The Duffer Brothers are undeniably successful in the streaming sphere thanks to Stranger Things, which will wrap with the fifth and final season at the very end of the 2025 TV schedule. That said, Matt and Ross Duffer are reportedly ready to spend some time in the Rightside Up after a decade dealing with the Upside Down, and their new Netflix project sounds a lot more grounded than what they've written for Hawkins, Indiana in the '80s.
That said, I'm still interested in more details about the animated Stranger Things spinoff series that was announced years ago. But first things first!
The Duffer Brothers' Next Project
Matt and Russ Duffer will be working on a book adaptation this time around, with Deadline reporting that they're developing a novel called The Savage, Noble Death of Babs Dionne for viewers with a Netflix subscription. Author Ron Currie and his writing partner, Joshua Mohr, are expected to write the crime thriller as well as serve as executive producers. The Duffers are also slated to executive produce, along with Hilary Leavitt via the brothers' Upside Down Pictures production company.
If you've never heard of the book but thought "Babs Dionne" sounds like a great mobster name, you're not far off. The title character is a Franco-American crime matriarch based out of a small town in Maine. While she's a loving grandmother, she also has control over the drug trade... until a drug kingpin discovers that he's not dominating the business in the upper northeast, and sends somebody who probably means bad news for Babs.
Other characters include the lieutenants who work for Babs; her longtime friends; her eldest daughter Lori, who struggles with addiction after her time in the Marines; The Man, who is sent by the kingpin; and Sis, her youngest daughter who has gone missing.
I personally haven't read the book, but I feel confident guessing that Sis isn't going to go missing because she was chased into an Upside Down dimension by a monster a la Will Byers in Stranger Things! This technically isn't the Duffer Brothers' first project outside of the Stranger Things franchise in recent years, as they produced The Boroughs and Something Very Bad Is Going To Happen, both for Netflix with expected premieres in 2026. The Savage, Noble Death of Babs Dionne is only in the development stage at this point, so there are no guarantees that it will become a series.
Now, as a lover of crime dramas, The Savage, Noble Death of Babs Dionne actually sounds right up my alley, but I still associate The Duffer Brothers with Stranger Things, and this development reminded me of another show in the franchise that I'd love some more information on.
What's Up With The Animated Series?
News of a Stranger Things animated TV show first broke back in 2023, at which point fans were already nearly a year into the wait for Season 5. At the time, the project was said to be an adult animated series set within the world of Stranger Things, with The Duffer Brothers and longtime collaborator Shawn Levy on board as executive producers. Matt and Ross Duffer expressed in a joint statement that they'd "always dreamed of an animated Stranger Things in the vein of the Saturday morning cartoons that we grew up loving, and to see this dream realized has been absolutely thrilling."
Two years later, and Netflix has at least revealed that the title will be Stranger Things: Tales From '85. Showrunner Eric Robles reportedly dropped some details and a sneak peek at the Annecy Film Festival in early June. Per Deadline, Robles said that his inspiration for Tales From '85 "all went back to The Real Ghostbusters," which he described as "silly but had a handful of dark, creepy episodes." The logline from Netflix reads:
Welcome back to Hawkins in the stark winter of 1985, where the original characters must fight new monsters and unravel a paranormal mystery terrorizing their town in Stranger Things: Tales From ’85, an epic new animated series
That confirms that the show will be set in the colder months between the end of Season 2 in late 1984 and the beginning of Season 3 in summer 1985. Hopefully the mention of "the original characters" means familiar – albeit animated – faces, but the promise of new monsters and a terrifying mystery leads me to suspect that the stories won't actually be canon to the live-action show. That doesn't mean it can't be fun, though!
A big question I have at this point is whether this show is aimed at adults, as was expected back in 2023 when the animated offshoot was first announced, or aimed at children. There's plenty of time to speculate before Stranger Things Season 5 arrives, as the first of three volumes releases on November 26. The second will be on December 25, and the third on December 31.
Splitting the season into three volumes that release on or near major holidays in the U.S. was a divisive choice, but I'm just excited that the streamer is releasing the episodes at 8 p.m. ET rather than 12 a.m. PT as usual, which always means 3 a.m. in my time zone. In the meantime, fans can always rewatch the first four seasons streaming on Netflix and cross their fingers for a glimpse of the animated series.
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