Stranger Things star Finn Wolfhard is sitting on a secret. The actor is currently promoting the release of When You Finish Saving The World, a movie directed by Jesse Eisenberg. During his appearance on The Tonight Show, he shared a story from the Season 4 set.
In a spitballing of outlandish ideas, Finn accidentally figured out how the show’s spin-off brings us back into the Stranger-verse. “We were on set filming Stranger Things 4 and we were all talking about if there’s going to be—like joking, ‘oh they’re all going to have us back in 20 years and we’re all going to be fat and old,’ that kind of thing,” he started. “And then I was like, ‘But if you guys are actually going to do a spin-off, it should be this.’ And then I said it and the Duffers looked at each other and looked at me and they were like, ‘Could we talk to you for a second?’ And then they pulled me off and they were like, ‘That is the idea. Who told you?’ and I was like, ‘No one,’ and they were like ‘What do you mean? You just came up with it?’ and I was like, ‘Well, no, I just thought that that would be a cool way to expand.’ It was really funny and they were like ‘Okay, well... don’t tell anyone.’”
Last February, months before Season 4 premiered, the Duffer brothers wrote an open letter to the fans, confirming that the show would end in Season 5 and hinted at the beginnings of a spin-off series. Then in July, they appeared on Josh Horowitz’ Happy Sad Confused podcast with some clarification. “We are working on a spin-off idea that we haven’t told anybody about. I think it drove Netflix crazy that we were talking about it in the press and they don’t know what it is.” And while Finn might be the most in-the-know member of the cast, the Duffer brothers said he doesn’t know that much.
“It’s not like [Finn] machine-gunned ideas out,” they said. “He was just like, ‘Is it this?’ And it’s so off the wall, it’s not what anyone would think so I don’t know how Finn picked it out. He’s a smart kid. So, we have that idea, but the idea, ultimately, is to sort of pass the baton to someone who is really talented and passionate. Even the idea of say, us doing a pilot and then leaving it – it just feels silly to me. You need to be there from the beginning to the end. We need to find a partner to help us with that. This show has taken up a decade of our lives. I’ve loved every second of it, but I don’t want to do another decade. But, we do want to be involved.”