Chapter One: The Vanishing of Will Byers

On November 6, 1983, in a US Department of Energy laboratory in the town of Hawkins, Indiana, a scientist is attacked by an unseen creature. While bicycling home from a Dungeons & Dragons session with his friends, 12-year-old Will Byers encounters the creature and vanishes. The next day, a buzz cut young girl wearing a hospital gown steals food from a local diner. The owner, Benny, takes pity on her and feeds her before calling social services. From a tattoo on her arm, he learns that her name is Eleven. A woman posing as a social worker arrives and murders Benny. Armed men search the diner for Eleven, but she escapes. Will's mother Joyce believes she hears Will's voice on a distorted phone call, but her phone short circuits. Will's friends Mike, Lucas and Dustin search for Will in the woods and find Eleven.

Stranger Things was created by Matt and Ross Duffer, known professionally as The Duffer Brothers.[3] The two had completed writing and producing their 2015 film Hidden, which they had tried to emulate the style of M. Night Shyamalan, however, due to changes at Warner Bros., its distributor, the film did not see a wide release and the Duffers were unsure of their future.[4] To their surprise, television producer Donald De Line approached them, impressed with Hidden's script, and offered them the opportunity to work on episodes of Wayward Pines alongside Shyamalan. The brothers were mentored by Shyamalan during the episode's production, so that when they finished, they felt they were ready to produce their own television series.[5]

The Duffer Brothers prepared a script that would essentially be similar to the series' actual pilot episode, along with a 20-page pitch book to help shop the series around for a network.[6] They pitched the story to a number of cable networks, all of which rejected the script on the basis that they felt a plot centered around children as leading characters would not work, asking them to make it a children's show or to drop the children and focus on Hopper's investigation in the paranormal.[5] In early 2015, Dan Cohen, the VP of 21 Laps Entertainment, brought the script to his colleague Shawn Levy. They subsequently invited The Duffer Brothers to their office and purchased the rights for the series, giving full authorship of it to the brothers. After reading the pilot, the streaming service Netflix purchased the whole season for an undisclosed amount;[7] the show was subsequently announced for a planned 2016 release by Netflix in early April 2015.[8] The Duffer Brothers stated that at the time they had pitched to Netflix, the service had already gotten recognized for its original programming, such as House of Cards and Orange is the New Black, with well-recognized producers behind them, and were ready to start giving upcoming producers like them a chance.[6] The brothers started to write out the series and brought Levy and Cohen in as executive producers to start casting and filming.[9]

Both Vulture and The A.V. Club gave the episode a positive review, praising its nostalgic elements and acting.[10][11]