This article contains spoilers for Stranger Things: Tales From ’85 Season 1, including the season finale.
With 10 episodes in the books on Netflix, Stranger Things: Tales From ’85 has finished its first campaign in the “secret season” that takes place between Seasons 2 and 3 of the live-action parent series. And if you were wondering, at least given that ending – nope, this is not a one-and-done. There are far more tales to tell from the winter of 1985…if fans are intrigued enough to go on more adventures.
In case you’re curious, we won’t explain the entire ending of the series beat for beat, but to give some context: If you’re wondering how the Hawkins kids had any sort of adventure with monsters after the gate in Hawkins Lab was closed at the end of Season 2, here’s the gist.
Stranger Things: Tales From ’85 Ending Explained
As it turns out, when the government was cleaning out the remains of the Upside Down vines at the end of Season 2, some were left behind for experimentation. Utilizing a formula created by substitute teacher Anna Baxter (Janeane Garofalo), former Hawkins Lab worker Daniel Fischer (Lou Diamond Phillips) was able to renanimate one of the vines, creating an evolved, spore-based version of the Upside Down creatures whose biological goal was to evolve and survive long enough to go back home. That’s right: Unlike the Demogorgons we know that are controlled by Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower), the eventual Queen – which Dustin (Braxton Quinney) calls Hordak Prime after the character from She-Ra – merely wants to go back to the Upside Down and be left alone.
In the final episode of the season, the whole gang – including new Hawkins Investigators Club member Nikki Baxter (Odessa A’zion), who, like Donatello, does machines – ends up in a series of massive caves that the Queen has been living in with her creatures. She’s finally grown big enough to rip open a massive gate in the cave, which is something the kids definitely don’t want her to do. They also realize that if she returns and bonds with the Mind Flayer, that could be very bad as well. The whole thing plays out as an interesting, accidental rejoinder to the finale of Stranger Things, giving us the sort of massive battle with drones (i.e., little creatures) attacking our group that we never got in the fight with the Mind Flayer kaiju in “live action.”
In any case, you won’t believe this: They win, with the Queen getting sliced in half as Eleven (Brooklyn Davey Norstedt) closes the gate. Three weeks later, things are back to normal, and the Baxter family has decided to stay in Hawkins. Not only that, but the gang has a new hangout: Nikki’s garage, where she’s invited to be the Barbarian of the D&D party.
But wait, that’s not all! Heading to an Upside Down version of the greenhouse where Fischer cultivated the Queen (oh, he’s dead by the way), we hear “We’ll Meet Again” play, and a flower with a mysterious blue tinge hatches from the Queen’s corpse. Uh-oh!
That’s a lot to throw out in the final moments, but don’t worry, we have showrunner Eric Robles on hand to explain it all… or at least be cagey about it all, as he’s waiting to reveal a lot of info until Season 2 premieres. That brings us to our first burning question:
Will Stranger Things: Tales From ’85 Return for Season 2?
As of this writing, Tales From ’85 has not been renewed (or canceled) by Netflix, but that’s nothing out of the ordinary, as the streamer normally takes at least a month (approximately) to look at streaming numbers and decide on renewals. The tricky thing about a show like Tales From ’85 is that if they haven’t started work on the show in the background, it’s going to take a while to see a Season 2 (rule of thumb is at least two years to produce an animated series, which is why two seasons are often picked up at the same time, so they can work ahead). While Robles didn’t specifically answer whether they’re already at work on scripts or have been soft renewed in the background, he is champing at the bit to return for more adventures.
“I know exactly where we're going with this,” Robles said. “If I get that call, and then everybody's ready to do this, there’s zero hesitation… I know exactly from day one where we're going… Animation does take a while. It gives me time to really marinate on this stuff and really think things out and what the potentials are. We're so excited about what we're about to launch with Season 1, and how it all wraps up this finale.”
When Would Stranger Things: Tales From ’85 Take Place?
If the show does continue, when would it take place? Season 1 takes place over the course of about a month, from January 10, 1985 to “three weeks later” at the end. While Robles didn’t explicitly say that each season would take a month of time, there are still a few of those months to go until we reach June 1985 – aka the beginning of Season 3.
“We are frozen in time between these two seasons, two and three,” Robles explained. “But within this frozen time, we're now going to expand this… mini-universe of Tales From ’85 in a way that it does go big.”
So potentially, if they are able to continue with the animated series, it could go at least five seasons – one for every month leading up to the Season 3 premiere episode.
Why Did The Kids Think They Could Pull the Queen Back With a Rope?
Up until Eleven steps up to the plate, the rest of the team is trying to hold back the Queen from the gate with a rope. It’s a Herculean effort that seems like it would never work… but that’s the whole point.
“Those kids, there's no freaking way that they could have stopped that Queen by pulling that rope,” Robles said. “But you know what that does show? That's f-ing friendship at its purest. Man, the fact that they will do anything, even though they know they couldn't stop that thing, that friendship of all of them holding up that rope and trying their hardest, man, that is what Stranger Things is about. It's about that loyalty, that friendship… We're building a series that really captures at its core what it's about. It's about those friendships and the fact that they'll always be there and have each other's back no matter what. That, to me, is everything, and the foundation of what not only Season 1 will have, but Seasons 2, 3, 4, and 5, whatever they want it to be. At its core, we'll make sure that we always retain what Stranger Things is about, and it's about those relationships and those kids and how much they love each other.”
How “We’ll Meet Again” Ties The Queen To The Mind Flayer
Stranger Things fans will likely recognize “We’ll Meet Again” as the creepy song that plays at the end of Season 3, Episode 4 when Billy (Dacre Montgomery) reveals that the goopy, gross version of the Mind Flayer has assembled a veritable army of hypnotized Hawkins citizens. So what’s the connection between that scene and the end of Tales From ’85? Is it simply an easter egg for the die-hards?
“There's more to read into it,” Robles teased. “It's hard to go into what's coming… It's something that in my mind, I know where we can go with this. I know what it means. I know what the future of Tales From ’85 could be, what it can look like. So, and I guarantee you this, it's not something that I'm going to come up with on the fly. It's something that I've been thinking about for a very long time, and I'm really excited about what that can mean if everything goes well.”
So what does it mean? The short speculative version is that while it’s ostensibly Russian experiments that begin to open the gate to the Upside Down in Season 3, leading to the Mind Flayer creating a physical body for itself in Hawkins, perhaps there’s more to it than we know. And perhaps the Queen’s body making its way (well, halfway) to the Upside Down is the thing that begins to topple the dominos.
What About That Weird Blue Flower?
Color is a pretty important part of Stranger Things. Red is the color of the Upside Down, and yellow-green is the color of Baxter’s formula which infuses the Queen. Once it opens the gate in its caves, it gets infused with red energy, indicating its connection to the Upside Down. So what does it mean that the flower is coursing with blue energy?
“It really says a lot, that color,” Robles said. “If everything goes accordingly, that would be a really big deal. And you also have to keep this in mind, what we are dealing with now is not just the Upside Down, it's Upside Down science meets Upside Down matter. This is an amalgamation now of something new. And one of the things that I remember Matt and Ross [Duffer] told me right from the get is, ‘Robles, you got to make this yours now. You have to create something new that doesn't mess with our timeline or our thing that we're doing here, so that way you can isolate it, but also now create from it… That's what that blue flower that you see at the end, it really is. Again, if everything goes accordingly, it really is going to open up a whole new Pandora's box that I don't think anybody is ready for, because we've never seen anything like that.”
Where’s Joyce?
Most of the main cast appears in the season, albeit voiced by different actors, including brief bits with Jonathan Byers and even Nancy Wheeler. Hopper (Brett Gipson), Nancy (Alessandra Antonelli), and Steve (Jeremy Jordan) get supporting roles, but entirely absent from the proceedings is Joyce Byers, played on screen by Winona Ryder.
“There's a lot of reasons why,” Robles said when asked why Tales From ’85 is dealing with the disappearance of Joyce Byers, “but one of the main things I will say… is the Duffer brothers didn't want this to become an adult story, a teenage story. They wanted to make sure that the stories stayed true to just the kids and their adventures, very much like the Goonies, or The Lost Boys, very much like the Stand By Me of it all. It's the kids’ story. It's their adventure. They didn't want to get all caught up with the adult stories of it all.”
Why she’ll probably die: As one of the few characters who hasn’t “died” but been part of the main action, Joyce certainly could be in trouble in this final season. Based on trailers for Season 5, her son is in a tough spot with Vecna, and we know she’ll do anything for her kids. There’s also the matter of the plot of the play, The First Shadow, which finds Joyce far more tied to Henry Creel than has been let on in the TV show. Fans have also put Joyce pretty high on their “to die” tier list, mostly because they expect the cursed Byers family to suffer some sort of loss by season’s end.<br><br>
Why she probably won’t: Again, there doesn’t seem to be anything gained by Joyce dying. Per the repercussions thing, there’s a good chance the Duffers want to give as many people a happy ending as possible; having Joyce find out her cursed family isn’t so cursed might be a good thing indeed.”/>
“Because the reality is, when we first started this and I started developing this series, I actually had a story that started leaning towards bringing in Joyce and Hopper and everybody else. And we just started noticing that [we] started going down a darker route. You bring in adults, then the stories get a little heavier in a different way. And so we decided to lean back towards just the kids, just their story, and try to keep the adults out of that adventure. They can still check in, they can still be a part of it, but it was really more about focusing on the kid adventure and the kid journey of it all.”
To throw out a few more theories beyond what Robles laid out, it may have felt duplicative to have single mom Anna Baxter and single mom Joyce Byers in the series. Additionally, at this point in time, Joyce is still reeling from the death of her boyfriend, Bob Newby (Sean Astin), so having her be depressed all season may have dragged things down quite a bit (by the time we loop back in Season 3, she still isn’t recovered and considers leaving Hawkins). There’s also the possibility that Ryder may have had an issue with likeness rights, but given the answer to our next burning question, that seems less likely.
The Live-Action Cast Gets a Special Thanks in the Credits
Right at the end of the credits, the main cast of Stranger Things gets a special thanks; it’s not everybody, though. Getting shout-outs are Millie Bobby Brown, Natalia Dyer, David Harbour, Charlie Heaton, Joe Keery, Gaten Matarazzo, Caleb McLaughlin, Winona Ryder, Noah Schnapp, Sadie Sink, and Finn Wolfhard. You might be able to intuit this one, but why this mix of people?
“It's about respecting the fact that we are using their likenesses,” Robles explained. “They've also given us their blessing… Stranger Things is a family. When you think of the Duffer Brothers, and you think of Millie… We had Gaten come by the studio, and he was so excited to see what we were up to here. He heard Braxton doing his voice, and he was like, ‘Is that… me?’”
“Having their blessing, seeing how their characters are going to continue, it really is just a big thank you to them for creating these personalities. The Duffer brothers can write these amazing stories. But what ends up happening is… these characters evolve from script and they become real characters. That's what's happening to us, as well. We start at script, and then our actors bring new life, new personality to them, and that life and personality gives us a foundation to build on. And so giving them thanks for building these characters and bringing their personalities now that we get to continue to build on, is really what that means for us.”
Does Moving to Nikki’s Garage Mean the End of the Wheelers’ Basement as Home Base?
One little alarm bell for fans might be that the season ends not in Mike’s basement, but Nikki’s garage. A lot of the thrust of the episodes is not just about the gang accepting Nikki, but Nikki accepting the gang in return. And that final move seems to set up Nikki’s garage as the de facto Ghostbusters firehouse of the Hawkins Investigators Club. But don’t worry, Robles hasn’t forgotten where they came from.
“You can never get rid of that basement,” Robles said. “That basement is iconic, and no, it's just one extra place, whether it's the palace arcade, or whether it's Mike's basement, these kids always find places to regroup… But nothing will ever replace the Wheeler basement. If we continue, we're not going to stray away from making sure we have a home base.”
That Name Again Is Mr. Plow
While the season is chock full of easter eggs and references to Stranger Things lore, one of the weirdest shout-outs in the first two episodes is to the local snowplow operator, Mr. Plow. Fans of The Simpsons might debate whether Nikki Baxter is a Poochie, but there’s no debating that Mr. Plow is a reference to the venerated animated program, specifically the Season 4 episode where Homer gets a job as a snowplow guy.
“We inadvertently did that,” Robles said, laughing. “It wasn't meant to be, and then we all started laughing about it, and then we ended up keeping it for the sake of… It's the plow guy, right? ‘Yeah, I don't know, Mr. Plow.’ And then we were like, ‘Oh yeah, Simpsons has that, right?’ And we're just like, ‘Yeah, it does.’ We all just started laughing about it, and it became a funny thing for us internally.”
Will Live-Action Actors Take Part in Upcoming Seasons?
You can’t cast Gaten Matarazzo as Dustin, since Tales From ’85 already has a Dustin. So what about another role? If the show does continue, will we ever hear the live-action cast making guest appearances in other roles?
“If the story allowed it to, and the timing was right and they were available, I'd have no hesitation doing that,” Robles said. “I wouldn't do it to try to force something in there, the show is very organic. It grows on its own and it continues. So if an opportunity shows itself and or appears and we don't totally take advantage of it? It'd be fun for us, and I'm sure it'd be fun for them.”
You can chat with Alex Zalben on BlueSky @azalben.bsky.social, or find him regularly yapping on the Comic Book Club podcast.
