Stranger Things 2 ​‘Chap­ter One: Mad­Max’ review

A group of masked, young adults run from a build­ing, sirens blar­ing behind them. They pile into a parked van and speed off with a screech­ing U‑Turn, in the oppo­site direc­tion of the police car com­ing for them. The atmos­phere in the van is charged with a dan­ger­ous mix of excit­ed adren­a­line and fear. The girl in the pas­sen­ger seat, Kali (Lin­nea Berthel­son), appears to be the sto­ic leader of the group, direct­ing their escape route with mono­syl­lab­ic commands.

Sev­er­al police cars have joined in on the chase now and things aren’t look­ing too good for the group who looks like they have walked straight out of a ​‘Girls Just Wan­na Have Fun’ / ​‘Cal­i­for­nia Love’ mashup. But just as the cops cir­cle in on them, Kali slow­ly rais­es her hand to bring her fin­gers togeth­er in what looks like a yog­ic mudra, when – BOOM! – an obsta­cle hin­ders the men in blue from fol­low­ing them fur­ther. The back­seat cheers as blood trick­les from Kali’s nos­tril. Wip­ing it away with the back of her hand, we see the num­ber 008 tat­tooed on her wrist.

I must admit, my heart sank a lit­tle at this point. Though it would have been weird not to at least men­tion the very real pos­si­bil­i­ty of oth­er chil­dren like Eleven (Mil­ly Bob­by Brown) exist­ing, bring­ing more name­less, num­bered kids into the mix of Stranger Things 2 could see the show fol­low­ing in the veins of Heroes, or even worse, Kyle XY – shows that lost their intrigue due to their inabil­i­ty to stick with one strong sto­ry­line, rather than many, poor­ly devel­oped arcs. This seem­ing­ly unre­lat­ed open­ing scene is the last we see of Kali and co through­out Chap­ter One, but you can expect them to roll up in Hawkins soon­er or later.

Back in the town, it’s the night before Hal­loween and Dustin (Gat­en Mataraz­zo), Lucas (Caleb McLaugh­lin), Mike (Finn Wolfhard) and Will (Noah Schnapp), are scroung­ing togeth­er enough mon­ey to spend an evening at the local Arcade. It’s been almost a year since Will returned from the Upside Down and although things seem to have gone back to nor­mal, the kids and their par­ents are still strug­gling with the after­math of what hap­pened in Octo­ber 1983. Mike checks in via radio every day, hop­ing for a sign of Eleven; Barb’s (Shan­non Purs­er) par­ents have put their house up for sale to raise the funds nec­es­sary to employ a pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tor, still hope­ful their daugh­ter is some­where out there; and Joyce (Winona Ryder) has become even more of a ner­vous wreck, wor­ry­ing about Will every wak­ing hour.

Will wants noth­ing more than to move on from his ​“Zom­bie Boy” rep, but with his fam­i­ly and friends walk­ing on eggshells around him, he has yet to return to a sense of nor­mal­cy. While all his friends bike to the Arcade, Will is dropped off by his mum and spends a good few min­utes reas­sur­ing her he’ll be fine when she repeat­ed­ly insists he call home if any­thing were to go wrong. Exte­ri­or shots of the Arcade to the sound of the ​’80s are as aes­thet­i­cal­ly pleas­ing as they are heart-warm­ing – along with its Goonies-style sto­ry­telling, these nos­tal­gic touch­es are what helped turn Stranger Things into the cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­non it is today, as the show plays on the theme of inno­cent times passing.

When Will joins his friends inside, things shape up into a typ­i­cal pre-teen night out. What his friends don’t know, is that Will has been plagued by what his moth­er and Dr Owens (Paul Reis­er) refer to as ​“episodes” brought on by PTSD. He repeat­ed­ly finds him­self hav­ing visions of an apoc­a­lyp­tic, Upside Down world in which a ten­ta­cled mon­ster, the bane of all evil, is out to kill every­one, and there is noth­ing he can do to stop it. The mon­ster is beck­on­ing him, and Will is afraid he won’t be able to resist its force for much longer.

In its pre­mière episode, Stranger Things does what it does best – slow­ly set­ting us up for the mys­ter­ies that will be uncov­ered dur­ing this sec­ond sea­son with­out rush­ing into expla­na­tions. ​‘Mad­Max’ serves to recon­nect us with our boys Mike, Dustin, Lucas and Will not by imme­di­ate­ly launch­ing us into their next adven­ture, but by check­ing in with how they have grown as indi­vid­u­als and as friends. Intro­duc­ing new char­ac­ters and Eleven’s where­abouts, this sea­son promis­es plen­ty more action and answers, and we only hope the Duf­fer broth­ers will man­age to keep their sto­ry­lines contained.