Common Sense Media Review
By Joyce Slaton
,
based on child development research. How do we rate?
Violence, smoking, sweet romance in sci-fi horror sequel.
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Stranger Things: Season 2
What's the Story?
STRANGER THINGS: SEASON 2 picks up in Hawkins, Indiana, where best friend quad Mike (Finn Wolfhard), Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo), Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin), and the newly returned Will (Noah Schnapp) are still recovering from the events of the first season, and mourning the disappearance of Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown). But Hawkins' troubles are not over yet: Will suffers strange spells in which he flips to the Upside Down world and is menaced by a huge monster, and new wrinkles emerge in the conspiracy involving Hawkins Laboratory. It's best friends to the rescue again, with the help of police chief Jim Hopper (David Harbour) and Will and Jonathan's mom, Joyce (Winona Ryder), though she's distracted by her new romance with Bob (Sean Astin). Meanwhile, characters deal with romantic complications; Lucas and Dustin both have crushes on new girl Max (Sadie Sink), and Nancy (Natalia Dyer) forms the point of a romantic triangle with Steve (Joe Keery) and Jonathan (Charlie Heaton).
Is It Any Good?
The second season of Netflix's nostalgic sci-fi/horror series makes up for its lack of novelty by deepening its characters and making them, not the monster mayhem, the star of the season. Most Stranger Things: Season 2 viewers will already be intimately acquainted with 1980s Hawkins, Indiana, the ominous Hawkins Lab, and the Upside Down world and its monster. Though Season 2 does traffic in some sequel tropes (more monsters, more conspirators, this-thing-goes-all-the-way-to-the-top!), to the show's credit, it also does a deeper dive on the characters we've already grown to know. Lucas, in particular, claims more of the storylines, emerging from his status as a mostly silent sidekick. The show cleverly lampoons his new prominence with an early gag in which both Mike and Lucas want to be the Bill Murray character from Ghostbusters for Halloween instead of Ernie Hudson's famously marginalized role. "He joined the team late, he's not funny, and he's not even a scientist," complains Lucas. Indeed.
This season, we meet Lucas' family, notably his smart-aleck sister, Erica (Priah Ferguson); we also meet Max and her scary older stepbrother, Billy (Dacre Montgomery), who are new in town. Max seems engineered to be the kind of cool-girl character no 1980s nerdy tween boy could resist. But Billy, with his angelically pretty face and volatile temperament, is something else again, a genuinely menacing character who berates and threatens Max in scenes that are stomach-churning. Billy is scarier than Season 1's Demogorgon, and the storylines in which Will and Nancy reckon with their Season 1 trauma and Eleven learns more about her past are more emotionally resonant than any of the monster stuff. It starts to feel as if Stranger Things' real draw is in the interplay between its characters, not the sci-fi conspiracy, a feeling capped off by a John Hughes-ish finale where everyone kisses their true love at the big dance. In short, Stranger Things: Season 2 is a new kind of thrill: a romcom existing in a science fiction horror world, with a season conclusion that feels fully earned.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about how in Stranger Things' first season, Lucas was the only Black character. When a character from an underrepresented group doesn't get much focus, especially if that character is the only one of that group, this is sometimes called a "token" character. Is Lucas a token character in the first season? What about in the second season?
Sequels to movies and second seasons of TV shows must wrestle with a story problem: Viewers are already familiar with its setup. Producers usually try to solve this problem by widening the story's focus and introducing new characters. Does Stranger Things: Season 2 do this? How?
In science fiction parlance, a "redshirt" is a character who is introduced only to be killed by a monster or other force. They usually don't get a lot of screen time, and on the 1960s sci-fi series Star Trek, they usually wore a red shirt in contrast to the orange or blue shirts worn by major characters. Is Bob a redshirt in Stranger Things: Season 2? Why, or why not?
TV Details
- Premiere date : October 27, 2017
- Cast : Winona Ryder , Finn Wolfhard , Joe Keery , Millie Bobby Brown
- Network : Netflix
- Genre : Drama
- Topics : Adventures , Fantasy , Friendship , School
- TV rating :
- Awards : BAFTA - BAFTA Nominee , Emmy - Emmy Award Winner , Golden Globe - Golden Globe Award Nominee
- Last updated : April 7, 2026
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