Stranger Things: The First Shadow brings Hawkins to the stage, not Netflix

Dark Horse is taking another trip to Hawkins Lab with Stranger Things: SIX, and this time it ’s headed to Webtoon. The digital release, expected to roll out on the vertical-comics platform, adapts the publisher’s story centered on Test Subject Six, Francine, according to ScreenRant.

The series tracks Francine, a teenager brought into the lab because of her rare precognition — the ability to see, and sometimes change, what’s coming. As Brenner’s experiments escalate, her visions twist into nightmares of Demogorgons and other horrors bleeding in from the Upside Down.

It also widens the lab’s world with other numbered kids, most notably Three, real name Ricky. He’s portrayed as Francine’s love interest and can manipulate emotions, a power that turns volatile under Hawkins Lab’s control.

As a reminder, the Duffer Brothers have not treated the Dark Horse comics as official canon, per previous reports, and the Netflix series depicted the 1979 Hawkins Lab massacre that left the numbered children — including characters like Six and Three — dead. The comic dives into their lives before that tragedy.

Spin-off update

The Duffers first said a live-action Stranger Things spin-off was in the works back in 2022. Asked about it on Josh Horowitz’s Happy Sad Confused podcast, they stressed they’re taking their time rather than rushing to capitalize on the original show’s success.

“We’re being very careful,” Duffer Brothers told Josh Horowitz. “We don’t want to rush it. We don’t want it to be anything but excellent. No one wants to make it just to make it. No one wants to just do it to continue Stranger Things. Like, it has to be awesome or forget it. That’s sort of everybody’s mentality about it.”

The pair’s Upside Down Pictures banner has a lot riding on the next chapter, but there’s still no official word on when the new Stranger Things spin-off will be released.