While one underrated Netflix horror series blended Wednesday and Stranger Things, this Mike Flanagan show didn’t last long enough to explore its promising vision in depth. There are a great number of shows that tried to replace the Netflix phenomenon Stranger Things, both on the streaming service itself and among its competitors. Netflix’s I Am Not Okay With This and Locke & Key, Hulu’s Goosebumps revival, and Prime Video’s Paper Girls were all promoted as potential Stranger Things replacements, even though their similarities to the series varied.
Even now, ten years after the show began and six months after its January 2026 series finale, Charlie Heaton’s next Netflix show, Below, is currently being marketed as a shorter, more horror-centric spin on the small-town supernatural mystery. Stranger Things had something that few shows could recapture, as the show blended nostalgic coming-of-age dramedy with enough mystery, fantasy, and horror plot elements to keep viewers enthralled. One Netflix mega hit did, however, boast both of these qualities.
Anchored by a star-making turn from Jenna Ortega as the title character, Netflix’s Addams Family reimagining Wednesday saw the legendary director Tim Burton turn the macabre family comedy franchise into a teen drama set at a magic school. While this might sound similar to HBO’s upcoming Harry Potter reboot, Wednesday injected enough menace, horror, and death into proceedings to ensure the show felt more like Stranger Things than a children’s movie. However, a year earlier, Mike Flanagan’s The Midnight Club offered an even creepier, more mature spin on a similar premise.
Mike Flanagan’s The Midnight Club Is The Best Stranger Things Replacement On Netflix
Like Wednesday, The Midnight Club was a reinvention of a popular ‘90s horror media franchise. Loosely based on the books of popular ’90s YA horror author Christopher Pike, The Midnight Club was set in a hospice facility for teenagers with terminal illnesses. The show’s heroes all had little time left to live, so they made the most of their lot by sharing gruesome, scary stories every night at the stroke of midnight.
Starring The Shards’ Igby Rigney, Iman Benson, Annarah Cymone, and a scene-stealing Ruth Codd as the troubled but darkly hilarious patient Anya, The Midnight Club pulled off something miraculous in terms of the show’s tone. Early on, the show was a grounded, rather heartbreaking drama about teens dying long before their time, which was interrupted by creepy, short-form horror vignettes that the kids shared to take their minds off things.
Then, the supernatural aspects of the show’s story began to bleed into its “reality” as the members of the titular club learned more about the mysterious, shady facility housing them. Before long, the show operated like a blend of Stranger Things and Wednesday as its story bounced between the tensions, friendships, and burgeoning romances shared by the teens and the broader paranormal mystery underpinning their shared setting.
The Midnight Club Was Canceled One Year Before Wednesday Debuted
Although The Midnight Club wasn’t technically set in a school, its focus on a group of teens living together in close quarters gave the series a similar feel to Wednesday, albeit darker and more grounded. While Flanagan’s upcoming Stephen King adaptation Carrie will be a more straightforward teen drama, and even one that features a psychic teen like Stranger Things, The Midnight Club remains his best blend of Wednesday and Stranger Things.
Sadly, the show never got to fulfill its full potential since Netflix canceled The Midnight Club after its first season. Unlike Flanagan’s four other Netflix original shows, The Haunting of Hill House, The Haunting of Bly Manor, Midnight Mass, and The Fall of the House of Usher, The Midnight Club was not originally intended to be a self-contained miniseries.
Flanagan had plans to adapt Pike’s standout novel Remember Me as the main storyline of season 2, and The Midnight Club season 1 ended with a bombshell hint at the mysteries of its hospice setting. Sadly, a year before Wednesday debuted in late 2023, Netflix canceled its best Stranger Things replacement, The Midnight Club.
- Release Date
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2022 – 2022-00-00
- Network
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Netflix
