What’s Next for Winona Ryder After ‘Stranger Things’? The Answer Might Surprise You

Okay, let’s talk about the elephant in the room that nobody wants to face. Stranger Things is ending, and Winona Ryder is finally walking away from Hawkins, Indiana. After nearly a decade living inside Joyce Byers’ neurotic, determined soul, the woman who basically invented the “anxious mother with telekinetic abilities” archetype is moving on. But here’s the thing: we don’t actually know what comes next, and that ambiguity tells us everything we need to know about where her career is heading.

First, let’s be real about what we’re losing. Ryder spent ten years bringing Joyce Byers to life. Ten years. That’s longer than she’s played any single character in her entire career, and that’s a massive statement coming from someone who defined entire decades of cinema. She told Hot Ones in November that saying goodbye was “deeply emotional,” especially watching her younger co-stars process what it means to essentially grow up on camera, playing the same people for half their lives. For Ryder, it was different. She came to the show as an established talent making a comeback, not as a kid learning the industry while cameras rolled. But even for her, the weight of a decade-long commitment in one role is no small thing.

The Beetlejuice Proof of Concept

Here’s where it gets interesting, though. Ryder didn’t just clock out of Stranger Things and start panicking about unemployment. No. She went into Beetlejuice Beetlejuice in 2024 while the show was on hiatus and absolutely crushed it. Tim Burton’s sequel grossed over $450 million globally, and Ryder proved she could still carry a massive studio franchise. She wasn’t just Lydia Deetz again. She was Lydia Deetz as a middle-aged woman trying to protect her daughter from supernatural forces, dealing with her own romantic life, and generally being the most compelling character in a movie full of Michael Keaton’s comedic brilliance.

That’s not an accident. That’s a deliberate choice from someone who knows exactly what she’s doing with her career.

The Mystery of What Comes Next

But here’s where the future gets murky and kind of fascinating, actually. As of right now, in December 2025, Ryder doesn’t have any officially announced projects lined up after Stranger Things ends. Not a single one. And yes, Beetlejuice 3 is definitely happening. Warner Bros. confirmed in April 2025 that development was beginning “imminently,” and while Tim Burton joked that he wouldn’t do another sequel for another 36 years (because it took 36 years between the original and the sequel), the studio clearly has other ideas. If the timeline follows what happened with Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, we’re probably looking at a 2027 release, which means she’d likely need to commit sometime in 2026.

But that’s one movie. And when you look at how Ryder has strategically managed her career over the past two decades, one movie every few years is kind of her thing. She’s not trying to be everywhere. She’s not doing Netflix limited series for everyone else. She’s waiting for the right roles, the right directors, the right moments. It’s a calculated patience that most of her peers abandoned years ago.

The Jim Jarmusch Principle

In an interview with Harper’s Bazaar in 2024, when she was promoting Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, Ryder got philosophical about her approach. She talked about considering retirement, about wondering if she should just hang it up. But then she said something that reveals everything about her mindset going forward: “And then I think, ‘What if I just hang it up?’ And then I think, ‘Well, if Jim [Jarmusch] wanted me to do something, I would do it,’ and then you start thinking of all the people that you would work with if they called, and that’s not really retiring. That’s just being available.”

That’s the key to understanding what’s next for Ryder. She’s not out. She’s not taking a retirement tour. She’s just incredibly, almost aggressively selective. She wants to work with people she genuinely respects. She wants projects that feel important or at least interesting. And she has enough power, enough of a filmography, enough of a legacy that she can actually wait for those things to happen instead of chasing them.

The Position of Power

The woman just came off ten years of a show that dominated cultural conversations. She did a massive studio film that made nearly half a billion dollars. She’s in a stable, long-term relationship with fashion designer Scott Mackinlay Hahn, who keeps her grounded and out of the tabloid spotlight. She’s financially secure. She doesn’t need to take work just to stay relevant.

So what’s actually next?

The Realistic Timeline: Beetlejuice 3 and Beyond

Realistically, we’re probably looking at Beetlejuice 3, which will likely shoot in 2026 and release in late 2027. Jenna Ortega will almost certainly come back as Astrid, Ryder’s daughter, and the dynamic between them that made Beetlejuice Beetlejuice so entertaining will probably continue. Michael Keaton will presumably be back, though his relationship with the bio-exorcist was supposedly resolved at the end of the last film, so who knows how that’ll work. Catherine O’Hara will probably make an appearance, because Delia Deetz is too delightful not to include.

Beyond that? That’s where it gets speculative, and that’s probably the point. Ryder isn’t someone who announces projects years in advance. She doesn’t do the Marvel machine with sequels planned out five years down the line. She works differently now than she did in the 1990s when her career moved at light speed. She’s thoughtful about it.

The Ruth Gordon Years Ahead

What we do know is what she’s said about her future in interviews. She’s mentioned being excited about her “Baby Jane years,” referencing Bette Davis’s career resurgence, and she’s talked about looking forward to her “Ruth Gordon years,” meaning she’s planning a long career as an older actress taking interesting roles. Ruth Gordon didn’t peak in her forties or fifties. She had one of the best runs of her life starting in her sixties and continuing until she died in her nineties. Ryder knows film history. She knows that aging out of Hollywood as a woman isn’t the end if you have the talent and the chutzpah to stick around.

That’s basically her roadmap for the next decade or more. She’s going to be selective. She’s going to wait for things that matter to her. She’s probably going to do at least one or two major films every couple of years, with maybe a prestige television project mixed in if the right script lands in her lap. She might produce at some point. She might direct, though nothing’s been announced about that. She’ll probably do some smaller independent projects that remind her why she loved acting in the first place.

Will She Disappear Again?

The big question everyone wants answered, though, is simpler: Will she disappear again like she did in the 2000s?

The answer is probably no. The 2000s were about survival and regrouping after the shoplifting incident, after tabloid hell, after genuinely not knowing if she’d ever work again. She needed to step back. But her comeback with Stranger Things proved something crucial: the audience never stopped loving her. There was no cynicism when she returned to mainstream culture. There was only joy and recognition and “oh my god, Winona’s back.” She’s learned that she can control her narrative if she’s selective about her projects and careful about her privacy.

What the Next Five Years Probably Look Like

The next act of her career is probably going to look more like a slow burn than the meteoric rises and falls we’ve seen from her in the past. She’ll probably show up in things we don’t expect. She might do something that absolutely shocks everyone, like collaborating with a director known for harder-edge work or taking a role that requires her to do something totally different from anything she’s done before. That’s the Ryder move now. Surprise. Selectivity. Substance over salary.

For fans, the immediate next five years probably look like this: Stranger Things wraps up the emotional way it deserves to, Beetlejuice 3 happens sometime in 2027, and in between, Ryder probably does a project or two that we don’t see coming. Maybe a small indie film at Sundance. Maybe a supporting role in something prestigious. Maybe even a limited series if the right script appears, though she’s probably done with major television commitments for a while.

Control and Intentionality

But here’s what matters most: Winona Ryder is making her own choices now. She’s not desperate. She’s not chasing anything. She’s not trying to prove anything to anyone. She’s just being thoughtful about how she spends her remaining decades as a working actor. And in a town that constantly chews up and spits out talent, that kind of control and intentionality is actually the rarest thing of all.

Stranger Things might be ending, but Winona Ryder’s career? That’s just getting interesting.