Stranger Things fans might have never gotten that “lost” ninth episode that nearly broke the internet, and quite literally broke Netflix, but it appears we’re about to get a “lost season.” Or, at least, that is what the showrunner of Netflix’s new Stranger Things spinoff hopes fans will feel after they watch the debut season of the new animated original Stranger Things: Tales from ‘85.
The new animated series will take viewers back to Hawkins, Indiana, this April in the first official extension of the Stranger Things franchise to hit Netflix following the Stranger Things series finale on December 31. This new series will unfold within the established Stranger Things timeline of the live-action series, but will transport viewers to a window of time previously unexplored to tell a brand-new story featuring all of our favorite characters.
Set against the backdrop of winter 1985, Stranger Things: Tales from ‘85 season 1 will transport viewers back to Hawkins as they watch Eleven and the Hawkins crew face off against new monsters and unravel a new mystery that is terrorizing the town of Hawkins. For showrunner Eric Robles, the hope is that the new animated series is one that feels like a “lost season” of the show which could very well have been part of the live-action franchise.
“You could easily take this and make it the live-action version,” Robles revealed in an interview with Empire. “We wanted to go back to Hawkins and feel like a lost season. [It harks back to] when the kids weren’t trying to save the world — they were just trying to save the town.”
Little is known about the exact threat the group will be facing in the series outside of that it’s an extra-dimensional beast, but its origins are perhaps what make this “lost season” concept most interesting.
After the events of season 2, Eleven closed the gate in Hawkins Lab and it was the Russians who opened a new gate beneath Starcourt Mall in season 3. So introducing this new lore into what is meant to be a show set within the main timeline of the franchise seems like it’s about to create more headaches for the Duffer Brothers.
I love that the showrunner is hyping up this new animated spinoff and the promise of it being designed in a manner that will make it feel like a lost season. It’s going to be fun to see what this beast is and to learn about its origins and how the group stopped it, and it’ll be exciting to get a new story featuring the characters we love from Stranger Things—even if they’ll be voiced by new actors and not the original cast.
The problem is that this “lost season” promise might actually hurt the show more than help it. We saw how fans picked apart every aspect of the show’s final season with countless theories about plot holes and production errors. With Stranger Things: Tales from ‘85 set between two seasons of the live-action show, there is no way that the fans won’t begin picking apart changes to what has been established as canon. It’s also not going to be surprising to see fans questioning why no one in the live-action series mentioned the events that will unfold in Stranger Things: Tales from ‘85, and complaining about low-stakes, given we know no key characters will be in actual harm’s way.
Hopefully fans will see Stranger Things: Tales from ‘85 for what it hopes to be, which is a fun animated adventure set with Eleven, Mike, Dustin, Lucas, Will, and the rest of the Hawkins crew. Sadly, I fear this show could be set up for failure with fans over-analyzing it rather than just enjoying the journey.