Sweaty Stranger Things stage play trailer insists it "might" point to what comes next

Of all the tricks Netflix has pulled in recent months to increase its revenue—cracking down on password sharing, raising prices, tossing Chris Hemsworth at the screen with wild abandon—few are odder than the news that the video firm would soon be pivoting to theater. Specifically, with its record-smashing genre series Stranger Things, which announced almost exactly a year ago today that it was making the move to the stage, because if there’s one thing that fervent fans of nostalgia-based Spielberg pastiches love, it’s watching dedicated thespians trod the boards.

But, just in case a sheer love of the dramaturgical arts isn’t enough to lure in the Hawkins-ites out in the audience, Netflix has decided to play a manipulative card or two to sweeten the deal, releasing a trailer for Stranger Things: The First Shadow today that goes very heavy on footage from the show, very light on any idea of what the play might actually looks like, and ends by saying, “The beginning of the Stranger Things story might hold the key to what comes next.”

(And if you’re suddenly hearing a serious and concerning creaking coming from said trailer, that’s the sound of a load-bearing “might” twisting and splintering under the strain.)

Of course, anyone who’s ridden the multi-media cross-promotion rodeo before—say, when Star Wars decided to announce a key plot point in The Rise Of Skywalker via an event in tween credit card trap Fortnite—will know that there’s no good way to pull off what Netflix is trying here. Either The First Shadow matters to the overall story of Stranger Things—in which case, viewers will have to either pony up for tickets or avail themselves of Wikipedia (the poor man’s Broadway)—or it doesn’t, in which case, a bunch of theatergoers bought popcorn for no good reason at all. The best anybody can hope for, honestly, is that the play tells a good story in its own right, or, barring that, has some cool tentacle effects on the stage, as it delves into what we’re going to assume is an extended look at bad guy Vecna’s backstory.

The First Shadow will arrive some time later this year, at the Phoenix Theater in London’s West End.