**Spoiler Alert**: This article contains mild spoilers for Stranger Things season five.
There's been an ongoing online theory that Stranger Things season five didn't end with episode eight, and that a surprise seventh episode would be released on Jan. 7, turning everything once again... well, upside down. But Netflix has finally set the record straight.
As of the morning of Jan. 7, the bios for the official Stranger Things social media accounts read, "ALL EPISODES OF STRANGER THINGS ARE NOW PLAYING." So, despite the many fans' conviction that the series conclusion was almost too good to be true—a movement known as "Conformity Gate" online—Stranger Things as we know it is indeed concluded.
But that doesn't mean the Stranger Things universe is done. In fact, there are several spinoff projects in the works. Not only will a documentary titled One Last Adventure, chronicling the making of season five, release on Jan. 12, but there are two more projects headed our way.
The first is an animated series coming sometime this year called Stranger Things: Tales of '85. The show will take place between seasons two and three of the original series, following characters Eleven, Mike Wheeler, Dustin Henderson, Will Byers, Lucas Sinclair, and Max Mayfield (played by new voice actors) as they work to unravel the mysteries of the Upside Down.
The second is an unnamed live-action series for which details are scarce, though Stranger Things creators Ross Duffer and Matt Duffer have promised that this project will answer some lingering questions left at the end of season five. For instance, what exactly happened with Henry Creel, a.k.a Vecna, in that cave that gave him his powers, connecting him to Dimension X's Mind Flayer?
"I do want to explain, just because people's expectations go in certain directions: The spinoff is going to delve into that and explain it, and you're going to understand it," Matt told Variety in an interview published on Jan. 1. "But it's a completely different mythology."
"So it's not a deep exploration of the Mind Flayer or anything like that," he emphasized. "It's very fresh and very new, but yes, it will answer some of the loose threads that are remaining."
But despite the connection to the original series, don't expect to see actors Millie Bobby Brown, Caleb McLaughlin, Finn Wolfhard, Noah Schnapp, Sadie Sink, or Gaten Matarazzo make an appearance in the spinoff. The brothers confirmed they're still writing it. "No common characters," Matt confirmed. "We're actually really excited about working with a clean slate: completely new characters, new town, new world, new mythology."
