beyond anything the people who made the show could even dream of. Producer Shawn Levy explained to io9:

“Not only did we not have a clue it would be this popular, we didn’t even fantasize it would be this popular,” Levy said. “All we knew was it was cool and exactly what we told Netflix we wanted to make a year earlier. But we never even aspired to this phenom status that we’ve reached since July 15. It’s been truly shocking but absolutely thrilling.”

But with great popularity comes great responsibility (and heightened fan expectations for upcoming seasons). So what does Levy think about season 2?

“You can hear from my sudden stammering that I live in terror of saying anything too revelatory about season two...We don’t live under a rock,” Levy said. “We really want to satisfy expectations and affections of our fans, but that’s not to say we’re going to cater to everything people want. At the end of the day, we are going to rely, as we did in season one, on the core instincts of the [Duffer] brothers.”

It's clear now that the Duffer Brothers had some pretty damn good instincts for the first season, so trusting them to make the show the way they want to sounds like an excellent plan. Perhaps the best news in that regard is that the creatives on the show don't have to go through a series of bureaucrats or committees to get things done. Levy explains:

“There’s no studio, there’s no outside showrunner, there’s no big TV company. There’s literally [producer] Dan Cohen, me, the Duffer Brothers and we deal with three execs at Netflix. This TV show is made by a smaller team than almost any TV show or movie I’ve ever heard of.”

That's great to hear, because I can easily see how a traditional network could meddle too much after the show became such a smash hit and alter it beyond recognition. Here's hoping the Duffer Brothers have a good plan for the second season and are able to execute it the way they want to. Stranger Things season 2 arrives on Netflix next summer. For more of Levy's thoughts on the new season, check out this piece from a month or so ago.