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Shawn Levy Returns for More “Stranger Things”: Hints at Possible Third Season
Since the announcement that the second season of Netflix’s “Stranger Things” had officially kicked off, people have been dying to know what to expect from the return of the show. Already, there has been a confirmed cast photo and the announcement of three new faces to the series. Now, it can be confirmed that producer/director Shawn Levy is returning to get behind the camera for at least two episodes, per Collider.
Levy explains that the crew want to follow the same formula as the first season, so the Duffer Brothers are directing the first two episodes while Levy will get in for the third and fourth ones. “Yes, we are a little superstitious so just like last year, they’re doing 1 and 2, I’m going in and doing 3 and 4. So the first four are gonna kick off exactly the same as last time… I am going to start prepping right around Thanksgiving and I’ll be filming my episodes through December and January,” he explains.
As for when we’re going to see the show return, Levy urges patience. “You can do a little bit of math, we’re not magicians so there’s no way it launches in Spring since I just admitted we started filming today, and we’re doing nine.” That “nine” he’s referring to at the end is how many episodes there will be in the second season, which is one more than the first.
While he won’t comment on specific plot points, Levy does talk a bit about Will and how his time in the Upside-Down affected him, saying, “Will Byers was in that Upside Down for a while. So Season 2 is about this determined desire to return to normalcy in Hawkins, in the Byers family, in that group of friends, and it’s the struggle to reclaim normalcy and maybe the impossibility of it.”
Finally, Levy explains that he and the Duffer Brother’s are not going to find themselves in a spot where they are making things up as they go along. If a third season gets announced, they plan on being well-prepared. “We are not gonna be caught off guard and we don’t wanna be making stuff up like the day before we have to write it and make it,” Levy says. “So we are definitely optimistic and we have started thinking ahead.“
In the grim darkness of the far future there is only war, but it was a cheerful illustrator from England who helped to define the terrifying war-torn imagery that inspired what we now know as Grimdark (a hybrid genre combining horror with sci-fi/fantasy).
Unfortunately for fans of Warhammer 40,000, Trench Crusade and countless other sources of Grimdark thrills, veteran artist John Blanche passed away this week after struggling with health issues for the past few years.
While the artist retired back in 2023, he leaves us with an enormous legacy of iconic artwork that continues to inspire gamers and storytellers around the world to this very day.
The news is especially gloomy as it was only last year that Daniel Lowman and Napoleon Dynamite himself Jon Heder released The Grim & the Dark: The Search for John Blanche, a documentary following Heder’s exploration of the Grimdark genre culminating in a heartwarming encounter with Blanche in his own home.
Below is one of my favorite pieces by Blanche, his highly influential depiction of Warhammer 40k’s God-Emperor of Mankind on his Golden Throne.
We send our deepest condolences to John Blanche’s family, friends, and fans.
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