Is Netflix’s The Boroughs Connected to Stranger Things? What the Co-Creator Revealed About the Final Scene
The Netflix series The Boroughs has drawn comparisons to Stranger Things even before its premiere, largely because both shows center on a group of unlikely allies investigating a strange mystery and confronting a supernatural threat. The connection feels especially strong because the Duffer Brothers, creators of Stranger Things, serve as executive producers on The Boroughs. While the two series are not directly linked in story, the creators of The Boroughs have confirmed that the show deliberately pays homage to the ending of Stranger Things Season 1.
Co-creators Jeffrey Addiss and Will Matthews explained that the final moments of The Boroughs were designed as a nod to the iconic ending of Stranger Things. In the Netflix series, Alfred Molina’s character Sam experiences a glitch while looking into a bathroom mirror, creating an unsettling final image and raising immediate questions about whether he is truly safe, whether a new danger is emerging, or whether the earlier threat has really been defeated. The creators declined to reveal the exact meaning behind the glitch, but they made clear that the scene was meant as a respectful tribute to Matt and Ross Duffer’s earlier work.
That parallel becomes even clearer when compared to the close of Stranger Things Season 1. At the end of that season, Will Byers leaves a family dinner, goes to the bathroom, and suddenly vomits a strange, slimy substance. The bathroom then flashes between the ordinary world and the Upside Down, signaling that the trauma and supernatural forces surrounding him were not over, even though he tries to return to normal life. Both endings use a bathroom scene and a disturbing visual shift to show that a character’s experience is far from finished.
The similarity is more than a visual trick. It reflects a shared storytelling approach between the two shows: both use mystery, suspense, and a final unsettling image to suggest that the supernatural conflict has deeper layers than the audience has seen so far. In The Boroughs, the glitch functions as a cliffhanger that leaves room for a potential second season. In Stranger Things, Will’s final scene helped set up the larger mythology that would expand in later seasons.
For viewers, the comparison highlights how much The Boroughs borrows from the spirit of Stranger Things while still telling its own story. Both series explore how ordinary people respond when reality begins to break down around them. Both rely on friendship, fear, and the slow unraveling of a hidden mystery. And both end their first seasons with an image that suggests the danger is not gone, only paused.
If The Boroughs is renewed, the final glitch could become the starting point for a bigger story, much like Stranger Things used Will’s final scene to launch its expanding mythology. For now, the ending stands as both a homage and a promise: the story may not be finished, and whatever is happening to Sam may be only the beginning.
