15 TV Shows Like Stranger Things You Need To Watch Next

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While Netflix certainly had hit original shows before, the 2016 series “Stranger Things” catapulted the platform’s original programming to another level. Created by the Duffer Brothers, the series follows a group of kids as they defend their small-town Indiana community from monsters unleashed by an extra-dimensional portal. The show is elevated by classic ’80s movie aesthetics, a fan-favorite ensemble cast, and spectacle as big as any of the biggest movies around.

Of course, all good things must end, and so too is “Stranger Things,” which will release the last two parts of its fifth and final season on Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve. Fortunately, there are plenty of other stories focused on either a primarily young cast or quaint, spooky setting (or both!) for those looking for similar shows. Whether it’s a small-town mystery that takes on supernatural dimensions, or coming-of-age stories exacerbated by dark and disturbing secrets, “Stranger Things” is in good company. 

Here are 15 TV shows like “Stranger Things” that you need to watch next to keep those eerie vibes going.

Before creating “Stranger Things,” the Duffer Brothers were writers on the sci-fi television series “Wayward Pines,” which ran for two seasons on Fox. Based on novels by Blake Crouch, the series has Secret Service agent Ethan Burke (Matt Dillon) investigate the disappearance of two fellow agents in Wayward Pines, Idaho. He finds himself trapped in the town, possessing no means to contact the outside world, with the community run by its cruel sheriff Arnold Pope (Terrence Howard). Burke searches for a way to escape the town as he learns more about its bizarre nature, including the way that time passes within it compared to the outside.

Though the story initially ended with its first season, with “Wayward Pines” offering a final twist and time jump in its finale, the series continued for one additional run. This moved beyond Crouch’s literary source material, expanding the dark mystery to feature decidedly global stakes. But “Wayward Pines” really works best when it leans into the creepiness and claustrophobia of its titular town and the struggle to escape its confines. Revisiting the series, it’s clear to see how the Duffer Brothers used their experience here as a springboard to create “Stranger Things.”

Premiering the same year as “Stranger Things,” “The OA” was another Netflix original series focusing on a young adult-centric supernatural mystery. After being missing for seven years, Prairie Johnson (Brit Marling) returns to her hometown, now possessing eyesight after previously being blind. Referring to herself as the OA, or Original Angel, Prairie recruits several individuals to assist her in rescuing other missing people while searching for an extra-dimensional portal. This cross-country and cross-dimensional quest pits the OA against Hap (Jason Isaacs), the mad scientist who experimented on her during her lengthy captivity.

Apart from its interdimensional stakes, “The OA” resembles “Stranger Things” through its ensemble of misfits out to save the day. Marling does fantastic work as the titular angel, matched by Isaacs’ reliably villainous turn as Hap. Frustratingly, Netflix cancelled the series after two seasons, with “The OA” yet another show that ended on an unresolved cliffhanger. However, those two seasons offer an inventive young adult mystery that blends fantasy and sci-fi in equal measure.

While Archie Comics may have provided a picture of wholesome Americana for generations, the classic characters were completely reimagined for the dark young adult thriller “Riverdale.” Premiering in 2017 on The CW, the show’s titular small-town New York setting is rocked by the death of a local high schooler. Archie Andrews (KJ Apa) and his friends set out to discover what happened to their classmate, uncovering sinister secrets about their town. This escalates to other murder mysteries, the arrival of malevolent cults, and even parallel realities affecting the small community.

Offering a moody take on the source material, “Riverdale” presents a vision of its town constantly shrouded in ominous fog and shadowy pasts. The show gets wackier as it progresses, incorporating full-on musical numbers and veering into the paranormal by the end. This includes a time jump to the 1950s and new romantic pairs harkening back to the franchise’s iconic roots while retaining the underlying menace. Delightfully over-the-top, “Riverdale” keeps from derailing itself completely, entertaining audiences with just how absurd its story gets.

The closest German television has come to making a show like “Stranger Things” so far is the 2017 Netflix original “Dark.” The series is set in the small town of Winden, focused on four families living in the community across several different time periods. The show opens with a child disappearing near a cave system on the outskirts of town in 2019. This appears connected to similar child disappearances in the community in 1986 and 1953 involving the families. As the series progresses, this time-bending mystery becomes tied to an apocalyptic event while generations of families try to learn what’s going on.

With its multiple time periods and generational mystery, “Dark” is a show that gets more enjoyably complex as it goes along. The plot twists and steady escalation fuel a gripping three-season story that will keep audiences guessing. A show that truly lives up to its title, “Dark” is a bleaker sci-fi noir that grows to include apocalyptic stakes and a mystery spanning decades.

If “Riverdale” flirted with the supernatural, its sister series “Chilling Adventures of Sabrina” dove headfirst into the paranormal possibilities. The show follows teenager Sabrina Spellman (Kiernan Shipka) as she embraces her destiny as a witch and begins studying at a magical academy. Sabrina is targeted by dark forces upon her growing involvement in sorcery and witchcraft, including the calculating Lilith (Michelle Gomez). As she embraces her dual heritage as a witch and a mortal, Sabrina stops her hometown of Greendale from being overwhelmed by hellish evil.

Like “Riverdale,” “Chilling Adventures of Sabrina” brings the unabashedly campy elements, but doesn’t hold back on the malevolent mayhem. From unholy baptisms to haunted battles of the bands, the show combines teen drama with demonic stakes to great effect. Through it all, Shipka turns in a strong performance as Sabrina, giving the witchy narrative its human core. Shipka’s Sabrina would cross over to “Riverdale” in a Season 6 event for that show, proving death — and cancellation — was not the end for the witch.

My Chemical Romance frontman Gerard Way is also an accomplished comic book creator, teaming up with Gabriel Bá to pen the postmodern superhero series “The Umbrella Academy.” The comic was adapted by Netflix in 2019, detailing the saga of the Hargreeves, a group of super-powered orphans adopted by the enigmatic Reginald Hargreeves (Colm Feore). The estranged siblings reunite in the wake of Reginald’s death, learning that they are all that stands in the way of an impending apocalypse. Their actions have severe consequences on the space-time continuum, leading to the creation of an alternate timeline and other cataclysmic events.

While “The Umbrella Academy” certainly deconstructs superhero tropes, the show feels more like a sci-fi tale than anything else. The odd enemies that the Hargreeves battle, the prominent use of time travel, and the show’s overall quirky aesthetics make for something more unique in its ultimate presentation. But for all the world-ending stakes that the characters constantly face, the show never takes itself too seriously, with the third season premiere containing a wild “Footloose” dance sequence. 

Running for four seasons, “The Umbrella Academy” is one of the wonderfully weirdest takes on the superhero genre, becoming something very much its own.

The best-selling manga series “Alice in Borderland” by Haro Aso was adapted into a live-action Netflix series in 2020. The show has Ryōhei Arisu (Kento Yamazaki) and his friends suddenly transported to an alternate and near-empty version of Tokyo. Encountering other people trapped in this world, the group is forced to endure a set of deadly challenges if they hope to escape back to their home. After striking up a romance with fellow participant Yuzuha Usagi (Tao Tsuchiya), Arisu returns to the lethal world to rescue her from the game’s overseers.

“Alice in Borderland” stands as one of the best Netflix original Japanese series, bringing plenty of imaginative sci-fi action in its twisted vision of Tokyo. The show revels in the graphic violence but maintains a clear sense of empathy and development for its main characters. A lot of that appeal comes from Yamazaki and Tsuchiya’s solid chemistry that makes up the story’s emotional core.

An adaptation of Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodríguez’s popular comic book series, “Locke & Key” had been in development for years before finally being produced by Netflix. The show has Nina Locke (Darby Stanchfield) and her children inherit the imposing mansion of Keyhouse in a coastal Massachusetts town. The family discovers that their new home contains a set of keys that open magical portals, each with their own unique properties. However, the mystical power of Keyhouse and its namesake keys are also sought by dark forces who target the family and their home.

“Locke & Key” excels by focusing its narrative more on its younger cast, as was the case for its comic book source material. That gives the prominent fantasy aspect of the story an overarching sense of wonder that sells the core concept and its possibilities. At the same time, “Locke & Key” isn’t really a kids’ show, bringing supernatural malevolence and teenage stakes to the table, as well.

One seemingly inconspicuous small town becomes a hellishly deadly trap in the MGM+ series “From.” The unnamed setting traps whomever has the misfortune of venturing into its borders, while voracious monsters prowl the township after dark. The show opens with the Matthews family on a cross-country trip; they’re forced to take a detour into the town, inadvertently becoming trapped with its residents as a result. The family tries to survive this nightmarish new status quo, working with the community’s sheriff Boyd Stevens (Harold Perrineau) to learn the truth about the circumstances and how to escape.

“From” is a dark mystery show with supernatural and sci-fi overtones that never loses its intriguing hook, even multiple seasons deep. A lot of that comes from Perrineau’s strong performance as a character forced into a seemingly hopeless situation without surrendering his determination. The show is steadily paced and contains enough plot twists to keep audiences guessing what exactly is going on here. Another disturbing subversion of small-town Americana, “From” delivers chilling atmosphere and monstrous action.

As far as period piece aesthetics and sci-fi stakes, it’s impossible to deny that “Paper Girls” has plenty of parallels to “Stranger Things.” The Prime Video series is based on the comic book by Brian K. Vaughan and Cliff Chiang, taking place in a sleepy Cleveland suburb in 1988. The story centers on four teenage girls embarking on their newspaper delivery route in the early hours of the morning after Halloween… but what starts as a routine morning quickly changes into a deadly struggle against shadowy figures and time travelers from the year 2019.

Like “Stranger Things,” “Paper Girls” embraces the ’80s aesthetics and warm storytelling style without coming off as cloying or dated. The show is elevated considerably by its earnest young cast, particularly Camryn Jones and Riley Lai Nelet. The action set pieces grab the audience right from the opening episode, while the dialogue is sharply written, especially between its titular girls. “Paper Girls” was sadly canceled at Amazon after a single season, but the show still provides cozy, ’80s-set sci-fi spectacle.

One of acclaimed horror filmmaker Mike Flanagan’s last projects at Netflix was the 2022 series “The Midnight Club,” adapting the works of Christopher Pike. Set in 1994 when the book was published, the show takes place largely in a hospice care facility for teenagers diagnosed with terminal conditions. The story’s protagonist is Ilonka (Iman Benson), a recent enrollee who joins the other teens in sharing scary stories each night. Ilonka also begins investigating the history behind the facility and its patients, uncovering dark secrets and details along the way.

Of all of Flanagan’s Netflix original series, “The Midnight Club” is the one that feels closest to “Stranger Things.” The teens investigating a sinister mystery while forming tight friendships in the face of death have parallels with the young characters from Hawkins. Unfortunately, “The Midnight Club” was canceled at Netflix after Flanagan inked a development deal with Amazon, cutting its story short. Afterward, Flanagan spilled “The Midnight Club” Season 2 secrets online, offering some closure to an excellent horror show with an overarching meditation on mortality.

The 2023 Netflix original series “Lockwood & Co.” is set in a technologically arrested and haunted vision of the United Kingdom, where ghosts have been rising for 50 years, their touch lethal to the living. This has disrupted the progression of technology since their ghostly prevalence, preventing its advancement in any meaningful way for decades. Since only children are able to detect the presence of ghosts, it falls on teenagers to become ghost hunters to keep Britain from falling into complete chaos.

An adaptation of the book series by Jonathan Stroud, “Lockwood & Co.” consistently features a young cast that saves the day in a way that the adult characters can’t. This thematically aligns with “Stranger Things,” but veers more into the overtly supernatural than science fiction. “Lockwood & Co.” was canceled at Netflix after one season, tragically ending this distinctly British young adult tale. Boasting the creative talents of filmmaker Joe Cornish (“Ant-Man”), “Lockwood & Co.” is sharply written and offers a new twist on ghost-busting.

Best-selling author R.L. Stine popularized kid-friendly horror books in the ’90s with his “Goosebumps” series, which evolved into a full-on franchise. While the novels received an anthology television series adaptation in the ’90s, this was updated with a new Disney+/Hulu show in 2023. Eschewing the episodic anthology format of the novels and original series, the new adaptation features a longer-form story covered in each of its two seasons. Each episode still draws direct influence from different Stine books as it weaves its scary stories, including Camp Nightmare and a certain evil ventriloquist dummy.

The shift to a serialized format is a welcome one, offering recurring characters for audiences to become invested in rather than rotating tales and casts. The show keeps its frights family-friendly, but there’s plenty of good-natured menace and foreboding atmosphere to thrill fans. Though the series had its plug pulled after two seasons, “Goosebumps” is kid-centric horror done right.

The dark fantasy world of Netflix’s “The Sandman” gets even bigger with the 2024 spin-off series “Dead Boy Detectives.” The show follows the spirits of the deceased Edwin Payne (George Rexstrew) and Charles Rowland (Jayden Revri), who evade Death (Kirby) to avoid being taken to the afterlife. Remaining on Earth, the two wayward souls decide to work together to solve paranormal crimes, taking on ghostly clients. This places them in contact with all sorts of otherworldly figures, some taking an unhealthy interest in the pair of post-mortem private investigators.

Though the association with Neil Gaiman and the allegations around him may understandably affect appreciation of “Dead Boy Detectives,” the show is quite good on its own merits. The series has a more noticeably whimsical tone than “The Sandman,” buoyed by its largely young cast. Unfortunately, “Dead Boy Detectives” was canceled at Netflix after one season, making Edwin and Charles’ crime-solving adventures woefully short. Providing a more fun look at the “Sandman” universe, “Dead Boy Detectives” deserved better and still deserves more attention.

After an enormously successful two-part movie adaptation, the world of Stephen King’s classic novel “It” gets explored in the HBO spin-off series “It: Welcome to Derry.” The show takes place in the titular Maine town, starting in 1962 during an earlier awakening of the monstrous Pennywise (Bill Skarsgård). The shape-shifting creature sets his sights on a fresh set of child victims, taunting them by taking on the form of their respective fears before going in for the kill. Pennywise’s presence encourages malevolence throughout the town as a group of kids tries to find out what exactly is hunting them.

“It: Welcome to Derry” replicates the small-town sense of supernatural menace that made the preceding movies so memorable. More than just delving into the backstory of It and Derry, the series expands to touch on some of King’s other fan-favorite works, quietly building its own shared universe. This adds a richness to the proceedings, even as the show wisely restrains itself from relying too heavily on Pennywise for its scares. A solid expansion of one of King’s greatest novels, “It: Welcome to Derry” proves there’s still plenty of terrifying life in the unsettling Maine town.