The flagship series may have wrapped up its apocalyptic finale a few months ago, but Hawkins is not done with us yet, not by a long shot. “Stranger Things: Tales from ’85” premiered on Netflix this week, an animated spinoff that rewinds the clock to a time when the kids were still kids and the biggest worry was surviving middle school with a demonic creature or two lurking around the edges. It is the first piece of a clearly expanding franchise future, and it is a bet that audiences are hungry enough for more Hawkins that they will follow these characters into an entirely new medium. Whether that bet pays off is a genuinely open question.
The series drops us into Hawkins during the winter of 1985, slotting neatly into the gap between the second and third seasons of the original show, a period fans have always been curious about. Across its ten episodes, the animated adventure reunites the core kids as they face down new monsters and unravel a fresh paranormal mystery, with something sinister brewing beneath the town as the influence of the Upside Down seeps back in. The young cast has been entirely recast with new voice actors, including Brooklyn Davey Norstedt as Eleven and Luca Diaz as Mike Wheeler, though Jeremy Jordan lends his voice to a returning Steve Harrington, and Odessa A’zion voices a brand-new character named Nikki Baxter. The Duffer Brothers and Shawn Levy executive produce, with animation handled by Flying Bark Productions. Warning beyond this point there are spoilers for “Stranger Things: Tales from ’85” and the wider Stranger Things timeline.
It is a bet that audiences are hungry enough for more Hawkins that they will follow these characters into an entirely new medium.”
Setting the story in the winter of 1985 is a genuinely smart move, because it lets the show operate in the sweet spot fans remember most fondly. This is the era before the kids grew up and the show grew enormous, back when it was a tight little adventure about a group of friends on their bikes facing down the impossible. Filling in an untold chapter of that period gives the spinoff a clear reason to exist beyond simply extending the brand, a chance to tell a self-contained monster-of-the-week style story with characters at their most beloved age. There is real nostalgia value in getting to spend more time in that specific, cozy corner of the timeline.
The animation is the biggest swing here, and it is a double-edged one. On one hand, moving to an animated format frees the show from the constraints of aging child actors and live-action budgets, letting it depict the Upside Down and its creatures with a freedom the main series could never afford. On the other, the whole appeal of “Stranger Things” was always its lived-in, cinematic texture, the way it felt like a lost eighties film, and translating that into cartoon form risks losing some of the atmosphere that made it special. The early results are a mixed bag, with reviews landing in decidedly lukewarm territory, suggesting the transition is not entirely seamless.
The recasting is the other hurdle, and it is a significant one. These kids have been played by the same young actors for nearly a decade, and their voices are burned into the audience’s memory as deeply as their faces. Hearing entirely new performers step into those roles is inherently jarring, no matter how capable they are, and it takes real adjustment to accept a different Eleven or a different Mike. Bringing Jeremy Jordan in for Steve helps bridge that gap with a familiar presence, but the core recasting is a wall the show has to climb with every returning viewer. Some will make the leap. Others will find it a bridge too far.
What “Tales from ’85” really represents is the moment the franchise proves it intends to outlive its flagship. The main show may be over, but Netflix clearly sees Hawkins as a world worth returning to again and again, in animation and likely in other forms down the line. That is both exciting and a little worrying, because the thing that made “Stranger Things” special was partly its finite, focused story, and endless expansion always carries the risk of diluting the magic.
This animated detour is a low-stakes, enjoyable enough way to keep the lights on in Hawkins, but it also raises the question of how much more of this world we actually need. For now, the party is back together, the monsters are stirring, and the Upside Down is calling once more. Whether we keep answering is up to us.
What do you think? Does an animated format free “Stranger Things” to do things the live-action show never could, or does it lose the cinematic texture that made the original so immersive? Can new voice actors ever truly replace the kids we have watched grow up across nearly a decade? And is expanding Hawkins into an ongoing franchise a welcome way to stay in this world, or a risk of diluting what made the original story special?
See you on the next binge!
