In the first episode of season 2, the seemingly perennially unlucky Will Byers (Noah Schnapp) is bedeviled by an image of what comes to be known as the Mind-Flayer… although at that particular moment it resembles a giant tarantula made up of smog-infested tornados. Standing inside his family home’s doorway, Will sees the creature that would come to possess the lad (in a religious sense) later in the season. It is foreboding, it is epic, and it is oh, so very familiar. While Will is not abducted in Stranger Things 2, that is because this is the exact same basic storyline setup of the first season, with the focus being on Joyce Byers doing anything to find her son, much like Melinda Dillon in the Spielberg classic. In this scenario, Hopper is even Richard Dreyfuss. So in some ways, it can be said Stranger Things improved on the formula, no?
