Stranger Things: Tales from '85

Ink, Neon, and the Shadows of Hawkins

I was skeptical when I heard the news. We’ve spent nearly a decade in the amber glow of the Duffer Brothers’ live-action Hawkins, getting used to the specific texture of shag carpets, Eggo waffles, and the sweaty, frantic reality of teenage angst. Bringing that world into the realm of animation felt like an unnecessary pivot—another way to squeeze juice from a fruit that had already been harvested for every possible drop of nostalgia. And yet, *Stranger Things: Tales from '85*, directed by Eric Robles, manages something unexpected. It doesn't just replicate the live-action aesthetic; it uses the fluidity of animation to explore the psychic debris of the Upside Down in a way a camera never could.



There’s a freedom here that live-action constraints simply prohibit. Robles, known largely for more frantic, kinetic animation styles in his past work, dials back the hyper-caffeinated movement. Instead, he leans into a muted, almost oppressive color palette. When the characters venture into that parallel dimension, the lines don’t stay still. The environment breathes. It’s no longer just a set dressed with plastic vines; it’s a living, shifting nightmare that reacts to the characters' proximity. As *Variety’s* recent retrospective on animated spin-offs noted, there is a "rare, deliberate patience" in how these episodes unfold, favoring atmosphere over the usual jump-scare pacing that dominated the original series' later seasons.

It’s in the quiet moments that the format justifies itself. Take the scene in the second episode where the group is huddled in the school basement. In live-action, this would be a dialogue-heavy slog, cluttered with teen drama and whispered exposition. Here, the camera—if you can call it that—floats in the negative space between them. You see the way their shoulders slump, the specific, jagged tension in the way they grip their flashlights. Animation allows Robles to exaggerate the isolation. When one character turns away from the group, the background seems to physically recede, stretching the distance between them until it feels vast, lonely, and terrifyingly cold.



The voice acting brings a different, perhaps more intimate weight to the proceedings. Elisha Williams, tasked with anchoring much of the emotional heavy lifting, does something fascinating with his cadence. He doesn’t "act" in the traditional sense; he adopts a weary, clipped tone that suggests a kid who has seen too much and is, quite frankly, over it. It’s a performance that bleeds into the character’s posture—or at least, the way the animators have drawn his posture. You can hear the exhaustion in his vowels. It’s a grounded choice in a medium that often leans toward the exaggerated and the theatrical.

Whether this succeeds as a broader experiment depends on how much you miss the original, I suppose. There’s a risk of feeling like you’re watching a peripheral fan-fiction—a footnote to a much larger book. The two-episode structure is a tease, leaving us with questions about the "why" of it all. Is this just a test of the medium? A way to keep the Hawkins brand ticking while the actors age out of their roles? Probably. But there is a distinct, melancholic beauty here that surprised me.



I’m not entirely sure we needed more from this universe. But having seen this, I’m glad it exists. It’s a reminder that sometimes, taking a world that has been meticulously mapped out in flesh and blood and rendering it in ink and light can strip away the baggage of familiarity, allowing us to see the ghosts in the machine a little more clearly. It’s a modest, chilly, and surprisingly effective little experiment. Sometimes, less really is more—even when you’re building a monster.