There are ghosts in Hawkins now. Netflix released the official Season 2 trailer for Stranger Things: Tales From '85 earlier this week and confirmed the animated series returns September 17th, per Netflix, with eight new episodes. That's a fast turnaround, with barely five months between seasons.
The new season picks up around Valentine's Day in Hawkins, and the trailer leans hard into the spooky stuff: ghostly figures lurking in the woods, mysterious apparitions around town, and a swarm of little creatures the marketing calls hate sprites. Dread Central summed the vibe up well: the Hawkins Investigators Club is going full-blown Scooby-Doo.
The trailer's biggest tease? A mysterious blue entity that appears to shrug off Eleven's powers entirely. Eerie blue roses spread through town after Max and newcomer Nikki try to sell them, and the paranormal activity may trace back to Hawkins' abandoned silver mines, which would mean another potential gateway to the Upside Down.
A monster Eleven can't just blast away? Now we're talking!
A Valentine's Day setting also means the show gets to poke at middle-school romance while the town falls apart around it. Hate sprites on Valentine's Day are bound to be a fan favorite.
The young voice cast returns, including Brooklyn Davey Norstedt as Eleven, Luca Diaz as Mike, Braxton Quinney as Dustin, and Jolie Hoang-Rappaport as Max, with Jeremy Jordan back as Steve Harrington. Season 2 adds some fun grown-up names too: Janeane Garofalo, Lou Diamond Phillips, and Odessa A'zion as Nikki Baxter, plus Valeria Rodriguez and Jack Griffo.
For those keeping track of the timeline, the animated show fills the gap between the live-action series' second and third seasons: after the Mind Flayer's Halloween 1984 rampage, before the summer of 1985 turned the Starcourt Mall into a battlefield. The kids are together, the lab is gone, and the town believes its nightmare is over, which leaves plenty of room for a new one.
Season 1 premiered back on April 23rd with ten episodes in the half-hour range, sending the party back to ordinary life, with D&D campaigns and snowball fights interrupted by something paranormal lurking under the winter ice. Netflix renewed the show just five days later. Reviews were a mixed bag: critics liked the nostalgia and the softer, kid-friendly tone but felt it never hit the emotional highs of the live-action series. A ghost mystery with a villain who won't fold to superpowers sounds like a direct answer to that criticism.
If you missed the first season, here's the trailer that started it all:
The series comes from creator Eric Robles and Flying Bark Productions, the Australian studio behind 100% Wolf and LEGO Monkie Kid, with teams working across Los Angeles, Sydney, and Madrid, and the Duffer Brothers and Shawn Levy executive producing.
It's hard to believe the original series premiered ten years ago this summer. The flagship show took its final bow at the end of last year with a finale event big enough that Netflix put it in theaters. The franchise's future now runs through this series, the stage play The First Shadow, and whatever comes next.
All eight episodes of Season 2 hit Netflix on September 17th, and Season 1 is streaming there now if you need to catch up. All ten of those episodes run about half an hour, so it's an easy weekend binge.
What do you think of Hawkins going the ghost-story route?
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