Brace yourselves, “Stranger Things” fans — it sounds like you’ll be getting a much bigger view of the Upside-Down when the supernatural Netflix series returns for a second season.
“Stranger Things” composers Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein recently spoke during a South by Southwest podcast to discuss their approach to writing music for the series.
In the process, they dropped some information about how the Upside-Down — the mysterious world briefly explored by Jim Hopper (David Harbour) and Joyce Byers (Winona Ryder) in the first season — will be depicted in the new batch of episodes.
“There are new characters, fun, and the Upside-Down will be more of a place… you’ll spend more time,” said Dixon. “So we’ll make a lot more weird music this time around.”
While details about the second season of “Stranger Things” have been hard to come by, the show’s cast and its creators, the Duffer Brothers, offered some insight earlier this year.
In the second season, which picks up almost a year after the events of the first run, Will Byers — who emerged from the Upside-Down in Season 1 — will experience “some sort of post-traumatic stress disorder,” according to co-creator Matt Duffer.
“He seems to be seeing images from the Upside-Down — the question is whether they’re real or not,” Duffer said. “So it seems like he’s having some sort of post-traumatic stress disorder.”
Will’s mother Joyce, meanwhile, has taken up with a former high-school classmate named Bob (played by “The Goonies” alum Sean Astin), and attempts to bring some sense of normalcy to her distraught family, according to Ryder.
“She’s trying to mask a lot,” Ryder offered. “I think she’s made this choice with Bob because she wants a good father figure in her sons’ lives.”
Lawman Jim Hopper is undergoing his own struggles, as he attempts to keep the disappearance of Barb and other Season 1 events under wraps for the good of Joyce and others.
“It kind of falls on Hopper to be the voice of authority to say, ‘This did happen and this didn’t happen,’” Harbour revealed. “He’s struggling with the compromise that takes him to, having to lie and cover things up.”