Credit: NetflixStranger Things: Tales From ’85 (2026) has finally premiered on Netflix, with all 10 episodes instantly available to stream. The 3D animated series, set during the winter of 1985, bridges the gap between seasons 2 and 3 of the flagship series, which concluded last year with Season 5. Now, all the main heroes are back (though voiced by an entirely new cast), with a never-before-seen story, including new characters and new Upside Down monsters.
Since the series was confirmed to be set between seasons, fans were quick to address the inconsistency with canon, with no such events being mentioned by the characters in the live-action series, from Season 3 through Season 5. But perhaps the biggest issue with Tales From ’85 is the fact that it’s packaged like a full, proper season, even if it is an animated one.
Related: Is ‘Stranger Things: Tales From ’85’ Canon? Here’s the Answer
Is Tales From ’85 Worth Watching?
Starting with the positives, Tales From ’85 looks gorgeous. The animation is sharp, vibrant, and high quality. And, refreshingly, it doesn’t adopt that choppy, CG/hand-drawn hybrid and imperfect stylized animation of recent hit movies like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (2023), K-Pop Demon Hunters (2025), and the Spider-Verse film series.
It also nails the atmosphere of its live-action counterpart, not just visually but through that signature Stranger Things ’80s synth and classic songs of that era. Tales From ’85 really does feel like an animated version of the hit Netflix series, save for the omission of cursing and violence (although it’s aware of this and even often pokes fun at it — for instance, we see snow splatter a tree when a teen is dragged off into the wintry woods by an unseen monster).
Then there are the characters. While some don’t sound like their live-action equivalents (Will being the worst culprit), most look just like them (especially Nancy, it’s uncanny). For the most part, switching from seeing (and hearing) the Hawkins gang in live action to animation feels almost seamless. As for the show itself, it’s fun, action-packed, and a lot scarier than you might think for something that’s obviously targeted more towards younger audiences.
Where Does Tales From ’85 Go Wrong?
Tales From ’85 ultimately fails by behaving like a full season of Stranger Things.
Showrunner Eric Robles described the series as a “lost season”, telling Empire in February, “We wanted to go back to Hawkins and feel like a lost season,” adding that it focuses on “when the kids weren’t trying to save the world — they were just trying to save the town.”
But while we always knew this wasn’t going to be an anthology series, the title Tales From ’85 sounds like something better suited to a set of standalone episodes, like The Real Ghostbusters (1986–1991), which Robles has even cited as the creative team’s “north star.”
“It all went back to The Real Ghostbusters,” he told Deadline last year. “It was silly but had a handful of dark, creepy episodes and we just kept talking about that. That became the north star for us.” Unlike Tales From ’85, however, the hit ’80s cartoon was episodic, as it gave viewers a brand-new monster for the Ghostbusters team to deal with in almost each episode.
For the most part, Tales From ’85 also gives us new monsters in each chapter, but that’s only because the main threat is a continuously-evolving entity. In other words, it has its cake and it eats it, and that’s where it falls down. Because it’s a full season, that makes it the new Season 3, which in turn makes Season 3 the new Season 4, and so on. They really should have just called this show something like Stranger Things Season 2.5 or The Lost Adventure.
More Stranger Things Content Is Coming
There’s a lot more to come from the world of Hawkins and the Upside Down.
The Broadway version of the critically acclaimed stage production Stranger Things: The First Shadow has been filmed for a future Netflix release. Meanwhile, a live-action Stranger Things spinoff that will explore the “briefcase rock” introduced during the Season 5 finale is also in development; however, the Duffer brothers confirmed that it won’t have any “common characters” from the flagship series.
Tales From ’85 stars Brooklyn Davey Norstedt as Eleven, Luca Diaz as Mike Wheeler, Braxton Quinney as Dustin Henderson, Jolie Hoang-Rappaport as Max Mayfield, Elisha Williams as Lucas Sinclair, Ben Plessala as Will Byers, Odessa A’zion as Nikki Baxter, Brett Gipson as Jim Hopper, Janeane Garofalo as Anna Baxter, Griffin Burns as Jonathan Byers, Jeremy Jordan as Steve Harrington, Lou Diamond Phillips as Daniel Fischer, Robert Englund as Cosmo, Alysia Reiner as Karen Wheeler, Alessandra Antonelli as Nancy Wheeler, Valeria Rodriguez as Rosario, and Jack Griffo as Jeff.
The series is now streaming in full on Netflix.
Stranger Things seasons 1 — 5 are also available to watch.
Have you watched Tales From ’85 yet? Let us know in the comments below!
