Two months on, and Stranger Things’ final season still feels like a weird lucid dream on Christmas morning, despite all of the widespread finale criticisms still echoing in my head alongside the fandom’s unrealized hopes for a super-secret finale. Anticipation has now set in for the animated spinoff Stranger Things: Tales From ‘85 hitting Netflix's 2026 release lineup, but the latest batch of new details and character posters makes it seem like the creative team is making the one narrative faux pas that I thought this show would 100% avoid.
Given that Stranger Things: Tales From ‘85 won’t be expanding the Hawkins’ teens stories beyond the finale so much as filling in some of the blanks between Seasons 2 and 3, my only real expectation was that the creative team would avoid adding anything new that could potentially create hiccups regarding the final three seasons. Such as — oh, I dunno — bringing in a new character whose presence is so important and vital to the others that it would make zero sense for the live-action series’ characters to never reference them. And yet…
During this particular tale from 1985, Eleven, Mike and the others are just settling back into whatever normal life looks like, when of course a new threat emerges from beneath Hawkins, and it’s the kind that a team of trained adults couldn’t possibly handle. Only RPG-obsessed teens are capable.
Which is where our new character, Nikki Baxter, enters the picture. An exchange student with a punk rock attitude and the haircut to match, Nikki, voiced by Marty Supreme and I Love LA co-star Odessa A’zion, is used to moving from place to face and doesn’t have much experience with building deep friendships. She comes out of her shell once she tags along with our Dungeons & Dragons-loving heroes, though, taking on more of a physically intimidating role within the campaign, as opposed to someone with magical abilities. Here’s how A’zion put it to Tudum:
[She's] the barbarian and the protector [of the crew]. They had everything, and she was the missing puzzle piece. You need a little muscle in that crew. [She] wants to stick up for people who have trouble sticking up for themselves, and I think she’s a badass for that.
I can easily see Dustin putting his foot in his mouth and finding out the hard way just how tough Nikki is, but it sounds like she'll align quite nicely with the others.
Showrunner Eric Robles says he talked with the Duffer brothers at length about making sure that Nikki was right for the tone of the show and the tone of the group itself, and that she would feel like a true extension of the dynamic, and not just tacked on for the sake of it. As he put it:
Nikki is the audience’s eyes. She comes into this world completely new. She’s got her own issues that she’s been dealing with, and it’s these kids who step into her world in a sense. . . . She’s got to figure things out with the kids because there’s no way that she could just walk away [from what she’s seen] and pretend like it never happened.
Check out the full character poster for Nikki below, and then read on to hear why this new character seems so non-intuitive for this show.
Why Nikki's Presence In Stranger Things: Tales From '85 Bugs Me
Namely, if Nikki is so important to Dustin, Mike, Will, Lucas, Eleven and Max that she not only joins their D&D games but ALSO helps them stop a monstrous threat in the town, then it doesn't make any sense for the live-action series to include zero references to her. Even if Nikki's family once again packs up and ships off once the heroism is done, her impact on that period would still live on in the others' heads. And considering all of the flashbacks and memories that were rehashed in Season 5, the lack of Nikki mentions seems suspect at best, and negligent at worst.
Obviously Nikki can't logically get referenced in Stranger Things proper since she wasn't even conceived of during the second or third seasons. So it makes no sense to me why all involved thought that was a vital idea for this spinoff. Sure the TV show constantly added to the ensemble each season, but without the worry about injecting new details into past timelines.
In the scheme of things, it doesn't really matter, but for a show whose creators have always been such sticklers for canon, it boggles the mind to think that Nikki Baxter will forever live only in an animated bubble of reality that never gets discussed at any other point in the characters' lives.
The Duffer brothers have several other projects in the works at Netflix that they served as executive producers for under their overall deal, such as the nutty-looking thriller Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen, as well as another sci-fi-tinged show, The Boroughs, co-starring Bill Pullman, Geena Davis and more. They’ll soon be creating projects solely for Paramount, both features and series, but the Stranger Things universe will continue to live on.
Stranger Things: Tales From ‘85 will bring Team Hawkins out to save the day again, along with their new buddy, with it streams via Netflix subscription on April 23, 2026.
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