Netflix Orders Stranger Things Prequel ‘Other Worlds’, Set in 1955 Nevada
Netflix has ordered a new live-action prequel to Stranger Things, taking one of its defining franchises decades into the past and hundreds of miles from Hawkins, Indiana.
The series, titled Other Worlds: A Stranger Things Adventure, was announced on 6 November as part of Stranger Things Day, the annual fan celebration marking the fictional date in 1983 when Will Byers disappeared. It is set in Marion, Nevada, in 1955, and is due to premiere in 2028.
A new town, a new decade
The teaser released with the announcement gives viewers a date and a place: 19 April 1955, Marion, Nevada. A disturbance in the night sky, read by fans as a UFO, is followed by a crack of thunder and the year 2028. Its tagline sets out the premise in a single line: “Before Hawkins there was Marion, Nevada.”
The story will explore events before Henry Creel, the boy who eventually becomes the villain Vecna, was exposed to the otherworldly substance that gave him his powers. Matt Duffer has previously said the spinoff will explain a rock the young Henry finds in a scientist’s briefcase in the Nevada caves, a detail that ties the new series directly to the mythology built up across the original show.
No cast has been announced, and Netflix has confirmed no plot details beyond the setting and the period. Production will take place in New Mexico, with filming expected to begin in 2027.
The team behind it
The prequel is co-created by Matt and Ross Duffer with Kate Trefry, a writer on Stranger Things since its second season who also wrote the stage production Stranger Things: The First Shadow. Trefry will serve as showrunner and executive producer.
Joe Wright, the BAFTA and Golden Globe-winning director behind Atonement and Darkest Hour, will direct the first three episodes and executive produce alongside Shawn Levy of 21 Laps. The Duffers will produce through their Upside Down Pictures banner, with the series developed under their overall deal at Paramount, which they joined after their Netflix deal expired in April 2026.
Before Hawkins, there was Marion
Other Worlds is the second television spinoff in the Stranger Things franchise, and the third extension overall once the stage play is counted. The First Shadow, set in 1959, follows a teenage Henry Creel in Nevada; the new series, set four years earlier, becomes the earliest chapter of the story on any screen or stage.
That ordering matters for fans. The play’s filmed version changed its Nevada location to Marion to align it more closely with the fifth season of the original series, a detail that now looks like a deliberate bridge between the two stories.
What it means for the franchise
The order shows Netflix is treating Stranger Things as a universe to be extended, not a single story to be closed. Franchise extensions are having a strong run elsewhere too: The Odyssey has passed $1.17 billion to become Universal’s biggest international release, Godzilla Minus Zero was tipped to top the US box office on its opening weekend, and the Indian epic Ramayana opened to record-breaking numbers.
For Netflix, the gamble is that audiences will follow the franchise to a new town, a new decade and an entirely new cast. The 1955 setting, the desert and the suggestion of something in the sky all point to a story about how the strange first arrived in America, long before a group of children in Hawkins ever heard of the Upside Down.
Variety reported the series order, with the announcement timed to the franchise’s biggest day of the year. The wait, though, will be a long one: with filming still ahead and no cast in place, 2028 is the earliest fans will see Marion, Nevada, for themselves.
