Eleven has met her match. The Season 2 trailer for Stranger Things: Tales From '85 landed Monday, and the biggest moment shows a mysterious blue entity standing completely unbothered while Eleven throws everything she has at it.
The animated prequel returns to Netflix on September 17th with eight episodes.
The setting this time is Valentine's Day in Hawkins, and the town has a full-blown haunting on its hands: ghostly figures in the woods, apparitions around town, and a swarm of nasty little creatures called hate sprites. Eerie blue roses spread through town after Max and newcomer Nikki try to sell them, and the trailer hints the whole thing may be crawling out of Hawkins' abandoned silver mines, raising the question: Could there be another gateway to the Upside Down?
Season 1 ran ten half-hour installments, and Season 2 trims to eight. That's a lot of supernatural trouble for eight half-hour episodes to untangle!
That first season drew a 61% on Rotten Tomatoes, with critics enjoying the nostalgia while noting the softer, kid-friendly stakes never approached the live-action highs. Could a villain that no-sells Eleven be the smartest move this show could make?
Here's where the story sits in the larger continuity: the animated show takes place between the live-action series' second and third seasons, after the Mind Flayer was beaten back in late 1984 and before Starcourt Mall went up in flames in the summer of '85. The kids believe Hawkins is safe at last, and nothing in the canon says otherwise, so the writers can put them through a haunting without tripping over a single established beat.
The returning voice cast includes Brooklyn Davey Norstedt as Eleven, Luca Diaz as Mike, Braxton Quinney as Dustin, Jolie Hoang-Rappaport as Max, and Jeremy Jordan as Steve, with Janeane Garofalo, Lou Diamond Phillips, Valeria Rodriguez, Jack Griffo, and Odessa A'zion joining the fun. And yes, Hopper is around too: Brett Gipson voices the chief, whose 1985 self has no idea what Russia has in store for him. Eric Robles created the series, Australia's Flying Bark Productions (of 100% Wolf and LEGO Monkie Kid) handles the animation, and Matt and Ross Duffer executive produce alongside Shawn Levy through Upside Down Pictures.
With the flagship series finished after last year's theatrical-event finale, Tales From '85 is the only place new Hawkins stories are being told right now. Netflix renewed it just five days after the April premiere, so the streamer clearly sees a future in animated Hawkins, and a ghost-mystery season with real teeth could win over the fans who bounced after Season 1.
There's also an official companion book on the way that digs back through all five of the live-action seasons. As someone who grew up watching every big franchise earn its Saturday-morning spin-off, I get a kick out of this: ten years after Stranger Things premiered mining 80s nostalgia, its kids have landed on a cartoon.
If you skipped the first season, the original trailer below shows off the retro animation style before you commit to the catch-up:
Season 2 of Stranger Things: Tales From '85 hits Netflix on September 17th. So what's your theory on the blue entity, and can the party handle it if Eleven is powerless to stop it?
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