Name: The Thing from Another World
Released: 1951

Netflix’s biggest show now has an heir, and her name is not Duffer. Other Worlds: A Stranger Things Adventure, the live-action prequel the streamer ordered to series on Stranger Things Day, carries Matt and Ross Duffer as co-creators, but it will be written and run by Kate Trefry, the writer who joined the original series in its second season and stayed for the rest of the ride.

Most of the coverage files her name a few lines under the brothers’ statement. It belongs at the top. The order hands Trefry the next era of the franchise, and Netflix is not betting on an unknown: she has already taken Stranger Things out of the eighties once, on a stage.

The writer who stayed

Deadline counted the firsts. Trefry got her first staff writer job on the mothership series, wrote her first play with Stranger Things: The First Shadow, and now has her first series as creator with Other Worlds. Before Hawkins came a screenwriter’s apprenticeship: an Anchorage childhood, English at New York University, two unproduced features (Pure O and Revolver) on the Black List. Along the way she co-wrote Fear Street Part Three: 1666 and picked up a 2022 Emmy nomination for Outstanding Drama Series as one of the show’s producers.

“The Duffer Brothers gave me my first paying job in Hollywood, and it has been a joy and a fever dream ever since,” she said in the announcement. The brothers returned the compliment, calling her the showrunner “who has been in the trenches with us since Season 2.”

A stage play as the pilot

The official line insists on “a wholly new story,” with new characters and new mythology. Read the fine print and the lineage runs straight through Trefry’s own work. She wrote The First Shadow from a story by herself, the Duffers and Jack Thorne; it won a Tony and drew an Olivier nomination. That play had already moved the saga back in time and into the Nevada backstory of young Henry Creel, the boy who becomes Vecna.

According to what Matt Duffer told Variety last year, the prequel will explain the rock Henry finds in a scientist’s briefcase in the Nevada caves, an object the play introduced before the final season picked it up. The teaser places the new show in Marion, Nevada, on April 19, 1955; Deadline describes a deserted bike by a restricted area at night, with “Sh-Boom” by The Chords on the soundtrack. Deadline points out that the same song plays in the fifth season when Max visits Henry’s memory at Hawkins High, a setting that was born in the play. Netflix also taped The First Shadow in February, a filmed version with no release date yet that Deadline expects to bridge the flagship and the prequel.

Why the Duffers are not running it

Trefry’s promotion is earned, and it is also structural. The Duffers now sit under an exclusive overall deal at Paramount, and Other Worlds is a carve-out for their Upside Down Pictures banner. Deadline is blunt about the consequence: the brothers were never going to be day-to-day showrunners. Shawn Levy, the original series’ executive producer and director, has left for Disney’s 20th Television and executive produces through 21Laps without directing. Joe Wright, of Pride & Prejudice and Atonement, will direct the first three episodes.

So the people who built Netflix’s flagship now work for rivals, and the continuity of the franchise rests with the writer who never left the room. Jinny Howe, Netflix’s head of scripted series for the US and Canada, named her alongside the brothers when she said the streamer was “honored to partner again with Matt and Ross Duffer and Kate Trefry.”

Back to the fifties, eyes on the sky

The Duffers had warned this was coming. “I think we’re done with the ’80s,” Ross Duffer told Deadline last year. Their sign-off on the announcement, “watch the skies, nerds!”, pushes the series toward an older ancestor: “Keep watching the skies” is the radio warning that closes The Thing from Another World, the 1951 science fiction horror film about a saucer frozen in Arctic ice. The Hollywood Reporter reads the phrase as a UFO hint, though its report also headlined the show as “Other Words” and folded the New Mexico shoot into the setting. The story is set in Nevada; New Mexico is only where it films.

Other Worlds is set to premiere in 2028 with an all-new cast, the fourth project in a universe that also includes The First Shadow and the animated Stranger Things: Tales From ’85, now awaiting a renewal decision. The original series drew more than 1.2 billion views across its first four seasons.

The last time Trefry took this world somewhere new, she came back with a teenage Henry Creel and a Tony. This time her teaser starts with a deserted bike by a restricted area, a song by The Chords and a casting call that has not gone out yet. Whoever answers it will be working for her.

Tags: Netflix, Stranger Things, Kate Trefry, Other Worlds, TV prequels