Critic Reviews

By the end of the series, you’ll find your heart warmed by the returning characters and comforting world, even if nothing much really changes.

Tales From ‘85 does the one thing we all want but can’t have: it successfully captures the strengths of childhood friendships, before the pressures of growing up set in.

Mounted by showrunner Eric Robles, it’s a streamlined, supercharged telling, stripped of the soap operatics that occupied more of the original series than you might remember. It’s a classic kids-versus-monster adventure from which adults are largely absent, which in its own way makes this a superior “Stranger Things.”

Stranger Things: Tales From ’85 is good enough that franchise completists aren’t going to cringe while watching it, and it may be a good way to introduce younger kids to the franchise. But we just wish it was a little scarier, and the character animation a little less weird.

"Stranger Things: Tales From '85" is a fun watch, whether for fans of the franchise or not, but is ultimately inessential.

It’s not helpful that the scripts are, predictably but not inevitably, not as funny as the parent show, so there’s nothing to offset the feeling of going round in circles. But eventually, the peril intensifies, the intrigue goes deeper.

Stranger Things: Tales From ’85 is a colorful but underbaked addition to the Stranger Things universe.

While this animated spin-off makes little sense as part of the established Stranger Things canon, as a stand-alone story with twists aplenty, it’s a witty, vibrant hoot.

While Tales from '85 may struggle to justify its own existence, it will be interesting to see if another chapter of the animated show will come into fruition since the finale doesn't completely close out the story.

“Tales from ’85” illustrates a good idea that’s still hamstrung by a devotion to the show’s preexisting lore.