“Stranger Things,” the TV series that captured the world’s hearts for a decade with its 80s nostalgia, eerie feel and jarring plot twists that kept audiences captivated until its end in Dec. 2025. However, in the recent release of “Stranger Things: Tales from ‘85,” none of the original charm and nostalgia carried over. The characters may look the same, but their personalities and decisions within the series are completely different from the original. It’s clear that the audience is disappointed in the new show, with “Stranger Things” grossing around 1.2 billion views across all the seasons, while the new animated series has only 2.8 million views.
The new series is animated and has a modern 3D CGI animation style, which is a technique that is used to make animated characters more realistic in the digital world. The animation captures the original character’s essence and youth. However, it seems to be a copycat of the “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” and “Arcane” animation, with no unique, groundbreaking. It does a good job at staying true to the live actors’ features and looks while adding its own flair.
“Stranger Things: Tales from ‘85” is only rated 61% by tomatoers and 53% by average viewers. Many fans of “Stranger Things” don’t even want to watch the series.
Maddyn Wolf, a Huntington Beach High School (HBHS) sophomore, stated, “I just didn’t feel the need to (watch the series). I wanted to leave the story as the original series ended.”
The series is being overhyped by the “Stranger Things” marketing team and is being advertised to people as a brand-new adventure for the same characters. When, actually, the characters from the animated series have huge differences from the live-action ones. The characters appear childish and the new series does not cater to the older and mature audience that the previous series had.
The animated characters make jokes and remarks that are very out of character, with Dustin Henderson being the main victim of them. In the original series, Henderson serves as the comedic relief character who is a genius, but in the animated series, he’s always the butt of the joke. Shade is constantly being thrown at him for his incompetence and love of snacks. Nancy Wheeler is another victim. Wheeler makes a rather small cameo in the show, but she isn’t like herself. Instead of hating and ignoring her annoying little brother as she did in seasons two and three of “Stranger Things,” she agrees to dress up and act crazy for their heist, to get back the polaroid of the monster, with no given reason or incentive. This act is so out of character and does not line up with her previous attitude or the attitude she has in later seasons. These out-of-character moments are littered throughout the series and make fans question the integrity of the new series.
Riley Moser, a HBHS sophomore and fan of the original show, said she hasn’t watched it and doesn’t plan on doing so.
“Stranger Things” fans have been searching for answers about the decline of the TV series from the end of season five to now, “Stranger Things: Tales from ‘85,” and what the majority comes up with is a little theory called “Divorce Gate.” The Divorce Gate theory is a fan theory that blames the decline of the show on Ross Duffer’s divorce from Leigh Janiak. Janiak was said to have helped write season one through the beginning of season five, which was amazing work and very successful. During the making of season five, Ross Duffer and Leigh Janiak divorced, and the storyline has only gone downhill since.
“Stranger Things: Tales from 85” is a copycat storyline of all the previous seasons. The jump scares are very similar to the ones in season five, with the monster being right around the corner and all the characters hiding from it. This technique was cool and innovative for the live-action series, but in the animated one, it feels overdone and cliché. The storyline is just all five seasons combined, and it doesn’t make for an interesting watch, especially for the young adult and adult audiences that the original TV show catered towards. The new monsters that replaced Vecna and the demogorgons don’t even make sense. The plant monsters in the animated series are exactly the same as the vines from season two of the live action, while also combining them with the plot of seasons one and four with how they’re chemically engineered.
The original “Stranger Things” series on Netflix is rated TV-14, which is reasonable for the content within the show, but the new animated “Stranger Things: Tales from ‘85” is rated TV-PG, meaning the series appears on Netflix kid accounts. The infantalization of the “Stranger Things” universe makes sense as the series was made for younger audiences—but why? The original series was made for teen and adult audiences, but the Duffers have changed their target audience. The Duffer brothers have not publicly stated why the rating has changed, but IMDb released a parents’ guide for the animated series. Many fans are upset about the show being so different from the original.
Some fans, like Ireland Wilkins who’s a junior at HBHS, enjoyed the new creative choices, like the cute animation and the portrayal of Nancy. But even hardcore fans have boundaries.
When asked about the new monsters, Wilkins said, “To be honest, I’m not a huge fan of it. I kinda wish they just kept it how it was in the original.”
Although the series is generally disliked, there are some redeeming qualities, such as the new voice actors. The new kids taking on such profound roles have a large responsibility, and they sound amazing. They don’t personally make the scripts, so the characters’ choices are out of their control, but their voices sound great. Their voices are so close to the original and add a familiar comfort to the new environment that the show creates.
The show does not carry the legacy of “Stranger Things” seasons one through four, but instead carries the sloppiness and lack of research that season five presented to audiences. The copycat storyline leads old fans down the endless rabbit hole of repetition, and the character changes don’t help with the unfamiliar terrain. Let’s hope that when the Duffers keep this never-ending story going, they don’t mess it up next time.
