We’re still on a bit of a Stranger Things high after that awesome Super Bowl spot, and now EW has revealed a few new pictures (via Arrow In The Head) and some little teasing snippets of what we can expect in the show’s second season.
As you can see, there’s another picture of the gang in their Ghostbusters outfits, which is excellent, and that image of Will (Noah Schnapp) is extremely ominous…
Indeed, Matt Duffer explains that Will is definitely not OK. “He seems to be seeing images from the Upside Down—the question is whether they’re real or not. So it seems like he’s having some sort of post-traumatic stress disorder.”
Could that mean that the worm he coughed up wasn’t real? We’re guessing that it was, because it’s Stranger Things and if there’s a question of “real or not” the answer’s going to be “real.”
Meanwhile, Will’s mother Joyce (Winona Ryder) is trying to get back to some semblance of normality and is dating her old high school friend Bob, played by new addition Sean Astin. Ryder teases that this choice is at least a little calculated: “She’s trying to mask a lot. I think she’s made this choice with Bob because she wants a good father figure in her sons’ lives.”
Then there’s Chief Hopper (David Harbour). We’re still not sure exactly to what extent he’s been compromised, if at all, by the choices he made at the end of the last season, and the actor suggested that Hopper’s not holding up particularly well. “It kind of falls on Hopper to be the voice of authority to say, ‘This did happen and this didn’t happen.’ He’s struggling with the compromise that takes him to, having to lie and cover things up.”
While the report is light on details about Paul Reiser’s Dr Owens (although “seemingly friendly” definitely means “not friendly”), it does tease some conflict for the kids in the form of new arrivals Billy (Dacre Montgomery) and Max (Sadie Sink). Max will be a new addition to the group and the cause of some romantic conflict between Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo) and Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin), but Billy sound like he’s going to be a threat in the classic Stand By Me/It mould.
“Stephen King always has really great human villains,” Matt Duffer says. “The evil in the real world is often as bad or worse than the supernatural evil, so we wanted to introduce a character like that.”
While there were bullies in the previous season, they definitely felt like a minor threat compared to everything else that was happening (apart from that one sequence at the quarry). The bad kids in Stephen King’s It were murderers in the making, just one step away from killing our heroes. Stirring in that kind of element could really add another level to Stranger Things.
Stranger Things Season 2 will arrive on Netflix on 31 October. Keep up with the latest genre news with the new issue of SciFiNow.
