Stranger Things’ First Spinoff Unleashes New Monsters — Ranked by How Dangerous They Really Are

Netflix finally dropped the first official Stranger Things spinoff, 'Tales From 85', and it slides right between seasons 2 and 3. The Upside Down is supposed to be locked off after Eleven shut the door, yet Hawkins is somehow crawling with new nightmares anyway. The show explains why, and yeah, it leans into science class in a way that actually tracks for this universe.

Why there are monsters when the gate is closed

The short version: something survived after Eleven sealed the gate, and some truly unwise experimenting helped it along. The big idea holding the whole thing together is evolution pushing hard when a species is cornered. As Anna Baxter puts it:

'Evolution is the process by which an organism adapts into an enhanced version of itself.'

In other words, when you nearly wipe a thing out, it mutates fast to stay alive. That gives the show license to escalate one creature after another, each nastier than the last, even with the Upside Down technically out of reach. Until it isn’t, but we’ll get to that.

The new monsters of Tales From 85, ranked by how much they want you dead

1. 8. The Queen's 'Insects' — The opener introduces these scorpion- adjacent creepers. They’ll sting if you aren’t paying attention, but their first instinct is to scatter. Like most of this season’s fauna, they burn.

2. 7. Jerk O'Lanterns — Yes, that name is exactly what you think. Born out of a pumpkin patch, they look gnarly but rely on swarming. One-on-one they’re pushovers, and the Hawkins kids mow through them without breaking a sweat.

3. 6. Snow Shark — A Jaws riff that hunts under fresh Hawkins snowfall, lunging fast, yanking victims away, and repurposing them as new hosts. You can bait it into surfacing, and Eleven can pin it with telekinesis, which keeps it from climbing higher on this list.

4. 5. Aboleth — A nasty fusion of Aliens and The Thing vibes. Dustin’s rival, Rosario, eats an infected pumpkin pie (file that under 'choices') and turns into a host for the Queen’s influence. Aboleth spreads vines over huge areas and hits from the dark. It’s a proper mini-boss: the gang has to combine efforts to stop it. Fire and Eleven’s telekinesis both hurt it, and it can’t keep going without a human host.

5. 4. Vine Monster — The kids manage to free one bully from the Queen, then kind of forget the other guy for a bit, which goes about how you’d expect. Jeff Nelson ends up as a vine-limbed terror that feels like a Demodog/Demogorgon mashup, upgraded with extendable tendrils that snag prey from range. He’s saved when a sewer gate literally slices the creature apart, which is a neat hint at how the Queen will meet its end.

6. 3. Vine Dogs — First teased in the Stranger Things toy line (love a merch spoiler), these brutes start life woven around a host but evolve to operate solo. That surprise factor kicks in at the lumber mill when several ambush the group. It’s the first time the kids look seriously outmatched; even Eleven nearly gets taken out, and Mike spirals so hard he almost spills everything to Hopper. Fire still does the trick if you can get a flame on them.

7. 2. Horde Prime 's Minions — Bigger, meaner, and no human core to target. They hunt using scent on top of sight and sound, which makes hiding a lot less useful. They can muscle through Eleven’s telekinesis, but flames remain their undoing.

8. 1. Horde Prime / The Queen — The boss of bosses. Dustin nicknames it 'Horde Prime' as a She-Ra nod; functionally, it’s filling the Mind Flayer slot, spawning everything else on this list. At first it behaves like D&D’s Bodytaker Plant, rooting in the forest and warping the ecosystem, but it quickly levels up beyond that. The truly alarming part: the Queen manages to rip open a fresh gate to the Upside Down. The good news is Eleven slams that door shut mid-transit and literally bisects the thing. The 'not done yet' teaser? A blue flower sprouts from the corpse immediately, like evolution is still quietly grinding away.

Does Tales From 85 actually count?

Yep. It’s positioned clearly between Stranger Things season 2 and season 3: post-gate-closure, pre-Starcourt-summer. The timeline logic matches the show’s larger arc, and the story threads (including that ominous flower) are built to feed back into the main mythology.