STRANGER THINGS: TALES FROM '85 Originally Featured Franchise Adults but They Were Cut Back to Focus on the Kids
It was recently announced that Stranger Things characters Billy Hargrove and Joyce Byers wouldn't be appearing in the upcoming animated Netflix series Stranger Things: Tales From '85.
Luckily, the show will include brief scenes with Steve Harrington and Jim Hopper, but showrunner Eric Robles explained to GamesRadar+ that the flagship show's adult characters were originally going to play a much bigger part in the series, before pivoting:
"In those early stages, we were leaning a little bit heavier; live-action style with bigger stories and some more of the adult characters and what have you. But we felt like once we started focusing too much on the adult story, we lost the youthful innocence of what the journey was supposed to be.
“We kind of reset ourselves, and said, 'You know what? Let's buckle down and figure out what these kids are really kind of figuring out in this mystery.'"
The series is set to bridge the gap between seasons 2 and 3, in the weeks that followed the Snow Ball. Robles teased that this adventure will feature a bunch of "awesome monsters".
"One of the big things we talked about is that these versions of the kids were not worrying about saving the world – once we got to those later seasons, the stakes were pretty high.
“And there's just something really nice about the idea of, like, trying to save their town, trying to save just their friends or community. Things hadn't gotten that dramatic yet. The relationships are still very fresh. You know, Mike hasn't seen El for so, so long. You know, she's been gone, right? And he didn't even know if she was still alive, and he was just hoping that that would be a thing.
“Now these two kind of get to spend more time together now that you know that she's there and she's around. We didn't really get to see that relationship develop between seasons 2 and 3 in the flagship series."
It’s kind of cool to go back and see what happened between in the 7-8 month gap between the second and third seasons. Stranger Things: Tales From '85 is set to premiere on Netflix on April 23rd.
