When franchises become as popular as Stranger Things, it’s no surprise to see spinoffs, prequels or sequels in play. The animated Stranger Things: Tales from ’85 is exactly this, a lost chapter in between Season 2 and 3 of the live-action show. Here, the iconic squad of youngsters battled a slew of rabid, bloodthirsty plant monsters. It has been renewed for a second season, but fans remain confused if the new show is canon to the live-action show. And with questions lingering, there is a wild approach Netflix can take to settle this debate, elevate the series, and create new stories: the Multiverse.
To recap, Stranger Things, created by the Duffer Brothers, centered on Hawkins, Indiana. Young Will Byer (Noah Schnapp) — and in time, others — got kidnapped and held in a dark realm known as the Upside Down. Along the way, other enemies, supernatural and human, and several heroes would rise up.
The resistance consisted of Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown), Mike (Finn Wolfhard), police chief Hopper (David Harbour), Joyce (Winona Ryder) and many more. Their job was multifaceted: rescue Will and stop monsters coming over the Upside Down. Once they sealed the rift, per Season 1, all should have been well.
Wrong.
For five seasons, fans witnessed a sprawling war. More rifts opened, allowing the tyrannical boss, the Mind Flayer, to manifest on Earth and infect victims like Henry Creel (Jamie Campbell Bower). Henry eventually got mutated and became Vecna, the Mind Flayer’s general. Vecna kept sending Demogorgons and other beasts over to garner an army of children needed to remake Earth.
It didn’t help that America and Russia were engaged in an arms race, trying to harness the power of the Upside Down and its monsters. And, in America’s case, create super-soldiers such as Eleven and Kali (Linnea Berthelsen) in the MKUltra program using Henry’s blood.
Over 42 episodes, the mission became “save the world.” It wasn’t easy, because Vecna was corrupting Will, while the heroes hid Eleven from the government. Luckily, in the final season, the heroes went on the offensive, waging war on Vecna and the Mind Flayer in Dimension X: the sordid wasteland the Upside Down bridged into.
Thankfully, with Will harnessing his own powers after being imprinted on by Vecna , and Eleven unleashing all her might, the protagonists saved the day. Vecna was killed, and Dimension X, along with the Mind Flayer, was excised.
This left viewers intrigued where showrunner Eric Robles could take the 10 episodes comprising Tales From ’85. While the heroes faced experiments affiliated with the Upside Down and beat the plant monsters, none of this was mentioned in the live-action series. When questioned, Robles painted this series as “soft canon” — i.e. the TV show can exist without it. This may be a cop-out, but it opens the door for Netflix to get a bit more creative and conceptualize a dynamic Multiverse to make the IP even more bombastic.
The Door To A Stranger Things Multiverse Already Exists
As mentioned above, the bane of Hawkins was rifts being opened — whether by the USA, the Russians, or the Mind Flayer’s legion. Come Tales from ’85, we witness a plant queen opening a rift, too, to return home and avoid being killed. Clearly, whether it’s a rift to the Upside Down or Dimension X, space and time are being tampered with.
The idea of different dimensions is a door for Robles’ team to exploit and avoid janky world-building. Rifts existing can be the literal door to explaining why this cartoon is indeed another iteration of Hawkins. Done and done. This way, Tales from ’85 can focus on one particular Earth, without struggling to stay tethered to main continuity.
Issues did pop up when Tales from ’85 tried not to break the lore from in the live-action. Had the new animated war been self-contained and away from town where only a select few would have known, it’d make sense that no one would remember it.
But it’s ridiculous to think the badass altruist, Nikki Baxter (Odessa A’zion), the plant monsters, and all the chaos in the streets for many to see, could be forgotten by the time the live-action Season 3 commences.
Netflix has, coincidentally, shown how to solve this via Fast & Furious: Spy Racers, Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous and Jurassic World: Chaos Theory. These animated series mostly used freshly-created characters, with a cameo here and there, per Vin Diesel’s Dom Toretto showing up to hire his cousin, Tony, in Spy Racers. But the other allies and villains and technology felt like the show’s own thing.
Netflix was able to use feedback on pros and cons from the parent properties and refine to shape fresh narratives. As a result, whether fans ignore these cartoons or consider them main canon, everything flows like a well-oiled engine.
The Duffers did want Robles and Co. to forge their own mini-universe to mesh into their world. But the ceiling is capped. Using an entirely different Earth would allow Stranger Things to course-correct this ambiguity. This tactic would give Robles’ squad free rein to do whatever they want and max out the story’s potential, while respecting previous continuity.
On its own, Tales from ’85 wouldn’t be revisionist history. It’d position itself as engaging, nuanced stories amid an identity of its own. Such a strategy is much easier than adding fresh content and game-changing swerves, only to tell consumers to ignore them when juxtaposed to the five seasons prior.
A Stranger Things Multiverse Offers More Spectacle
Tales from ’85 ought to embrace the idea of breaking the norm even more. This can create a bigger spectacle, like how in the first season we saw Nikki leading the charge to create a cache of tools including lasers. This blended sci-fi, fantasy and escapism, and in its own logic, gave the heroes weapons that we’d conceive them to need when having to destroy such otherworldly beasts.
Admittedly, audiences are already puzzled how the heroes could have envisioned such an arsenal in the cartoon only to then brawl with Vecna’s army in Dimension X using grounded tools and a couple of explosives. Even with the Demogorgons missing, a powered-up Will and Eleven, along with that grounded arsenal, shouldn’t have sufficed. But, hey, plot convenience, right?
Rather than having Tales from ’85 latched on this bewilderment, steeping it in another reality can allow the conversation to progress and not regress. Season 2 (and hopefully, more seasons) can have Nikki and the other tech-genius in the crew, Dustin, cooking up new devices to fight monsters like bombs, jet packs, drones, stealth tools, etc. Nikki’s garage can become a hub for something so much more — a lair that the likes of Batman or the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles would use.
Other methods of communications can be conjured, outside of HAM radios and walkie-talkies. They can even create detectors to sense monsters and ethereal energy from whenever an incursion occurs. This would perfectly honor Robles’ love of Ghostbusters and The Goonies, but with more of that military edge that Season 5 rushed into.
This can work for villains as well. Imagine MKUltra adopting a similar mindset and leveling up its military hunters. They can prowl on Earth, or explore the Upside Down and other pockets akin to Dimension X. More monsters, the better, not so? This would make them more than a fickle batch of soldiers seen in live-action.
Additionally, other labs and supplemental independent contractors can get word of Hawkins’ plight and weaponize the town for profit. This births a potential corporate arc outside of the political arms race. Tales from ’85 touched on this with the sinister scientist, Daniel Fischer (Lou Diamond Phillips) — someone who wanted revenge on MKUltra and tinkered with making monsters. An alternate reality opens up more space to be bolder.
Netflix’s Jurassic World cartoons had this kind of ambition, providing villains tech to mind-control dinosaurs, while Spy Racers deployed vehicles that could transform, and tech allowing tyrants to control the globe’s digital system. In other words, these animated series had a scope that the parent properties didn’t constrain.
If Tales from ’85 gets this kind of leeway on its own Earth, it’d be exciting to see Demogorgons being preyed upon for new private armies (something Russia fiddled with), humans being injected with the DNA of these monsters, and other business entities outside of America mining the Upside Down for fuels or minerals — all arcs that can become more grandiose than what the Duffers harnessed. And take the franchise more from fantasy into hardcore action-sci-fi and horror. It’d be a sin, honestly, not to capitalize on what the more fluid animated realm offers.
Ironically, the Multiverse can also build on the foundation of legacies that already exist to create even nastier tyrants. Netflix illustrated how to achieve this when it tweaked a primary figure in Jurassic World’s Dr. Henry Wu for the best. Wu was plucked out of obscurity and expanded on due to the blank canvas he left on the big screen.
There was ample creative space to flesh him out (past, present and future), as he wasn’t given much background in the cinemas. The key to all this is creative liberty and the freedom to subvert.
Tales from ’85 can stitch together a similarly congruent tapestry with Dr. Brenner’s dynasty and details from from The First Shadow play that many TV viewers haven’t seen. When Season 5 showed Henry being infected in the cave to become the Mind Flayer’s pawn, they had no clue Brenner’s father tried to harvest Dimension X for America’s military purposes in the play.
Robles can involve other members and elements from this nefarious project or even reveal Brenner had more kin warping science in the name of patriotism. An MKUltra spinoff, in essence. Such an arc would retain poignancy, relevancy and, as original as it’d be, stick to the already-established DNA of what the Duffers molded.
This shapes room for other world-powers, such as China, and spies to enter the fray. It’d remix the past and give Tales from ’85 an unpredictable edge, despite viewers already knowing where the main series concludes.
Ultimately, building without worrying about history is smarter, compared to forcibly retrofitting or retconning. The latter is prone to inconsistencies and plot holes. Rather than muddy worlds by mixing them, the best practice would be to streamline, separate and simplify.
If viewers don’t take to the Stranger Things Multiverse, rest assured, their precious holy grail of 42 chapters remains untouched. For those who want more wonder and wandering in Hawkins, however, Tales from ’85 being its own world can enable imagination and curation in ways the original franchise never did.
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