David Harbour has explained why he and Millie Bobby Brown are teaming up again so soon after Stranger Things wrapped, and the answer comes down to unfinished business.
Speaking with Deadline last week, Harbour said the emotional center of Stranger Things, the bond between Jim Hopper and Eleven, was always going to be difficult to resolve on screen no matter how the final season landed.
“One of the most beautiful things about [Stranger Things] was people love that show and they loved Hopper and Eleven. They loved that relationship. I think the guys did a terrific job on Season 5, but I just don’t think you could pay off that relationship in the way that people wanted it to pay off. I just don’t think there’s a way,” Harbour said.
That, he suggested, is the whole reason the new project exists. “And so Millie and I, I think we wanted to bring you something with the chemistry of these two, of me and her, that will surprise you and that will be rich, and have that deep emotion, but also be just wild,” he continued. “So I’m really excited to be back with her. I love working with her. I’m really excited about Jack, I think he’s a brilliant writer. A24 is producing with us. It has a lot of stuff to say about this modern contemporary world we’re living in as well that I’m really excited to keep doing.”
The Jack he is referring to is Jack Thorne, co-creator of Adolescence and the writer behind Brown’s Enola Holmes films. Netflix handed the untitled espionage thriller a straight-to-series order in June, with A24 producing alongside Thorne and Cut To’s Joe Hipps. It is loosely inspired by Paul Warner’s debut novel A Spy In the Blood.
The setup keeps the father-daughter framework fans know but drops it into far colder territory. Harbour plays Matt Wolfe, a disgraced former FBI agent turned private security expert who is pulled back into the world he walked away from when his estranged daughter Rebecca, played by Brown, vanishes on a mission. Rebecca is an FBI agent herself, determined to follow the path her father abandoned, and Matt returns to a profession that has moved on without him.
Both actors are executive producing. Brown produces through her PCMA Productions banner alongside her husband Jake Bongiovi and her father Robert Brown, while Harbour produces with KC Wenson through Bravo Axolotl. Thorne, Hipps and Cut To’s Patrick McDonald also executive produce.
Brown teased the reunion on the Happy Sad Confused podcast around the time the series order was announced, crediting Harbour with getting it moving. “Father-daughter is where we live, but Netflix will always be our home,” she said. “The David Harbour project is sooner than expected, and it’s David’s idea, so kudos to him.”
The reunion also lands after a rocky stretch. Reports of behind-the-scenes friction between the two on the Stranger Things set surfaced in late 2025, and both actors have acknowledged the tension without going into specifics. In the months since, they have been visibly supportive of one another, walking the Stranger Things Season 5 premiere together in November and continuing to appear side by side publicly.
Netflix has not announced a production start or premiere window for the series.
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