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Credit: NetflixSince debuting in 2016, Stranger Things has grown from a nostalgic, small-town sci-fi mystery into one of Netflix’s biggest franchises.
Created by Matt Duffer and Ross Duffer, the series quickly became a cultural phenomenon, spawning novels, comics, video games, and even the West End stage play The First Shadow.
But after nearly a decade, the story finally reached its conclusion with the show’s fifth and final season.
Stranger Things Season 5 Backlash
Season 5 premiered in late 2025 and wrapped up with its finale on December 31. While the ending delivered spectacle on a massive scale, fan reactions were mixed.
Online debates ranged from the viral “Conformity Gate” theory to petitions demanding alternate endings, with many viewers arguing that the show had drifted too far from its small-town horror roots.
For some fans, the problem wasn’t the ambition — it was the scale. The final season leaned heavily into epic fantasy territory as Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) and the rest of the gang tried to save the entire world from Vecna/Henry Creel (Jamie Campbell Bower).
In a series that originally thrived on kids riding bikes through a quiet Indiana town while investigating strange happenings, the world-ending stakes felt, to some, a little too big.
Related: ‘Stranger Things’ Confirms That Major Character Survived Season 5 Finale — Here’s How
A New Series Could Fix Season 5
That’s exactly where the new animated spinoff, Stranger Things: Tales From ’85, may change things. Set between seasons 2 and 3 during the winter of 1985, the 3D animated series takes the story back to Hawkins — and to the smaller-scale mystery that defined the early days of the franchise.
As showrunner Eric Robles explained to Empire in February: “You could easily take this and make it the live-action version. We wanted to go back to Hawkins and feel like a lost season.” He added that it goes back to “when the kids weren’t trying to save the world — they were just trying to save the town.”
But that doesn’t mean the show will be tame. The 3D animated series introduces terrifying new creatures while allowing the story to focus once again on the core group (Eleven, Will, Mike, Dustin, Lucas, and Max) trying to solve a supernatural mystery in their hometown.
The Stranger Things Cast Has Been Replaced
The cast includes Brooklyn Davey Norstedt as Eleven, Luca Diaz as Mike, Braxton Quinney as Dustin, Elisha “EJ” Williams as Lucas, Benjamin Plessala as Will, and Jolie Hoang-Rappaport as Max. Brett Gipson voices Hopper, while Jeremy Jordan plays Steve Harrington.
Odessa A’zion appears as newcomer Nikki Baxter, with Janeane Garofalo and Lou Diamond Phillips also joining the cast.
Produced by Flying Bark Productions alongside Netflix and the Duffers’ Upside Down Pictures banner, the animated adventure already has an official trailer teasing strange new monsters lurking beneath Hawkins’ winter snow. Watch it below:
Stranger Things: Tales From ’85 premieres on April 23 exclusively on Netflix.
A live-action spinoff is also reportedly in development, set to explore the mysterious briefcase rock introduced during the Season 5 finale. Meanwhile, the stage play The First Shadow has already been filmed for a future Netflix release.
There are no release dates for either project.
Stranger Things seasons 1 — 5 are now streaming on Netflix.
Are you excited to return to Hawkins — and do you think smaller stakes are exactly what the franchise needs? Let us know in the comments!