They finish each other’s sentences. They switch rolesseamlessly, communicate without words. At times, they can seem to share a brain— “that weird telepathic relationship,” as Winona Ryder, a star of the series,described it — because they rarely seem to disagree, at least not vocally. Whenthey write, they do it facing each other and in a shared Google Doc. To me,this seems insane. M Night Shyamalan, an early mentor and collaborator,affectionately described the phenomenon as like watching a “two-headed creativemonster.”
Still, they insist they would never want to isolatethemselves in a writing cabin together.
“It could end in a double murder — or just a murder,” Mattsaid, laughing. “Make sure there are no axes around.”
Judging by the way they worked together here in late March,having two heads was mostly a boon as the deadlines cascaded for Season 4. Thenew season, the first half of which premieres May 27 on Netflix after athree-year wait, still needed a lot of work in postproduction. Netflix hadn’tyet announced that it had been haemorrhaging subscribers all quarter. But therewas a sense in the editing suite that a lot was riding on this season of thesci-fi horror drama, which has earned seven Emmys since it debuted in 2016.
With competing streamers gaining ground, it was safe to saythat Netflix needed a giant hit. And “Stranger Things,” as Ted Sarandos,co-chief executive of Netflix, told me last month, is “probably our biggest,most enduring content brand that we’ve created.” This was the same day thecompany lost about $50 billion of its market value.
During the two days I observed them, the Duffers, whocontinue to direct, write and oversee “Stranger Things,” had enough on theirplates just getting things manageable. The pandemic had already causedsignificant delays, and the new season is five hours longer than any previousone. That was the main reason they had decided to release it in two chunks,Ross said. There was just so much material to get through. Demogorgons neededanimating. Run times needed tightening.
“How long is the episode right now?” Ross asked their editorDean Zimmerman about the episode on the screen. Zimmerman glanced my way.
“You want me to say it out loud?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“Two and a half hours.”
With episodes like short movies (three of the first four are75 minutes or more), one might worry that the Duffers have succumbed to excess.For now, they seem content to let the fans decide; Netflix has proved willingto support their expanding vision. Meanwhile, the tone is decidedly shiftingthis season (think “A Nightmare on Elm Street” and “Hellraiser”), and its youngcast has been shaving for at least a few years. (Want to feel old? Caleb McLaughlinand Sadie Sink are 20.) Plenty can change in three years, including viewerattention. Will fans still flock to “Stranger Things”?
Say this about the Duffers, 38, who as two virtually unknownbrothers from North Carolina created one of the biggest pop TV phenomena of theStreaming Age: It hasn’t paid to underestimate them so far.
IF THE DUFFER BROTHERS seemed to come out of nowhere whenthe now-famous opening sequence of “Stranger Things” first rolled out, that’sbecause by most measures, they had. They had written a few scripts, directed afew shorts. They had made a feature-length movie, but it never saw theatres.
But if fans know little more about them today than they didsix years ago, it’s not for lack of appetite. With few exceptions, the Duffershave kept their press engagement to a minimum. Unlike their teenage castmembers — say, Millie Bobby Brown or Gaten Matarazzo — they rarely get stoppedon the street.
The Duffer brothers prefer it that way. “There’s a reasonwe’re behind the camera — that’s where we feel more comfortable,” Ross saidover pizzas after a long morning of playbacks and colour correction. “We lovethe part of making a show, the process of making it, and not everything else somuch that comes with it,” Matt added.
They dress in sweatshirts and tennis shoes and rarely goout. They drive normal-people cars. Both are blue-eyed handsome, butmercifully, they were easy to tell apart: Matt’s hair is longer, and heappeared to be the more animated and fidgety of the two; Ross’ voice is deeper,and his manner seemed a bit more circumspect.
“They’re still some of the most down-to-earth people Iknow,” said Tristan Smith, a friend since early childhood who today is acreative director at Google. “When we hang out, it’s mostly, like, go todinner, play board games, watch a movie, talk about the industry,” he added.“But it’s never name dropping.”
It may help that the Duffers were raised far away from Hollywood.They were born in 1984 — the year after the timeline of “Stranger Things”begins — and grew up in a middle-class neighbourhood in Durham. Their father,Allen Duffer, a film buff who worked in a local research lab, said the boys hadbeen movie fanatics since they were toddlers.
“I was always surprised at their attention span, even at ayoung age,” he said. “Dumbo” was an early favourite. Eventually, their tastesexpanded to Steven Spielberg and Tim Burton. Friday movie night was sacrosanct,and Allen took his sons to see every new release in theatres that he could.
Starting around the fourth grade, the brothers began makingmovies with Smith, whose parents had a VHS camcorder. Their first was based onthe fantasy card game Magic: The Gathering. In one scene, a character shootsanother with a Nerf bow-and-arrow. In another, a boy in a Freddy Krueger maskseasons a severed hand with salt. “It was all improvised,” Ross explained. Themusic “was mostly Danny Elfman playing out of a boom box.”
Their father laughed when he recalled those early movies.“You know, they were kind of painful to watch because they would go on forever— mostly it was kids running around fighting each other with swords,” he said.But “then the process matured over time.” The technology got better too. Withdigital camcorders and iMacs, they were able to edit and add music without aboom box.
In 2011, just four years out of film school at ChapmanUniversity, in Orange County, California, the brothers sold a script to WarnerBros. for a post-apocalyptic thriller called “Hidden.” Suddenly the Duffers hada real Hollywood budget. “It was this insane situation,” Matt said. “Ross and Iare going: ‘Oh, this is the dream. We did it.’”
The film, about a family trapped underground while shadowycreatures roam the surface, establishes themes familiar to any “StrangerThings” fan: a precocious child, government conspiracies, an exploding rat.What the completed film didn’t have, the studio decided, was commercialviability. It went straight to video in 2015.
Matt and Ross thought their short career was over. But thenthe script made its way to Shyamalan, who was impressed and hired them to writefor the Fox puzzle-box drama “Wayward Pines.” His confidence helped get themback on track. “Stranger Things” soon followed.
“A lot of me is really grateful for that, for gettingsmacked,” Matt said, reflecting back on their experience with “Hidden.”“Because it’s just made me appreciate this so much more and not take it forgranted.”
Early criticism of “Stranger Things” argued that it waslittle more than ’80s karaoke — a greatest-hits collection that charms butlacks the genius of original art. Matt and Ross have never been coy about theirinfluences — their original pitch described the show “as if Steven Spielbergwas directing a long lost Stephen King novel,” Ross said. (Completing thecircle, the Duffers are expected to join Spielberg as executive producers ofthe Netflix series “The Talisman,” a long-awaited adaptation of the novelco-written by King.)
But some critics, like Willa Paskin at Slate, have wonderedwhether comparing “Stranger Things” to Spielberg missed something essentialabout Spielberg’s work. “E.T.” invokes nostalgia so powerfully today, theyargue, because Spielberg captured his own time precisely. Wouldn’t it be betterto give today’s kids something similar?
Matt pointed to the show’s popularity among young viewerswho know nothing of “War Games” as proof that “Stranger Things” is greater thanthe sum of its references.
“If the show was only working because of the nostalgia youfeel for bringing back that particular piece of music or referencing thatmoment in a film that you love,” he said, “then yeah, it wouldn’t be workingwith a 10-year-old.” They don’t deny the many tributes to their influences.“But at a certain point,” Ross added, “you just have to figure out how to tellthis story and tell it well.”
Shyamalan noted the humour of “Stranger Things” and itssuccess in capturing the innocence of children as evidence that the Duffers hadtranscended mere imitation. But he didn’t think the brothers had yet evincedwhat might be called a Duffer Style. I understood this as less a critique thanan acknowledgment of the constraints that can come with success — in this case,the continuing demands of what began as a concept steeped in homage.
“I think their style is going to continue to evolve,” hesaid. “I think they became super successful by doing this story,” he added,“but it wouldn’t shock me if we see something after this that doesn’t soundlike this.”
WINONA RYDER, WHO PLAYS JOYCE, IS CANDID about what“Stranger Things” has meant for her. “It completely changed my life,” she saidby phone.
In Season 4, Joyce, a single mom to Will (Noah Schnapp) andJonathan (Charlie Heaton) who has taken in Eleven (Brown), remains central asthey try to start over in Southern California, still mourning the loss of theirbeloved Hopper (David Harbour). (Fans have known since an early trailer droppedin 2020 that Hopper is alive in a Russian prison camp.)
The role has drawn metatextual power from Ryder’s roles inmovies like “Edward Scissorhands,” which were a huge influence on the Duffers.It has also had a powerful impact on her career.
“In all honesty, I don’t think that there would be this kindof amazing, incredible warmth or, like, embrace of me that I’ve felt withoutthis show,” she said. “There wasn’t a lot going on with me.”
Everyone I interviewed from the production called theDuffers generous, hardworking and unpretentious. That has been important, youngcast members said, for fostering an environment in which they could flourish.For a bunch of actors who became very famous as children, they appearexceptionally well balanced.
Finn Wolfhard, who plays Mike, said that he had struggledwith anxiety. But he said the stable work environment the Duffers had createdand maintained had helped him and other cast members immensely.
“When we get on the set, we feel like we’re 12 years oldagain,” Wolfhard said. “And that is a huge reason, I’m sure, why a lot of ushaven’t gone crazy.”
Season 4 will be the show’s second-to-last, which means ithas to get the characters and themes well positioned for the denouement. Thelong COVID delay, which arrived several weeks into shooting, gave the Duffersand their writers plenty of time to figure out where they wanted Season 5 toend. But it also ratcheted up the pressure on a show packed with teenage stars,whose surging hormones and heights place the production on a limited timelinein even the best of situations.
Lucky for them, they had the support of a cast and crew thathad come to feel like family. As Sink and Wolfhard pointed out, there were wasno one who understood what they had experienced better than the people who hadgone through it with them, and the Duffers were at the centre.
“They’re our big brothers,” Sink said. “It’s really thatkind of relationship. And they’ll always be a huge part of all of our livesbecause of this.”
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