Stranger Things has become one of Netflix's biggest and most talked-about original series after its two seasons on the air, and a third season is currently in production. While fans wait for new material, many of us are left to ponder the questions that are still unanswered after the first two seasons. The bad news is that we're likely still a while off from the third season premiering; the good news is that there will be another way to get answers to some of the biggest lingering questions surrounding poor Will Byers. Stranger Things will explain what happened to Will Byers in a comic series slated for debut later this year. Here's what we know.
Netflix is collaborating with Dark Horse Comics on a line of comics based on the characters and world of Stranger Things. A "multi-year publishing line" should give fans something to look forward to between seasons, however many seasons there may be when all is said and done. EW reports that the first series in this publishing line will center on Will Byers following his unwilling journey into the Upside Down in the Season 1 premiere. As fans will remember, for as much as what happened to Will drove the action of the first season, Will himself only appeared in relatively few scenes in the present along with some flashbacks. He spent most of the season off-screen until Eleven made contact with him in The Void. The first Will-centric comic series will run for four issues and debut its first installment in September.
Will was barely conscious when Eleven finally found him in The Void, then unconscious and literally attached to the Upside Down with a tentacle down his throat, so we didn't get to see him do much of anything. He was in the Upside Down version of his house at some point, and he passed some of the time by singing "Should I Stay or Should I Go" to himself, but there are a lot of blanks to be filled, and a Dark Horse comic series could be the perfect way to do it. Stranger Things can do pretty much whatever it wants when not constrained by a budget for special effects or the limits of a what a child actor can do.
There's also the point that 13-year-old Noah Schnapp has already grown enough that he can't really perform flashbacks to Will's time in the Upside Down circa Season 1. It was already a stretch seeing Season 2 flashbacks to Season 1 Eleven and Mike when Millie Bobby Brown and Finn Wolfhard had both obviously grown a few inches, and the kids are surely still growing. Comics can take the characters as far back as necessary. Who knows? Maybe Barb can have an Upside Down cameo for the sake of fans who wanted to see her in Season 2. We'll have to wait and see.
The first of the four Stranger Things issues will hit comic book stores on September 26. If you need some strangeness ahead of September and whenever the video game is released, you can always rewatch the first two seasons of Stranger Things on Netflix. Our 2018 Netflix premiere guide can point you toward some other streaming options, and our summer TV schedule can help you find more of what to watch.
