Sure, it also has great characters and a talented cast, but a large part of the appeal of Netflix’s smash-hit Stranger Things is ’80s nostalgia, as creators the Duffer brothers have concocted the show’s mythos by lovingly (or shamelessly, depending on your point of view) pilfering from that decade’s cache of pop culture — everything from E.T. to X-Men comics. The series returns for its fourth season later this month and, if this new poster’s anything to go by, it’ll lean into the horror side of things more than ever.
The official Stranger Things Twitter account shared the eye-popping poster — which comes from veteran Stranger Things promotional artist Kyle Lambert — online this Thursday, along with the caption, “*screams in demogorgon* THE WAIT IS ALMOST OVER. Vol 1 May 27.” This serves as a reminder that the first half of ST4 is due out in just over two weeks’ time.
The poster features the full intergenerational cast of heroes, from Millie Bobby Brown’s Eleven to David Harbour’s Hopper. The crux of the image is the Creel house, the creepy haunted abode that was once the site of a brutal massacre in the 1950s. As we’ve seen in the trailers, the house’s evil will reawaken 30 years later. And it’s all tied into a new monstrous villain, Vecna, the creature looming in the background of this poster.
There’s some definite Stephen King vibes going on in both this image and the storyline of ST4, then, and Vecna’s disfigured face is giving us Freddy Krueger flashbacks. Which is pretty fitting, in fact, as Freddy himself Robert Englund has a role this year, playing Victor Creel, the insane asylum inmate at the center of the Creel house mystery. Other newcomers include Jamie Campbell Bower, Eduardo Franco, and Amybeth McNulty.
Don’t miss volume one of Stranger Things season four on Netflix this May 27. The second half follows six weeks later on July 1.
