‘Stranger Things’ Season 2 To Feature New Cast Members

Stranger Things will return for a second season next year, but there will be some new faces on the Netflix thriller. Entertainment Weekly reports that two new cast members have been signed for the upcoming second season, and two previously established characters will have upgraded roles.

Actors Dacre Montgomery and Sadie Sink will play step-siblings Billy and Max on new episodes of the Netflix hit. Montgomery’s character Billy, is described as Max’s charismatic older step-brother who has a “violent and unpredictable nature.” Sink will play Max, a tough and confident girl tomboy who has “a complicated history and is generally suspicious of those around her.”

There has been some buzz on social media about the lack of diversity on the Stranger Things set, so the addition of two white teen actors to the cast resulted in a bit of a ruckus on Twitter. Stranger Things star Finn Wolfhard (Mike on the show) asked fans to chill out and give the new actors a chance.

In addition to the new casting news, Stranger Things alums Joe Keery (Steve Harrington) and Noah Schnapp (Will Byers) have been upgraded from recurring players to regular cast members for the second season of the binge-worthy series. They’ll join series stars Winona Ryder, Gaten Matarazzo, Caleb McLaughlin, and Millie Bobby Brown for the second season of the supernatural series.

While Schnapp’s character’s disappearance was the center of the story, the actor was seen very little in Stranger Things Season 1. But because bullies taunted him with homophobic slurs, there has been talk on social media that the tween character is gay. Schnapp posted his own feelings on the subject on Instagram to make it clear that he hopes that will be one storyline showrunners Matt and Ross Duffer never explore.

“For me, Will being gay or not is besides the point,” the actor wrote. ” Stranger Things is a show about a bunch of kids who are outsiders and find each other because they have been bullied in some way or are different… I’m only 12 but I do know we all relate to being different. And that’s why I think the Duffers wrote the show the way they did. So you can ask all these questions. I hope the real answer never comes out!”

In an interview with Variety, Stranger Things creators The Duffer Brothers said their Season 1 mission was accomplished by solving the mystery of Will Byers’ disappearance. But the story of this 1980s group of friends is far from over.

For the second season, which will pick up in the fall of 1984, more layers will unfold regarding the mysterious 30-page document and the ending scene that had Hopper (David Harbour) leaving a box of Eggo waffles in the woods, teasing that Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) may not be gone for good.

“Obviously something happened to her when she destroyed and killed that monster and we don’t know what she went,” Matt Duffer told Variety. “Hopper is left with this guilt because he sold her out. We wanted to leave it sort of mysterious exactly what he knows… we like the idea of potentially putting her and Hopper together.”

As for Will’s week-long, nightmarish visit to Upside Down in the first season of Stranger Things, it sounds like it will come back to haunt him.

“We love the idea that [the Upside Down] is an environment that is not a great place for a human being to be living in,” Ross Duffer added. “Will’s been there for an entire week, and it’s had some kind of effect on him, both emotionally and perhaps physically. The idea is he’s escaped this nightmare place but has he really? That’s a place we wanted to go and potentially explore in season two.”

Stranger Things 2 will premiere on Netflix in 2017 and it will consist of nine new episodes. Take a look at the video below to see the Stranger Things cast talk about Season 2.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hE42KznHpwc

[Featured Image by Michael Loccisano/Getty Images]