We were stoked to see the trailer for Stranger Things' second season during the Super Bowl. It gave us the season's release date — Halloween! — and promised that Hawkins would be just as strange, and Eggo-filled, as ever. But the teaser didn't actually give us much information about the Netflix series' Season 2 plot.
Luckily, Entertainment Weekly has the scoop on what to expect from our favorite '80s-inspired drama in October. Co-creator Matt Duffer told EW that the second season will happen almost a year after the first one, and it will start with Halloween. (Cue the Ghostbusters costumes.) And the Demogorgon, of course, is long gone.
But Will (Noah Schnapp) is "having some sort of post-traumatic stress disorder," according to Duffer. "He seems to be seeing images from the Upside Down — the question is whether they're real or not," Duffer told EW. The magazine noted that Hawkins National Laboratory is still in business, and there's still an opening between the regular world and the Upside Down. Duffer told EW that Hopper (David Harbour) will be "having to lie and cover things up" this season, which we assume relates to the lab and his likely two-timing of the bad guys, as the first season finale hinted.
Meanwhile, Will's mom, Joyce (Winona Ryder) is dating someone new. Duffer explains that Joyce "wants a good father figure in her sons' lives." And as we know from Jonathan's (Charlie Heaton) interactions with his father last season, his biological dad is definitely not a "good father figure."
Aside from Will's post-Upside Down issues, the boys' friend group will also be tested by a new set of siblings in Hawkins: Billy and Max. Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin) and Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo) find themselves attracted to Max, but the boys don't want to be friends with her brother. "Stephen King always has really great human villains. The evil in the real world is often as bad or worse than the supernatural evil, so we wanted to introduce a character like that," Duffer told EW of the duo.
What Duffer didn't mention, though, is how Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) will fit into the season. We know she's back, and sporting a perm, from the EW cover. Is she still stuck in the Upside Down? Will she and Max form their own friend group and leave the boys behind? Duffer noted that Nancy (Natalia Dyer) and Mike (Finn Wolfhard) will bond over the losses of Barb (Shannon Purser) and Eleven. Hopefully, Eleven will reunite with the gang sooner rather than later. After everything they've been through, imagining Mike mourning her death is just too sad.
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