Still Down in Hawkins

Stranger Things is doing something to my emotional real estate that I haven’t quite budgeted for. A group of kids in eighties Indiana, government cover-ups, inter-dimensional monsters—it sounds like a premise you’d find on a dusty VHS rack, and yet it’s become one of the best horror-adjacent shows in years. Retro anxiety in polished modern packaging. The tension shouldn’t work this well, and it does.

Maggie Cole, an illustrator out of Omaha, Nebraska, clearly feels the same way. She made a series of portraits covering the entire cast—every major character, old and new. Eleven, Nancy, Jonathan, the original party, but also the season two additions: Max, Bob, Billy. Each one gets real attention. They’re warm and stylized without being saccharine, which matches the show’s own register about right.

I’m still midway through season two. I’ve been rationing episodes deliberately, one at a time, letting each settle before the next. Bingeing it means waiting longer for whatever comes after, and I’m not ready for that math yet. So I’m staying in Hawkins a little longer, moving slowly through it, looking at Maggie’s portraits between episodes while the Upside Down does its thing.