Netflix's First Trailer for 'Stranger Things: Tales from '85' Teases Brand-New Villains

The release date for Netflix’s animated Stranger Things series has dropped along with a trailer, giving fans their first look at brand-new villains.

Tales from '85 Returns Fan-Favorite Characters in Animated Form

Netflix announced on Monday, Feb. 2, that Stranger Things: Tales from ‘85, the animated spinoff of the Duffer Brothers’ massively successful series, will premiere on April 23. The series will introduce audiences to the animated counterparts of beloved characters Eleven (voiced by Brooklyn Davey Norstedt), Mike (Luca Diaz), Will (Benjamin Plessala), Steve (Jeremy Jordan), Dustin (Braxton Quinney), Lucas (Elisha “EJ” Williams), and Max (Jolie Hoang-Rappaport). Marty Supreme breakout Odessa A’zion, Janeane Garofalo (The Ben Stiller Show), and Lou Diamond Phillips (La Bamba) will appear in as-yet-unspecified roles.

It’s the winter of 1985 (canonically somewhere between seasons two and three of the live-action series), and the kids have returned to their normal suburban lives after successfully closing the gate to the Upside Down. “But beneath the ice, something terrifying has awakened,” according to the official synopsis. “Could it be from the Upside Down? From the depths of Hawkins Lab? Or from somewhere else entirely? Our heroes must race to solve this mystery and save Hawkins in this untold story set in the Stranger Things universe.” Or, as Dustin says in the trailer: “Something from the Upside Down must have survived last year.”

The Trailer Gives a Tempting Glimpse of New Monsters

In addition to giving audiences a sneak peek at the series’ first-ever animated spinoff, the trailer features tantalizing glimpses of brand-new monsters. “It’s like Hawkins Lab science meets Upside Down matter,” showrunner Eric Robles (The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy) told Tudum. “When you put them together, those are the kinds of creatures we have in our world.”

In a video released last year announcing the animated series, Stranger Things co-creator Ross Duffer said that the show had been a long-term goal. "When we started talking about, is there anything else we wanna do with Stranger Things, this was one of our first ideas.” "The idea was to evoke a feeling of an '80s cartoon,” added co-creator Matt Duffer. “With animation, there’s really no limits. Eric and his team can just go wild…and they have.”