We live in the aftershow era, a time when the only thing people like more than sitting down to watch an hour of TV is to continue sitting down and watching another hour that discusses the previous hour of TV with the people that made it. Stranger Things is jumping on the bandwagon, and it’s doing so in a suitably strange way.
Announced today through The Hollywood Reporter, Beyond Stranger Things will be hosted by producer/writer — and, as is the tradition with all aftershows, “superfan” — Jim Rash, and will feature seven episodes of discussions with the cast and crew of Stranger Things‘ second season, diving into behind-the-scenes details on everything that just went down in Hawkins.
If you watch the video, you’ll notice Beyond is seven episodes long, while there’s nine episodes of Stranger Things 2: Upside Down Boogaloo. That’s because, weirdly enough, Beyond Stranger Things is an honest to god aftershow – Netflix explicitly states that it’s designed to be watched after you’ve finished the entirety of Stranger Things season two, instead of after individual episodes like the zillions of other aftershows out there.
Netflix hasn’t said how long each episode of Beyond is, but at this point it’s literally a new show to bingewatch immediately after you’ve bingewatched Stranger Things. The first episode of Beyond will even auto-play after the credits roll on the final episode of Stranger Things season two.
Hold onto your butts this weekend, Stranger Things fans. They’re gonna get real numb.