What’s next for the Hawkins Investigators Club after defeating the Horde Queen and preventing her from opening a new gate to the Upside Down? A ghostly new terror unlike anything they’ve faced before. 

“We’re the first line of defense against paranormal threats to our town,” Dustin (voiced by Braxton Quinney) says in the trailer for Season 2 of Stranger Things: Tales From ’85, which you can watch above.

The new season, which is now streaming on Netflix, picks up right after the events of the Season 1 finale. The crew — which also includes Eleven (Brooklyn Davey Norstedt), Mike (Luca Diaz), Will (Benjamin Plessala), Lucas (Elisha “EJ” Williams), Max (Jolie Hoang-Rappaport), and Nikki (Odessa A’zion) — resumes its regular activities of arcade gaming and HIC missions, as well as preparing for the upcoming Valentine’s Day festivities. There’s just one problem: A strange new phenomenon is surfacing all over their town of Hawkins, Indiana. 

“We think that the kids are going back to their normal lives, but we start to discover that these flowers are popping up all over Hawkins,” says showrunner Eric Robles. 

They may look beautiful on the outside, but there’s a supernatural secret embedded within those colorful petals. To make matters worse, “Nikki and Max are scheming to sell the flowers all over Hawkins,” Robles adds. “Now [they] are going to be everywhere, which creates a bigger problem.” 

So what exactly are the mysterious iridescent flowers? And who — or what — is behind the other weird occurrences that are happening throughout the town? That’s up to the HIC to figure out. 

Keep scrolling for more intel about Stranger Things: Tales From ’85 Season 2. 

What is Stranger Things: Tales From ’85 Season 2 about?

The gang is back at it, and so are the strange creatures lurking about their seemingly quaint town. With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, mysterious “ghostly” apparitions and a swarm of hate sprites are wreaking havoc around Hawkins. The HIC must uncover the truth behind these paranormal events before a new gate to the Upside Down is ripped open. 

New episodes find the gang returning to familiar places, like Hawkins Middle School and the Palace Arcade. But they’ll also step into fresh territory.

 “What's really exciting is we're going to go places that we haven't been to before,” Robles teases. “There's a mine in Hawkins that we haven't explored yet.”

Who’s in the Season 2 cast?

The whole Hawkins crew is back for new episodes, including: 

• Brooklyn Davey Norstedt as Eleven
• Luca Diaz as Mike
• Jolie Hoang-Rappaport as Max
• Elisha “EJ” Williams as Lucas
• Braxton Quinney as Dustin
• Benjamin Plessala as Will
• Odessa A’zion as Nikki Baxter

Additional cast also returning for Season 2 include:

• Brett Gipson as Hopper
• Janeane Garofalo as Anna Baxter
• Jeremy Jordan as Steve Harrington
• Alessandra Antonelli as Nancy Wheeler
• Valeria Rodriguez as Rosario
• Jack Griffo as Jeff

Where can I see a recap of Season 1?

Ahead of new episodes, get a refresher on Season 1 with the video above.

What is the release date for Stranger Things: Tales From ’85 Season 2?

New episodes premiered on Sept. 17. 

How does Stranger Things: Tales From ’85 Season 2 end?

With Daniel Fischer (Lou Diamond Phillips) so close to freeing himself from the Upside Down, the gang split into teams to stop him and the horde of plants he’d been mentally controlling in Hawkins. 

While Eleven and Mike took on Wood Monster Daniel — the giant walking tree shrouded in those iridescent murder flowers — Dustin, Nikki, Will, and Charlie faced a swarm of hate sprites in the old Hawkins mines. Elsewhere, Lucas and Max were preoccupied with evading the furious Jeff and his friends while simultaneously trying to burn the murder flowers that covered the bridge.

It took teamwork and a few well-timed explosions, but the gang saved the town in the end. Lucas and Max escaped a motorbike explosion that scared off Jeff’s friends, engulfed the bridge in flames, and burned the iridescent flowers to a crisp. Meanwhile, Charlie set off a massive eruption that allowed him and the others to narrowly escape while the hate sprites that were tailing them perished in the blast.

Over in the woods, Mike and Eleven worked together to defeat Wood Monster Daniel, who was weakened by the loss of the murder flowers at the bridge. Left without a power source, the gate shut on its own, Wood Monster Daniel returned to tree form, and Daniel’s body withered away in the Upside Down.

What happened in the aftermath?

We learned that Nikki will stick around Hawkins for a while longer. Her mom, Anna Baxter (Garofalo), landed a job as a biology teacher at Hawkins High School.

At the Palace Arcade, Mike worked up the courage to ask Eleven to be his girlfriend, and she gladly accepted.

Plus, the gang’s video report uncovering the truth about Samuel Hawkins, and exonerating Charlie’s ancestor Bill “Blood Axe” Dandridge, made the local news.

Dive into the next adventure: Season 2 of Stranger Things: Tales From ’85 is streaming now on Netflix.