Here’s the pitch for “Stranger Things: Tales from ’85,” the best that I can spin it: Imagine a version of “Stranger Things” where the core cast never ages out of their roles. You can spend season after season with their 14-year-old selves as they fight monsters from the Upside-Down or Hawkins Lab or both, in between D&D games, bike rides, and first crushes. The story isn’t bogged down by an ever-expanding mythology, episodes don’t balloon into overinflated features — they’re 30 minutes or less — and the vibe is closer to a Saturday morning cartoon (silly, sweet, stylized) than a blockbuster movie (big, basic, bad).
Letting fans of Netflix‘s most-watched franchise spend an infinite amount of time with their favorite characters, as they first met them, isn’t a bad idea. Neither is developing “Stranger Things” into a monster-of-the-week style show. But that’s not quite what “Tales from ’85” does, and the direction it takes instead feels less inspired than obedient and less reveling than repetitive.
It’s January 1985, and school is back in session. Eleven (voiced by Brooklyn Davey Norstedt) is still in hiding, living at Hopper’s (Brett Gipson) cabin in the woods, but her friends — OK, mainly Mike (Luca Diaz) — are committed to keeping her in the loop even when their days are filled with classes and their nights are filled with homework. Dustin (Braxton Quinney) is nearly as obsessed with keeping the group together, while Lucas (Elisha “EJ” Williams) and Max (Jolie Hoang-Rappaport) are torn between their friends and an awkward flirtation that’s surfaced after their first kiss at the Snow Ball.
Will (Benjamin Plessala) is mainly getting bullied, but his latest tormentors are shoved aside by the series first substantial new character, Nikki Baxter (Odessa A’zion). She’s the daughter of a temp teacher, Mrs. Baxter (Janeane Garofalo), who takes over for Mr. Clarke when he goes on (a convenient, unexplained) sabbatical. Nikki is tall, pierced, and punk rock; her pink hair is shaved down the sides and forms a floppy mohawk up top. She doesn’t bother with niceties or even introductions — when Mike and Will thank her for defending them from a beating, she just moves on without so much as a handshake — because her regular uprooting, following mom from town to town, has taught her not to make too many attachments.
Might she finally find a real friend group in Hawkins? Previous experience says “no way,” since Nikki never shows up for D&D game-a-thons in the live-action series. But her backstory allows “Stranger Things: Tales from ’85” to keep her around until its timeline collides with the original series, at which point Mrs. Baxter will presumably find a new job in a new town. Maybe Season 2 will still take place before the summer break, or maybe it will take place in another timeline gap when Nikki and her mom return to Hawkins.
But she still can’t make that much of an impact on the preexisting characters. If she does, then how come they never mention her in the original timeline? Nikki illustrates the series’ biggest hang-up: Even when showrunner Eric Robles finds a way to introduce new faces, places, and monsters to the “Stranger Things” universe, they all still have to abide by what’s already been established within the “Stranger Things” universe.
That means Max and Lucas can flirt, but they can’t maneuver beyond the relationship path already set for them in the original series. That means Eleven and Mike can keep building their relationship, excitedly showing off new foods (him) and telekinetic powers (her), but they’ll never reach a major milestone, because those belong to the other show. That means Hawkins Lab may get up to some minor shenanigans, and the Upside Down may harbor peculiar creatures — one of which props up the first season’s central mystery about a hostile spore-spreading species — but none of them can be any more nefarious or terrifying than what popped up before. That means the kids can face danger, but there’s no real risk because they all turn up in Season 3.
If the series leaned into the low-stakes forced upon it by infusing every line, action, and animation with an extra dose of fun, perhaps “Tales from ’85” could be something more than serviceable children’s entertainment. As is, there are a lot of easy allusions to “Star Wars,” “Jaws,” and “Raiders of the Lost Ark”; a lot of routine action scenes where the kids fight off evolving variations on the same monster; and a lot of bright colors, dead-eyed characters, and jerky movements. For at least half its running time, “Tales from ’85” looks like a decent video game that you can’t actually play, and the removed nature of its story — a lesser subsection of the main show — doesn’t help bridge the disconnect.
It’s only been four months since “Stranger Things” wrapped, and I don’t envy the Netflix executives in charge of keeping the franchise going. Fans’ attachment is largely to the kids, who aren’t kids anymore, and ’80s nostalgia, which is a diminishing resource. The Upside Down isn’t all that dynamic on its own, nor are the various RPG-inspired creatures that come out of it. “Tales from ’85” illustrates a good idea that’s still hamstrung by a devotion to the show’s preexisting lore. If it were full-blown episodic, or set in another dimension, or otherwise free to become its own thing, maybe there’d be enough tension and entertainment to hold our attention. But rather than burying the past and starting fresh, or even building from it toward an unknown future, the animated series aims to be an addendum when it needs to be an adventure.
That not only limits its creative potential — it also limits the road ahead.
Grade: C
“Stranger Things: Tales from ’85” premieres Thursday, April 23, on Netflix. All 10 episodes will be released at once.
