The Upside Down is open for business again. “Stranger Things: Tales From ’85” returns to Netflix tomorrow, Thursday, September 17, with the full eight-episode second season streaming at once, and Brooklyn Davey Norstedt is back in the booth as Eleven.
When the animated spinoff launched back in April, Norstedt was the story. A declared superfan of the series since she was eleven, she went from celebrating her twelfth birthday with a waffle bar and a wall of Christmas lights styled after Joyce Byers’ living room to actually voicing the character she had dressed as for years. (I wrote about that journey when season one launched.)
Showrunner Eric Robles gave her the simplest direction imaginable in the booth: “Be Eleven.” Norstedt has said she leaned into Eleven’s softness and vulnerability, and that she wanted to honor Millie Bobby Brown’s performance while bringing the character to life herself. That balance clearly worked, because season two puts her front and center again.
Norstedt is clearly counting down the hours herself. The other day she posted a fun TikTok posing next to an Eleven stand-up, set to an instrumental take on Madonna’s Material Girl, with the caption: “Practically only ONE day away… HOW IS IT HERE ALREADY?”
This time around, the party is trading snow for heart-shaped cards. With Valentine’s Day on the way, the gang has to uncover the truth behind ghostly apparitions and a swarm of strange creatures causing chaos around Hawkins. It is a fresh mystery, but the winter of 1985 setting keeps everything rooted in the world fans know.
The returning voice cast includes Luca Diaz as Mike, Elisha “EJ” Williams as Lucas, Braxton Quinney as Dustin, Ben Plessala as Will, Jolie Hoang-Rappaport as Max, Brett Gipson as Hopper, Odessa A’zion as Nikki Baxter, Janeane Garofalo as Anna Baxter, and Lou Diamond Phillips as Daniel Fischer, with Alessandra Antonelli as Nancy, Valeria Rodriguez as Rosario, and Jack Griffo as Jeff.
Collider is already framing the new season around Eleven’s return, which tells you everything about who the heart of this series is. Season one proved the animated format could keep the Stranger Things spirit alive after the live-action series wrapped, and tomorrow’s premiere gives fans another reason to spend the weekend in Hawkins.