Youths these days, amirite? Finn Wolfhard, who plays Mike Wheeler on “Stranger Things,” told the story of how it all went down during an appearance on “The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon” in January 2023. “So, we were on the set filming ‘Stranger Things 4,'” said Wolfhard. “And we were all talking about, like, yeah, if there’s going to be, like — like, joking. ‘Oh, they’re all going to have us back in 20 years. We’re all going to be, like, fat and old and being like, ‘Oh, Evan, where are you?” You know, that kind of thing.”
Not wanting to leave the Duffers out in the cold, Wolfhard explained, “And then I was like, ‘Oh, but if you guys [the Duffers] are actually gonna do a spin-off, it should be this.’ It was at this point that, if all of this was happening on a TV sitcom, there would’ve probably been a record scratch as the Duffers gave Wolfhard a look and pulled him aside:
“And I said it, and the Duffers looked at each other and looked at me, and they were like, ‘Could we talk to you for a second?’ And then they pulled me off and they were like, ‘That is the idea. Who told you?’ I was like, ‘No one.’ They were like, ‘What do you mean? You just, like, came up with it?’ And I was like, ‘Well, no, I just thought that would be a cool way to kind of expand…’ And they were like, ‘Well, yeah, I don’t know.’ It was really funny, they were like, ‘Okay, well, don’t tell anyone!'”