Stranger Things 2 will leave Hawkins and open in a new 'urban environment'

Stranger Things type TV Show network Netflix

To read more on Stranger Things 2, pick up the new issue of Entertainment Weekly on stands Friday. You can buy the whole set now, or purchase the individual covers of Eleven, the boys, or the grown-ups. Don’t forget to subscribe for more exclusive interviews and photos, only in EW.

When Stranger Things 2 premieres Oct. 27 on Netflix, fans are in for a bit of a shock for the first minutes.

The opening of the “sequel” takes place in a completely different city than the main location of Hawkins, Indiana… and that’s all we can say.

“I liked opening the show in a place not in Hawkins, in an urban environment,” teases Matt Duffer. “I want people thinking maybe they’ve clicked on the show and then, boom, you realize ‘Oh now we’re still in it.’ But it’s all about broadening, and expanding our world.”

Adds his co-creator and brother Ross, “We have all these different threads and you don’t see how possibly all these things could come together and then slowly but surely they all play an integral role in the story this season.”

Image zoom Dan Winters for EW

This week’s Entertainment Weekly features exclusive new details on the return of Stranger Things, including why the Duffer brothers want to consider it a sequel to the widely popular first season (instead of simply season 2). “When we started describing it as a sequel, Netflix was like, ‘Don’t do that, because sequels are known to be bad,'” says Matt. “I was like, ‘Yes, but what about T2 and Aliens and Toy Story 2 and Godfather II?'”

He adds, “The good news is that a lot of what we wanted to see or what we responded to, that seems to be what the audience responded to. Like we fell in love with Gaten [Matarazzo], and there were aspects, like Barb [played in season 1 by Shannon Purser], we were already planning to deal with. It felt like there was a nice alignment between what we wanted to see and what other people wanted to see.”

Stranger Things 2 is back on Oct. 27.