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was everything viewers could want in an ’80s-inspired PG-rated Spielberg-ian creepshow. Season 2, creators the Duffer Brothers say, will return to the Indiana town of Hawkins to continue the tale of Chief Hopper, El, the kids and the world of the Upside Down. But never before has a serialized show seemed perhaps better suited to doing exactly

Hear us out. Season 1 told a perfectly self contained and wholly satisfying tale, an eight-hour edition of one of the classic sci-fi films its creators so clearly adore. There were just two scenes near the end of the finale that felt, if anything, tacked on mainly set up another year – the somewhat disappointing reversal on El’s sacrifice that hinted she’s still alive and the suggestion that poor Will is not out of the woods yet (so to speak). Are there other questions beyond that? Sure. We barely know anything about the monster or the Upside Down world, for instance. But those are mysteries that felt like they

to show, not detracted. As an audience, we don’t need to know everything, and season 1 answered just enough.

as an entirely different sci-fi period drama every season, launching a new story with new characters mining different tropes from that bevy of unofficial Carpenter-Spielberg-King-Barker-Bradbury source material lionized in the first season.

Even the show’s title seems perfect for an anthology rather than an ongoing story; its

plurality suggesting a creepy variety pack rather than a singular tale. As a title, ”

.” Its awesome credits sequence is a black-and-red box of ambiguous mystery; there’s nothing about it that’s tied to this particular story.

Part of this urge to move on is very much due to the success of how well the Duffers executed the debut season. After the conclusion of

season 1, showrunner Noah Hawley explained that part of the reason he didn’t want to use the same characters in season 2, despite their popularity, is because he liked them so much (and put them through so much trauma) that he wanted to leave them alone. Hawley thought it was best to let his characters go about their “lives” unseen rather than revisiting some new murderous rampage upon them in season 2, scarring them deeper and trimming their numbers.

– these are awfully nice people, we care about them, let’s leave them alone now, they’ve earned their peace. We wouldn’t want to see any of the survivors killed off, yet also couldn’t respect the show’s storytelling if they all made it through another round. And even if they did continue to survive, how are they not increasingly damaged and traumatized with each passing season? 

should go somewhere else where nobody is expecting anything supernatural to happen, and scare the hell out of them instead (and us) using some fresh inventive terror. 

might return just as terrific in season 2 and 3 and 4… or perhaps, somewhere along the line, the show will reboot into an entirely new tale. Maybe in an alternate universe somewhere, it already has.

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