Reports swirled earlier today that the future of Stranger Things may be in doubt, at least creatively, but it turns out there’s no truth to them. Despite rumors that Stranger Things creators/writers/directors Matt Duffer and Ross Duffer would be leaving the wildly popular Netflix series after Season 3, high-ranking sources close to the brothers tell Collider this is absolutely not the case—the Duffers are not leaving Stranger Things after Season 3.

The move didn’t make much sense to begin with. Stranger Things is not only the Duffer Brothers’ baby, but they’re part of an incredibly small group of creatives that actually makes the show, which also includes producer/director Shawn Levy. The Duffer Brothers have personally written seven of the show’s 17 episodes thus far and have directed 10 of them. This is very much their thing, and the Duffer Brothers have said multiple times that they plan to see Stranger Things through to the end, telling one complete story.

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Image via Netflix

Indeed, when we spoke with the Duffer Brothers and Levy last summer, Ross Duffer confirmed they plan to stick with this series through its conclusion:

"In terms of exact number of seasons we’re not sure, but I know that Matt and I wanna stick with it and just sort of finish it out. But again we don’t want to linger too long, we just want to tell the story that we want to tell and get out. Hopefully people are like, ‘I want more!’ and that’s great, but that’s sort of how we want to leave it. In terms of spinoffs, I don’t think we’ve gotten that far. Because for us it’s really just about focusing on this story and just getting it done.”

Levy doubled down, revealing that despite fielding offers to go off and make big movies, the Duffers want to tell the complete Stranger Things story:

“There is no succession plan. There’s no like, ‘Oh the Duffers are gonna pull back.’ It’s a tiny creative team that makes this show, it’s predominantly this twinship that makes this show, and luckily for us and fans of the show, they’re being offered movies every week but they love this thing they’ve created, they know the value of it. To get to create a world of characters that the rest of the real world embraces, you’re lucky if you get that once in a career. They’re young but they’re also smart enough to know that, that it’s a gift. It’s not like we’re grooming someone that we’re gonna hand the show off to, it’s us and we’re in it, and it’s because we still love it. We’ve got a lot of story left.”

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Image via Netflix

The team is currently in pre-production on Stranger Things 3, which starts filming this summer and will consist of eight episodes. There’s no release date just yet, but fans should expect to see it either in very late 2018 or sometime in the first half of 2019. After that, however, the Duffers have no plans to leave the series anytime soon, and we’ll get to see this duo craft the conclusion to this phenomenon that they themselves created in the first place.

For more on Stranger Things, peruse our recent stories in the links below, followed by our video interview with the Duffers and Shawn Levy from last summer.

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Image via Netflix
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Image via Netflix
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Image via Netflix