Stranger Things began as a sci-fi adventure the whole family could watch. But after five seasons and 10 years, it morphed into an small-screen epic about metaphysics, secret military operations, and dubiously canonical endings. It was a great show, but a different show than the one that started it all. The live-action series may be over, but the franchise hasn’t stopped, and while there’s a pro-shot of the Broadway play Stranger Things: The First Shadow on the way, we’ve already seen the next evolution of the story: Stranger Things: Tales From ‘85, an animated “midquel” that captured the Saturday morning cartoon energy of the early seasons.
Now, less than six months later, the series is back with Season 2, which manages to find a happy medium between the episodic cartoon vibe and the serialized live-action saga.
