This article contains spoilers for Stranger Things: Tales From ’85.
How do you keep Stranger Things going four months after the show ended? Netflix’s answer, it seems, is to step back in time to the gap between seasons 2 and 3, launching an animated spinoff Stranger Things: Tales From ’85. The catch, of course, is that any spinoff can’t feel like part of the main story. Smartly, Tales From ’85 is set during a time when the Hawkins gate(s) were closed, meaning any new monsters have to initially emerge from the rightside up.
Stranger Things: Tales From ’85 handles this pretty well. It introduces a whole new monster that riffs on classic Upside Down tropes, named the “Queen” (because of beehives) or “Horde Prime” (because Dustin likes She-Ra). Surprisingly, the Queen serves as a nice parallel for the Mind Flayer itself, perhaps indicating how the original monster evolved in Season 5’s Dimension Z. But how does the Queen operate, and will it return should Tales From ’85 get a sequel?
The Queen exists because of research by Anna Baxter, a scientist who’s fascinated by the idea of accelerated evolution. “Evolution is the process by which an organism adapts into an enhanced version of itself,” she explains in one of Stranger Things‘ typical “teachable moments” that serves as obvious foreshadowing. This typically “occurs over a vast stretch of time, but sometimes it leaps forward,” especially when triggered by potential extinction. That information prompts the Hawkins kids to deduce something survived when Eleven closed the gate at the end of Season 2.
They’re partly right. Anna Baxter’s research has been co-opted by Daniel Fischer, a former Hawkins Lab scientist who kept vine samples and believes her serums can be used to resurrect them. His experiments are successful, and he believes the resurrected creature is contained in his lab. In reality, it’s playing him for a fool, extending into the caverns underneath Hawkins. A brief lab accident led to spores from this creature getting out into the atmosphere, and it’s used them to create foot-soldiers.
Appropriately enough for Stranger Things, the Queen initially parallels the Bodytaker Plant from Dungeons & Dragons. This is an invasive species that takes root in a forest environment, dominating the nearby ecosystem by replacing life with its own podlings. Bodytaker Plants spread their vines through vast areas, and they can regenerate from just a single strand. They use native animals and plantlife as hosts by depositing them in their central maws, where acids digest them and create new versions incorporated into the hive mind. Tales From ’85 initially plays this idea pretty straight, with an entire pumpkin patch corrupted.
Unlike the main show, Stranger Things: Tales From ’85 doesn’t spend too much time focusing on its Dungeons & Dragons roots. This is because the story is about accelerated evolution, and it doesn’t take the Queen long to evolve beyond this initial phase. First podlings require hosts, but later ones are riffs on the Demodogs, named “Vine Dogs” in the Tales From ’85 toyline. They’re created by the Queen itself, and they don’t require a host, meaning disappearances in Hawkins – this time unnoticed by Hopper – come to an end.
The Queen has a simple goal: It wants to get back to the Upside Down (and, presumably, to Dimension Z). Anna Baxter explains that many organisms try to return to their original environments, believing they will flourish there. Driven by this imperative, the Queen evolves to a state where it can actually open a gate to the Upside Down. This ability makes the Queen far more dangerous than the Mind Flayer, and it’s a terrifying addition to the show’s lore; if the Queen joined the Mind Flayer’s hive mind, the Upside Down could invade in force. Fortunately, Eleven apparently kills the Queen, closing the gate while its body is partway through.
But Stranger Things: Tales From ’85 ends with clear setup for Season 2. Mysterious blue flowers are shown rapidly growing out of the Queen’s corpse in the Upside Down, accompanied by the familiar song “We’ll Meet Again.” It’s clear the monster is continuing to evolve even now, and that it will indeed return. After all, the Queen is an artificial creature, not truly native to any environment. It would make sense for it to come back, albeit in a different form as this accelerated evolution continues. Whatever happens, though, it must never be absorbed into the Mind Flayer’s hive mind – because the Mind Flayer would then be able to open gates itself.
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