Hello and welcome to the Upside Down or, as we’re calling it, the even-numbered reviews of Stranger Things 2. John and I will be swapping back and forth as we race through this exciting new season so, if your favourite episode happens to be two, four, six or eight, I sincerely apologise.

Because – full disclosure – I had a little trouble with the first season, and not because I didn’t think it was good. Obviously anything that captures the imagination of so many people has to have a ton of merit but, as a child of the 90s, a lot of the references felt like what they were – references. There to make a certain type of viewer giddy and nostalgic, but otherwise just a distraction from an otherwise outstanding series.

So far, and as John said yesterday, this second run seems to be going for the same thing.

But that hardly matters when that ‘same thing’ is a story full of characters we love interacting in adorable or heartrending ways, which is what this second episode serves up in spades. It’s of course elevated by the fact that Eleven is present, but it also feels like Stranger Things was invented just to have an episode where the boys go trick or treating in Ghostbusters costumes.

But Stranger Things 2 isn’t going to skip over the trauma left over from the events of season one, yet while we and everyone else in the story are looking at Will, it’s becoming increasingly obvious that attention needs to be turned to Mike. It would have been easy for the show to use the one year time jump to skip over the aftermath of everything they went through, but everyone is still dealing with their individual stuff.

Centering the story this time around Will is a curious choice in itself, as the scene in which we’re reminded that he never even met Eleven illustrates. He missed out on his friends’ adventure, and he’s practically a stranger to us, but we’re privy to his visions and to his point of view when interacting with Joyce and Jonathan – characters we know far better.

Mike is very much in the background right now, at one point channelling his loneliness into complaining about Max’s presence at trick or treating, and the image of him Eleven captures – at the centre of the always evocative black void – is the truest look at him we’ve seen this season.

Which brings us to the woman herself, who was revealed to not only be alive at the end of the first episode, but secretly living with Jim Hopper out in the woods. This second chapter begins with a stunningly-realised escape from the Upside Down taking place almost immediately after the events of the first season finale, but a quick trip to Mike’s confirms that her presence would do more harm than good.

It’s a trope for the hero to distance themselves from those they love for their protection, sure, but very rarely do we see it done this way. Eleven’s position in the series flits between damsel to villain to love interest to bad-ass heroine all the time, which is what makes her so interesting. It makes sense for her character to retreat, and it also makes sense for her to perform the role of daughter for Jim.

We don’t yet know how the two of them came together, but it’s clear from Jim’s behaviour that the relationship isn’t an entirely healthy one. It’s not creepy in any alarming sense, but to watch Jim gaslight the entire town in order to keep Eleven a secret from the world doesn’t seem like it’s serving anyone particularly well. He’s replacing his daughter with a girl who literally can’t leave.

As said, it’s in Trick or Treat, Freak that the Halloween setting comes into its own, with a lot of fun derived from things as simple as the Ghostbusters group costume, that adorable cowboy or Eleven scaring Jim with a sheet over her head.

I feel like the Nancy stuff isn’t working as well as the rest of the show is right now, mainly because of the focus on both Barb and the love triangle that was already getting tired last season. I’ve never understood the Barb thing, so I’m probably not going to touch it, but I feel like the writers (and Tumblr) care more about which dude Nancy chooses more than the rest of us.

The beats – Nancy is upset, Nancy gets drunk and argues with her boyfriend, Steve leaves her alone – are so familiar to anyone who’s ever seen a film or watched TV, and that’s just not Stranger Things’ MO. Watching Jonathan pulling a Ryan Atwood to Nancy’s Marissa Cooper (sorry, child of the 90s) isn’t subverting or even acknowledging the genre tropes, it’s just playing them out.

Meanwhile, the town’s pumpkins are being killed by an unknown poison, and it’s Hopper’s job to figure out if it’s farmer warfare or something more sinister. My bet is the latter, even if the former would be it’s own kind of entertaining.

Strange Things

• So Sean Astin is way too normal to be true, right? He has to be evil.
• Are we supposed to understand that Eleven killed that random hunter, because it looked pretty chilly in those woods?
• I’m really liking Max so far, but I need a lot more information about Billy before I form an opinion.