Evening Standard

Even Stranger Things

Clear your weekend — Will Byers and his bicycling gang are back. As the entire second series of the

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IT’S almost Halloween in Hawkins, Indiana. Nearly a year has passed since Will Byers was abducted and since shaven-headed, super-powered badass Eleven escaped the sinister Hawkins Laboratory. Byers — last seen coughing up a slug in a sink — appears to be recovering, but Eleven has disappeare­d.

Welcome to the

start of Stranger Things season two. Season one — with its sci-fi and Eighties pop culture combo —was a huge hit for Netflix. If any of your colleagues don’t turn up to work tomorrow, feigning a mystery illness, they’re probably binge-watching because the whole second series drops then.

Our second visit to Hawkins gives its residents even more grounds to leave. There are now poisoned pumpkins, a doctor confirming the rule that you should never trust anyone who says “trust me” and put-upon Will being stuck in limbo between this world and the Upside Down. Everyone — even grizzled police chief Sheriff Hopper — seems scarred and more easily spooked.

So here’s what you need to know and what everyone’s asking as the world turns upside down again.

Little horror show

According to Finn Wolfhard, who plays Mike Wheeler, the terror-ometer will be turned up this season — and not just in the form of dire Eighties hair. In one of the opening scenes, the boyish quartet — Mike, Will, Lucas and Dustin — are in an arcade playing Dragon’s Lair. Will, the stolen boy of series one, then hears a voice. His friends seem to disappear, then the arcade transforms into the Upside Down, the bright lights becoming a dystopian landscape with fluorescen­t lightning. Will is understand­ably traumatise­d by the events a year earlier, while his mother Joyce, played by Winona Ryder, has gone into full protective parent mode. The Upside Down now seems part of Will.

There are a lot of questions viewers want answered. At the close of season one, Hopper seemed to have formed an alliance with the ethically bankrupt Hawkins organisati­on, yet he was also smuggling Eleven snacks — so is he on the side of good or now compromise­d? And has Eleven been — as the trailer implies — stuck in the Upside Down for all this time?

Where’s Barb?

The unlikelies­t event of 2016 — a year when a cantaloupe combover became US President — was “Barbmania”. Barb(ara Holland), played by Shannon Purser, was the geeky, bespectacl­ed everynerd who treacherou­s friend Nancy dropped like a plutonium potato when a not-even-that-hot boy looked her way, only for Barb to get snatched by the tulip-headed Demogorgon. No one in the series seemed to care that Barb was gone, but boy did viewers.

A “jesuisbarb” moment broke out. In a sense we were all Barb. If by “we” you mean those of us who had to wear NHS glasses as teenagers and had puddingbow­l haircuts imposed on us by our parents. Despite having only had about 10 minutes of screentime, Barb was so loved she had her own song, RIP Barb, (lyrics: “RIP Barb/ I’m sorry that monster rolled up on you so hard”) and she featured in the opening theme to the Golden Globes, rising out of the swimming pool she disappeare­d beside.

Now the Barbettes want to know what has happened to her. In the opening episode a journalist speculates that Barb may have been kidnapped by Russian spies ahead of an invasion. Alas, the executive producers have confirmed that Barb definitely died in the Upside Down. She will, however, shape Nancy’s storyline in season two. Natalia Dyer, who plays Nancy, has said: “I would imagine that the fan response from season one maybe put an impetus on that storyline and maybe made [creators the Duffer brothers] feel like they needed to address it more.

What will they borrow from next?

The first season was a homage to Stephen King. There were a lot of i n - j o ke s for King fans: Joyce asks Will in the first episode whether he is still scared of clowns, and then the group of four geeky boys fight the bullies. Eleven’s aunt even tells Joyce that Eleven was born with “abilities”, and when asked to explain what that means, she says: “Read any Stephen King?” The title even appears in a simple font to that of King’s book jackets.

But Stranger Things was liberal in where it borrowed from. The boys riding on their BMX bikes made people reminisce about The Goonies, while dressing Eleven up in a wig and taking her to school was a riff on the film ET. There were heavy Alien influences too. Will was found in the Upside Down attached to a wall with skulls in it, an idea reminiscen­t of Alien where the xenomorph has a nest of people. In Alien, the purpose of it is to grow eggs to create more monsters. In season two, one of the key questions is whether Will could be — as in Alien — turning into a monster.

The second season starts in 1984 and continues to be laden with Eighties pop culture references. When we first see Joyce she is sewing a Ghostbuste­rs logo onto a top, and the boys all get kitted out in full, highqualit y costumes later. There’s also a political dimension to this: we discover (of course) that Mike and Nancy’s parents are such keen Reagan/ Bush supporters that they have a sign on their lawn.

Who will Nancy pick?

In the grand scheme of things — demogorgon­s, black slugs, Matthew Modine’s godawful villain wig —whether Nancy will choose kind-if-shifty-eyed Jonathan or awful Steve may

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