Stranger Things: Tales from ’85 exists in “frozen time”, continuity-wise, so it’s no wonder that the ending sets up a second season. As we’ve already discussed, the potential for continuing adventures in this little pocket dimension is virtually endless, just so long as things end up how we found them at the beginning of Season 3 of the main show. If we can link some of the events to the plot of Stranger Things itself, all the better. And with its final stinger, that’s kind of what Episode 10, “Chapter Ten: Countdown”, is doing.
The familiar-feeling narrative that the show unfurls across Season 1 seems to come to a definitive end in the finale, notwithstanding a new character continuing to linger, but that little suggestion of more means another run is virtually guaranteed. Welcome to the streaming landscape in 2026, I suppose. But given that the first season is pretty enjoyable on its own terms, would another be all that bad?
Who Created the Plant Queen?
Despite a late red herring that Anna Baxter, Nikki’s mother, might have been responsible for the creation of the plant queen that has caused the monster outbreak in this season, it ultimately turns out that her partner, Daniel Fischer, is the real culprit. Daniel runs the mart where Dustin is always playing Space Invaders and underpaying for goods, but he used to work at the Hawkins Lab, albeit without enough security clearance to understand what was really going on there.
What he did manage to do, though, was steal a dead vine from the Upside Down. Using his underappreciated expertise, he was able to bring the plant back to life as a personal project, but he didn’t realise that the Queen’s roots were growing deep underground, constantly evolving, becoming more powerful, and producing increasingly dangerous offspring.
Dan isn’t a bad guy, necessarily. Part of the fun of Tales from ’85 is the decidedly local-feeling stakes of the plot, so it stands to reason that the culprit is just a talented guy who never quite felt satisfied after being overlooked during his career. However, that doesn’t make his mistake any less calamitous, especially when the fully-grown Queen attempts to open a gate to the Upside Down.
Weed Killer
The kids, with help from Anna and her expertise in evolutionary plant biology, take the fight to the Queen. She’s eventually “killed” – or so it seems – by Eleven, who traps her in the gate she’s trying to escape through.
However, the final scene of the season sees a small blue flower sprouting from the corpse of the Queen, its little mouth looking suspiciously like a Demogorgon. Vera Lynn’s “We’ll Meet Again” scores the scene, so the implications are pretty clear. It could be that the spin-off’s ultimate intentions are explicitly connecting this plant-based plot with the internal food chain of the Upside Down, especially given the overt Demogorgon connection.
Of course, we never saw any of these creatures or their often-themed manifestations in the main show, so it’s safe to say already that the kids are victorious in the long term. But maybe the connections that the showrunners come up with will be illuminating. You never know.
Nikki is the Biggest Clue That Season 2 Is Coming
One of the mandates of Stranger Things: Tales from ’85 is that everything ends up exactly how we found it in Stranger Things Season 3 to honour the existing canon. That means the fact that Nikki is still around in the ending means that Season 2 is virtually guaranteed, since the show still needs to contrive a reason to get her out of the way.
Nikki and Anna were intending to leave Hawkins but decided to stick around. This is a nice payoff for Anna, who has historically moved on – and taken Nikki with her, much to the detriment of her social life – whenever her interest settles on something new. It also means that Nikki can become a part of the group’s Dungeons & Dragons campaign, as well as a fully-fledged member of the Hawkins Investigation Club, the ad hoc group that the kids establish in this season to investigate the monster sightings.
Given that neither Nikki nor Anna is present – or even mentioned – in later seasons of Stranger Things, Season 2 will need to contrive a reason to get them both out of the picture. Hopefully, it’s fun and not too traumatic finding out what eventually happens to them, which I’m sure we will.
