Most spinoffs expand their flagship shows in a direction. That direction could be forward, following a beloved character past the events of the original story, á la “Frasier”; it could be backward, fleshing out the origins of a person or place with pre-established significance, the approach taken by both current “Game of Thrones” offshoots. It could even be lateral, simply transferring a concept to a different setting within the same universe in the time-honored tradition of procedurals like “CSI” or “Law & Order.”
For its first official TV extension, “Stranger Things” opts for none of the above. (A theatrical production, “The First Shadow,” took place in the 1950s.) “Stranger Things: Tales From ‘85” is animated rather than live action, an obvious visual cue we’re no longer watching the show that wrapped its blockbuster run on Netflix earlier this year. It turns out such a signal is sorely needed, because “Tales From ‘85” winds back the clock to tell the exact same story as “Stranger Things” proper, with the exact same characters, in the exact same archetypal small town of Hawkins, Indiana.
The primary distinction is that this version of the Hellfire Club, now voiced by a fresh set of actors, will never face the main constraint on a serialized story about young children: They don’t age. “Tales From ‘85” is a transparent attempt to preserve “Stranger Things” in pixels rather than amber, allowing Netflix to keep capitalizing on the phenomenon long after its original faces have moved on to other projects.
Per the title, “Tales From ‘85” takes place between the events of “Stranger Things” Seasons 2 and 3 — before the Battle of Starcourt Mall, the introduction of fan-favorite character Robin (Maya Hawke) or, most crucially, the main protagonists started to visibly transition from adorable tweens to post-puberty adolescents to, eventually, young adults. Exactly what occurred between those two chapters has never been a subject of great suspense. “Tales From ‘85” is quite literally doodling in the margins of “Stranger Things” mythology, or would be if the creative team (led by showrunner Eric Robles, with the Duffer Brothers executive producing) had opted for a hand-drawn look inspired by the kind of ‘80s cartoons its heroes watch between interdimensional adventures. But instead of “Transformers” or “He-Man,” “Tales From ‘85” as produced by animation studio Flying Bark looks like any number of contemporary, computer-generated shows, just with flashes of neon and other period details.
To summarize the plot of “Tales From ‘85” is redundant, because it’s the same plot as any other season of “Stranger Things”: besties Will (Ben Plessala, subbing in for Noah Schnapp), Mike (Luca Diaz, for Finn Wolfhard), Lucas (EJ Williams, for Caleb McLaughlin), Dustin (Braxton Quinney, for Gaten Matarazzo), Max (Jolie Hoang-Rappaport, for Sadie Sink) and their superpowered friend Eleven (Brookly Davey Norstedt, for Millie Bobby Brown) team up to fight an interdimensional threat from the Upside Down as local adults remain oblivious. That the gate between our world and the Upside Down in the Hawkins Laboratory basement is technically shut at this point in the master narrative is a mere technicality that’s easily handwaved.
The group’s internal dynamics and story beats are just as identical as the overall mission. Mike is protective of Eleven; Lucas and Max have sweet (then-platonic) chemistry; Dustin hangs out with reformed bully Steve Harrington (Jeremy Jordan, stepping in for Joe Keery). Dustin even re-christens the group the Hawkins Investigators Club, a particularly groanworthy development since there’s already a fictional member’s group that unites the ragtag gang. (Did the Hellfire Club not survive the digital transition?) If “Stranger Things” was already a nostalgia exercise, then “Tales ‘from ‘85” caters to nostalgia for nostalgia, a recursive loop with a predictably diminished impact.
The ensemble’s main new addition is Nikki (Odessa A’Zion), a pink-mohawked punk whose individuality is encouraged by her mother Anna (Janeane Garofalo), a substitute science teacher. Why haven’t we heard any mention of Nikki in subsequent seasons? Perhaps because she serves as a kind of proto-Robin, a queer-coded role model to encourage Will’s individuality before he even understands what makes him different. Once the real Robin shows up down the line, Nikki could be safely memory-wiped. As engaging an aural presence as A’Zion, a rising star, may be, it’s hard to fall in love with someone you know won’t be around in just a few months of in-universe time, never to come up again.
More than the presence of such technically new faces that slot neatly into pre-established tropes, what distinguishes “Tales From ‘85” is that the characters are no longer tethered to flesh-and-blood humans. Without the liability of actors whose voices will deepen and heights will shoot up over time, Netflix can continue to exploit this IP as long as its audience desires, looking ever-more-solipsistically inward rather than branching out. I’ll give “Tales From ‘85” this much credit: it’s as creepy and unsettling an idea as this horror-adjacent franchise has produced in years.
All eight episodes of “Stranger Things: Tales From ‘85” are now streaming on Netflix.
