Who directs Stranger Things? The directors and the writers, episode by episode

The Duffer brothers: creators, writers, and directors of half the show

Matt and Ross Duffer are twins, born on February 15, 1984 in Durham, North Carolina. They studied film at Chapman University, in California, from which they graduated in 2007. In 2013, they write a pilot titled Montauk: a child's disappearance in a small town, a lab, a girl with powers. About fifteen networks turn it down, with the same argument: a story about children cannot be a show for adults.

What they get in 2015 is rare for first-timers: writing and directing a majority of the episodes themselves. The word showrunner covers three jobs for them. They are responsible for the production as a whole, from casting to the shooting schedule. They are the lead writers. And they hold the camera themselves on some of the chapters, which remains unusual at this scale.

Their directing rule does not move across five seasons: they take the first two chapters and the last two. Season 1 comes back to them at six episodes out of eight, chapters 1, 2, 5, 6, 7 and 8. Season 2 gives them chapters 1, 2, 8 and 9; season 3, chapters 1, 2, 7 and 8; season 4, chapters 1, 2, 7, 8 and 9. On the last one, they sign chapters 1, 2, 4 and 8, plus 7 as a co-direction.

The total is twenty-four chapters out of forty-two. More than half the story therefore carries their name in the directing credit, and no season opens or closes without them. That is the direct consequence of their writing method: each season is built like a film, with a three-act plan and a small writers' room. The beginning and the end are the two places where that plan shows the most, and they do not delegate them.

They also supervise the edit, the music composed by Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein, and the choice of songs with music supervisor Nora Felder. That centralization explains the steady tone from one chapter to the next, even when another name appears in the directing credit.

Shawn Levy, the producer who picks up the camera

Shawn Levy has been executive producer since the first season, and not since the second: he is even behind the purchase of the project. It is Dan Cohen, from his production company, who had his boss read the rejected script at the start of 2015. The rights were bought in the weeks that followed, and the platform ordered a whole season on the reading of the pilot alone.

His directing signature is as regular as the creators', and just as easy to spot: chapters 3 and 4, across the first four seasons, are his. That gives “Holly, Jolly” and “The Body” in season 1; “The Pollywog” and “Will the Wise” in season 2; “The Case of the Missing Lifeguard” and “The Sauna Test” in season 3; “The Monster and the Superhero” and “Dear Billy” in season 4.

This list holds one of the most discussed episodes of the story. “Dear Billy”, the fourth chapter of season 4, is the one with Max's letter and “Running Up That Hill”, the track that saves her. The direction is his, from a script by Paul Dichter.

On the last season, his place changes. He directs chapter 6 alone, “Escape from Camazotz”, and co-directs chapter 7, “The Bridge”, with the creators. The room that melts in chapter 6, where Nancy and Jonathan part, took him six to eight months of preparation, between engineering, special effects and research. He has said he read that synopsis telling himself the director assigned to shoot it would have one serious headache, before learning it would be him.

The final count: nine chapters directed alone, and a tenth co-directed.

Who is the Stranger Things director when it is neither a Duffer nor Shawn Levy

Across forty-two chapters, only five outside directors stepped in, for nine episodes in all. They almost always arrive at the same place in the story: the middle chapters, never the opening, never the ending — chapter 3 of the last season being the only one to come that early.

Season 1 has none. Eight chapters, two signatures: six for the creators, two for Shawn Levy. It is the only season held entirely by the founding team.

Season 2 takes in two. Andrew Stanton, from Pixar, where he directed Finding Nemo and WALL-E, takes chapters 5 and 6, “Dig Dug” and “The Spy”. Rebecca Thomas, revealed by Electrick Children in 2012, her first feature, directs chapter 7, “The Lost Sister”, the only episode that takes place entirely somewhere other than Hawkins, shot in Chicago and in Pittsburgh.

Season 3 takes in one. Uta Briesewitz, born in Germany, was first a director of photography, notably on the early seasons of The Wire, before moving to directing in 2009, on the series Hung. She signs chapters 5 and 6, “The Flayed” and “E Pluribus Unum”.

Season 4 takes in one. Nimród Antal, a Hungarian-American director known for Kontroll in 2003 and Predators in 2010, takes chapters 5 and 6, “The Nina Project” and “The Dive”.

The pattern reads at a glance: chapters 5 and 6 of seasons 2, 3 and 4, with two exceptions — chapter 7 of season 2, an episode apart, without the main group, and the last season, where Frank Darabont takes chapters 3 and 5. The guests inherit the sequences the production can shoot in parallel with the rest, while the creators keep the chapters that carry the structure.

The writers' room: who writes the episodes the Duffers do not sign

Directing is only half the question. The other half is the writing, and there too the creators do not sign everything. They keep a writers' room that is deliberately small, where each season is broken down like a feature before it is split among the writers.

From the first season, four other names appear beside theirs. Jessica Mecklenburg writes “Holly, Jolly”, Justin Doble “The Body” and “The Bathtub”, Alison Tatlock “The Flea and the Acrobat”, Jessie Nickson-Lopez “The Monster”. The last chapter, “The Upside Down”, is adapted by the Duffers from a story by Paul Dichter.

Four writers then come back from one season to the next, and they are the ones who give the story its continuity. Paul Dichter, a producer on the show, signs five episodes: “Will the Wise”, “The Flayed”, “Dear Billy”, “Sorcerer”, after the story of the season 1 finale. Kate Trefry writes “The Spy”, “The Sauna Test”, “The Nina Project” and “Escape from Camazotz”; she is also the author of the play The First Shadow, from a story by the Duffers and Jack Thorne.

Curtis Gwinn signs “E Pluribus Unum”, “The Dive” and “Shock Jock”; he is also the one who suggested the theme from The NeverEnding Story for season 3, when the creators gave up a song taken from The Lord of the Rings. Caitlin Schneiderhan writes “The Monster and the Superhero” and then “The Turnbow Trap”, and has published two novels spun off from the story.

For the last season, the writing began on August 2, 2022 and stopped during the writers' strike of 2023. The room summed up the tone they had reached in one line: as if seasons 1 and 4 had had a child. The eight scripts were finished before the first day of shooting, which made it possible to shoot by location rather than in episode order.

The secret is kept all the way through. The creators do not send their scripts out in advance: the cast only discovered the last chapter on September 8, 2024, at a joint reading, with Shawn Levy present. They also own up to rewriting around the actors — Steve was supposed to disappear, Robin and Erica were supposed to stay supporting, and Eddie Munson was built on Joseph Quinn for season 4.

Who directed the last season

Eight chapters, three signatures. The creators direct chapter 1, “The Crawl”, chapter 2, “The Vanishing of Holly Wheeler”, chapter 4, “Sorcerer”, and the last, “The Rightside Up”; they co-direct chapter 7, “The Bridge”, with Shawn Levy, who takes chapter 6 alone, “Escape from Camazotz”.

What remains are chapters 3 and 5, “The Turnbow Trap” and “Shock Jock”, given to Frank Darabont. The director of The Shawshank Redemption and of The Green Mile, also behind the early seasons of The Walking Dead, had shot nothing since the series Mob City, in 2013. Eleven years of retirement, broken for two episodes.

His arrival hangs on very little. A viewer of the story with his wife, he had lunched with the creators before production began; they called him back to offer him a chapter. He was only supposed to direct 5. Dan Trachtenberg, hired in June 2023, had to pull out to shoot Predator: Badlands, and Darabont took over his episode.

The two chapters do not look alike, and that was intended. Ross Duffer warned that the director was “flexing very different muscles” there: where “The Turnbow Trap” plays adventure comedy, “Shock Jock” is “much darker and much more frightening”.

The last chapter could not go back to anyone else. “The Rightside Up” is written and directed by the creators, their twentieth script for the show — chapter 7 was the nineteenth. The rule set from the first season holds through the last image: the opening and the closing belong to them.

What this split says about how the show is made

Seen as a whole, the split is very readable. Twenty-four chapters for the creators, nine for Shawn Levy alone and a tenth co-directed with them, nine for five guest directors. No guest has ever opened or closed a season.

This split is not a hierarchy, it is a production constraint. The middle chapters are the ones that can be prepared and shot in parallel, with another crew and another schedule, while the creators put their time into the episodes that carry the season's structure.

The last season pushed this logic all the way into the schedule: the plan was built so that each actor's last day of shooting matched their last scene in the story.

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