‘Stranger Things’ Pays Homage to ‘Alien’ With New Season 2 Poster

Continuing their trend of honoring some of the best films the horror and sci-fi genres have to offer, the Stranger Things social media account once again shared a poster that pays respect to an iconic film. This week, the Netflix series paid homage to Ridley Scott’s seminal survival horror Alien, tagline and all.

Previously, Stranger Things has honored A Nightmare on Elm Street, which shared a much more direct connection to the hit series. Both Stranger Things and Nightmare on Elm Street took place in the ’80s, both featured characters named “Nancy,” and the Netflix series incorporated imagery that evoked sequences from the slasher.

The connection between Stranger Things and Alien, on the other hand, is much more tenuous. As you can see in the poster above, the “Upside Down” realm in the series does look similar to the empty spaceship that the crew explored in Alien, but that’s the extent of the similarities.

This wouldn’t be the first time the Netflix series has embraced memorable iconography over thematic similarities, as they also shared a poster that depicted Chief Hopper (David Harbour) as the lead in the film The Running Man. That film, at least, was made in the ’80s, which is the setting for Stranger Things. Alien, on the other hand, was released in 1979, which causes a slight disconnect between the two properties.

One of the show’s biggest strengths is how wholly the series embraced the culture of the ’80s, from the pop culture references to wardrobe to overall tone, often wearing its influences on its sleeve.

“We’re big movie nerds — that’s what we wanted to do,” said Matt Duffer, describing the genesis of the show he created with his brother Ross.

“We started to get into television as it became more cinematic,” he added, Variety reports.

The brothers shared that they asked themselves, “what would be the ultimate long movie — Spielberg directing a big, fat Stephen King book. That was the dream, that was the ambition,” Ross said.

The second season of Stranger Things comes to Netflix on October 27.