Stranger Things’ big bad may be Vecna now, but for a long time, the show’s greatest adversary was the passage of time. It’s been almost a decade since the first season premiered in 2016, yet only a few years have passed within the story, resulting in quite a few jokes about its 20-something stars riding their bikes around like little kids.
But ahead of the final season of Stranger Things premiering later this month, the streamer has found a way to keep the Hawkins gang eternally young: Stranger Things: Tales from ‘85, an animated series set between Seasons 2 and 3. Take a look at the official announcement video below.
In the clip, Stranger Things showrunners Matt and Ross Duffer reveal that they’ve always had animation in mind for the franchise. “When we started talking about was there anything else we wanted to do with Stranger Things, this was one of our first ideas,” Ross Duffer says. “The idea was kind of to evoke a feeling of an '80s cartoon,” his brother adds.
The result has a Real Ghostbusters vibe, and it appears to follow a classic Monster of the Week format. But the aesthetic is completely different, with a 3D computer-generated look that’s full of painterly imaginings of the characters we’ve watched grow up.
That, of course, is the biggest strength of animation: these characters will never grow up. The series is called Tales from ‘85, so this is clearly set at a specific moment in the timeline, but 1985 can last as long as Netflix wants it to. Given how popular Stranger Things is, that could be another nine years. While the show is ending, the franchise itself shows no signs of dying out. Stranger Things: The First Shadow is still playing on Broadway, and it’s possible Tales from ‘85 will be just the first spinoff to continue its legacy. A sequel series, Tales from ‘86, certainly writes itself.
