There are stranger things in Heaven and Earth than mere Demogorgons…aren’t there? To find out, Comic-Con brought out the Duffer brothers and the cast of Stranger Things to give us a look at what comes next, now that Will is back from the Upside Down and Eleven has seemingly been vaporized (thankfully not for long?).

While the ending of the first season was quite satisfactory, many questions remain about what exactly made Eleven psychokinetic, and what the Upside Down and the creatures within it actually are.

Patton Oswalt was the moderator on this one, which made a sort of perfect sense, and suffice it to say the fans here reacted much better to the Netflix logo here than the Cannes crowd. The mood was set with a giant image of the Christmas lights, as the wall behind it pulsed, turning into a 3D countdown from 11, seguing into a highlight reel that concluded with the slug-puking cliffhanger from season 1.

True Detective and Steven Soderbergh’s The Knick inspired the Duffer brothers to want to move into TV and essentially make a really long movie, and they decided the best version of that would hypothetically be a Stephen King book directed by Steven Spielberg. “Stranger Things” was a name that looked especially good in the Stephen King-like font they chose.

Natalia Dyer was the first cast member out, followed by Joe Keery and his amazing huge ’80s hair. David Harbour, Matthew Modine, and the main kids: Caleb McLaughlin, Gaten Matarazzo, Noah Schnepp, Finn Wolfhard, and Millie Bobby Brown.

Oswalt immediately seized on the name “Wolfhard,” calling it a porn name, to which Finn, without missing a beat, went “Hey, thanks man. Really puts a stamp on my future.” Oswalt advised him never to do any project called Stranger Thongs, and Wolfhard told him to get on with introducing the guests. Eventually he challenged Oswalt to a schoolyard fight at 3, to which Oswalt responded, “Just not the face, because that’s how I make my money.”

Schnapp couldn’t say much about what happens to Will next season, but we will see him exhibit more bravery, and show how the Upside Down has changed him. McLaughlin acknowledge that he has since realized he hadn’t used the slingshot properly the first time, so while it wasn’t officially “training,” he got better. Brown said her hardest acting challenge was crying, because she’s a happy person generally, and it’s hard to keep a straight face with teenage boys around.

Season 2 is set a year later, and Hopper will be dealing with the psychology of whether or not he can live up to his heroic actions, and the pitfalls of that. His own daughter issues will play into his dynamic with Eleven. David Harbour revealed that there was hate mail over him being shirtless in season one, but he gets to do some “very sexy things” in season 2.

Keery thought his character on paper seemed very one-sided, but finding the human moments in the script helped him round out the character.

Then it was time for round two of the actors! Dacre Montgomery, Sadie Sink, and Paul Reiser came out just in time to see the new trailer premiere. It begins with the boys playing Dragon’s Lair at the arcade, and ends with Eleven reaching through a rift in the Upside Down and through the wall of the school in our world. In between, Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” sets the tone as Will seems to be popping back and forth into the Upside Down at random moments, a homemade Ghostbusters ghost trap appears haunted, that gigantic spidery thing we’ve seen in advance promos appears under a red, swirling sky in the Upside Down, and the trappings of Halloween are everywhere, including a Reagan/Bush ’84 sign for some irony. Will scribbles drawings and tosses them to the floor where they form a larger mosaic, and the creepy vines chase people…some of whom have flamethrowers.

Sadie Sink plays a character named Mad Max, about whom all we know is she’s from California.

The first audience question was from Shannon Purser, asking if her character Barb would be in season 2. Director Shawn Levy bluntly answered “no,” but said there will be justice for her, and she’ll be avenged.

Harbour’s favorite moment of the show was when he destroyed his apartment looking for hidden microphones–it was just him being followed around by a Steadicam for two hours breaking everything. Brown’s favorite part was stealing the Eggos. Asked his favorite, Keery went “Hitting the Demogorgon in the face with a baseball bat! Duh!” He had to do a lot of apologizing after for hitting too hard.

The panel ended with Oswalt demanding the trailer be shown again, and so it was.

Images: Netflix