Season 3 Of Stranger Things To Feature Sizeable Time Jump; The Duffer Brothers Tease “End Goal”

Before season 2 of Stranger Things aired (our review), and all of our Halloween plans were quickly shelved, the Duffer Brothers outlined their masterplan that would see the Netflix phenom reach its conclusion after four or five seasons. And it seems that end goal is still very much in place.

While partaking in a Stranger Things post-mortem with Yahoo! (fair warning: these comments from the show’s creators can be construed as mild spoilers), Matt and Ross Duffer hinted at the seemingly inevitable time jump to come in season 3, along with their ultimate end goal for Mike, Eleven and the rest of the gang.

Indeed, similar to Warner’s Harry Potter franchise, there’s also the very real concern of an aging cast – those kids aren’t going to stay young forever, after all. And so, as the show’s main players continue their journey through adolescence, Ross Duffer conceded that a time jump will be a necessary pillar of season 3.

It will have to be somewhat of a time gap, because the kids are, I mean, they already look so much older. No matter what we want to do, I remember when we were originally talking about Season 2, we wanted to just start it in Christmas and just go from there, but then we realized the kids are just too old, so we had to jump forward. Even the latest trailer, we had to loop a line with Caleb. He sounds like a man now. It creeps me out. He’s going to be driving to set next year.

Netflix is yet to openly confirm a third season of Stranger Things at the time of writing, but with reports claiming that season 2’s premiere attracted 15.8 million views in the U.S. over the course of three days, we imagine it’s a question of when, not if, Things will return.

And yes, the Duffer Brothers still have an end goal in mind:

We have an end goal; we know where we want to go. We’re not quite sure how long it will take to get there, but we do have a plan. And some of it, it’s just because Season 2, we just came into it with so many ideas, and so many of them have been kicked further down the road. So we’re gonna use some of those. In [our Season 2 brainstorm], we figured out what that ending is, but it’ll take more than one year to get there.

Both seasons of Netflix’s Stranger Things are now available to stream, and based on the show’s current timeline, we imagine a return trip to Hawkins will be on the cards late next year. Stay tuned for more.