3 Netflix shows worth watching after Stranger Things
The fifth and final season of Stranger Things premiered on Netflix in late 2025, concluding an epic saga spanning nearly 10 years. In an era where television shows are distributed across numerous streaming services, and it's difficult for any series to achieve widespread popularity, Stranger Things became a cultural phenomenon, a show you've either seen or heard of.
Now that Stranger Things is over, there seems to be a gap in fans' schedules. What could fill it? Luckily, there are plenty of options right here on Netflix.
Lock & Key
If you want to watch a show similar to Stranger Things but with fewer science fiction elements and more fantasy elements.
Locke & Key is a three-season television series about a family recovering from the traumatic murder of father Rendell Locke. His wife, Nina (Darby Stanchfield), decides to take their three children out of town to their ancestral home, a large, airy, seemingly haunted mansion.
The children soon discover several keys hidden throughout the house that can open magical doors: one key allows them to go to any other door they imagine, another allows them to open a door into someone's mind, and so on. But a demonic entity also wants those keys for its own purposes, and the children and their friends must ensure it doesn't succeed.
Like Stranger Things, Locke & Key tells the story of a group of teenagers who must fight an evil force across dimensions while also facing the challenges of adulthood. The special effects are impressive, the atmosphere can be quite dark, and it seems to draw inspiration from many of the same sources that inspired Stranger Things, including films like The Goonies and A Nightmare on Elm Street, as well as the works of Stephen King; the original Locke & Key comic was written by King's own son, Joe Hill, so that's not surprising.
However, there are still some notable differences. While the concept is very creative, the characters in Locke & Key are not as popular as those in Stranger Things, and the show has been criticized for being too focused on school troubles. The final season wasn't as highly rated as the others, but that's another commonality between it and Stranger Things.
All of Us Are Dead
It's a widely acknowledged fact that South Korea consistently produces some of the best zombie movies. They're also excellent at producing zombie-themed television shows. All of Us Are Dead is set in a high school where students suddenly face an outbreak of a zombie virus. They must band together to survive while the government locks down the city.
The action is bloody and brutal. It barely cooled down throughout the first season. Viewers kept watching because they wanted to see what would happen to the characters, who gradually became memorable throughout the 12 episodes. Like the kids in Stranger Things, the main characters are a lovable group, but the plot is far more dramatic.
The plot of All of Us Are Dead is certainly more intense than Stranger Things, but it touches on some similar mature themes, and does so more effectively. And while the kids don't have to fight demons from another dimension, the zombies are still a threat enough.
If you haven't seen this series yet, now might be a great time to enjoy it, as the second season is coming to Netflix in late 2026 or early 2027.
Dark
If Locke & Key is Stranger Things for middle schoolers and All of Us Are Dead for high schoolers, then Dark is for graduate school students. At least in the first of three seasons, it's somewhat similar to Stranger Things. Children in the town of Winden begin disappearing. These events rekindle old feuds between the four families living in the town.
And then they get to time travel. Residents discover a black hole in the cave system beneath their local power plant that allows them to travel to different points in the past. Stranger Things only has one other dimension: the Reverse World. Dark, on the other hand, has many dimensions. This is the kind of show that many people would have to draw diagrams to understand.
For some, the complexity is a hurdle, but Dark fans absolutely love it. The show raises complex philosophical questions about free will, the tone is so heavy you can still feel it long after the episode ends, and the plot is so massive you'll find yourself pondering it during sleepless nights.
