The Duffer Brothers have addressed the alleged Montauk spin-off that was seemingly teased at the end of Stranger Things season five.
Trash ratings and backlash aside, we have now come to the end of a decade-long show. It’s been a big part of our lives since 2016, back when the Marvel Cinematic Universe was still in its infancy, and Donald Trump proved you don’t have to be qualified to get a job. Naturally, people want to know if the Stranger Things story will be continuing in some form.
In some of Hopper’s final scenes in season five, he talks about moving to Montauk, Long Island, where they’re “looking for a new chief of police.” The somewhat innocuous statement created a lot of debate online, in part due to the conspiracy theories surrounding the area of Montauk.
You see, back in the 1980s, theories started brewing around something known as The Montauk Project. It was believed that various government projects were conducted at either Camp Hero or Montauk Air Force Station, with said projects involving the usual suspects: Mind control and psychological warfare. The project was also said to include experiments on time travel, teleportation, metahumans, extraterrestrial life, and staging the fake Apollo Moon landings.
Authors Preston Nichols and Peter Moon took the conspiracy theories mainstream, detailing their own involvement in a series of books called The Montauk Project: Experiments in Time. The series is treated as fictional.
Obviously, such themes and ideas are a goldmine for a Stranger Things spin-off, leading many people to suspect that the next Duffer brothers project will be centred around the Montauk experiments.
WHAT. THE. HELL.
MONTAUK#StrangerThings5 pic.twitter.com/4Oip7Hyeu3
— rocío ໑
st5 spoilers! (@acordesmenores2) January 1, 2026
Is there going to be a Stranger Things spin-off about the Montauk Project?
While there are Stranger Things spin-offs in the works, the Duffer brothers have since rejected the idea that The Montauk Project will be one of them.
“Ross wanted to put the Montauk thing in, and this is what I didn’t want to happen, is people thinking that there’s going to be a spin-off in Montauk. No, but I actually think it’s really cute. I’m glad we have it,” Matt Duffer told Collider.
Also, Montauk was the original concept name for Stranger Things, so it was a neat little callback to the earliest days of the show.
“So, we’re all kind of invested in exploring completely new characters and a new mythology,” he added.
That being said, there have been some rumblings about a continuation of the Stranger Things mythos. Just don’t expect the likes of Eleven, Max, or Hopper to be making an appearance.
Montauk is looking for a chief of police #StrangerThings5 pic.twitter.com/tfCsvAF2Zc
— Haley (@_wolfhaley) January 1, 2026
Talking to Variety about the briefcase a young Henry Creel found, Matt Duffer explained: “Spinoffy, yeah. You pinned us down. So annoying. I do want to explain, just because people’s expectations go in certain directions: The spinoff is going to delve into that and explain that, and you’re going to understand it. But it’s a completely different mythology.
“So it’s not a deep exploration of the Mind Flayer or anything like that. It’s very fresh and very new, but yes, it will answer some of the loose threads that are remaining.”
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Featured image credit: Netflix
