Season 2 is a little less strange but still as thrilling

The success of the first season is always a burden that the second has to deal with, but show runners, the Duffer Brothers, manage to keep Stranger Things just as engaging enough to hold sway over the audience with their second run at telling the stories of 1980s Hawkins.

The second season skips a whole year after the events of the first that ended with the apparent death of the psycho kinetic Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) and return of Will Byers (Noah Schnapp) from the Upside Down.

While everyone is trying to move on from the rough bump that was last year, the universe has other plans to put them through trials that'll keep the viewer glued to the screen.

As the epilogue of the first season already hinted, Will's escape from the dreaded alternate dimension is not a complete victory as the darkness still has a firm grip on him.

As he tries to readjust to a life he was almost denied, Will's transition is bedeviled with visions of the Upside Down and its evil designs for the world as we know it.

Unlike the first season, the second has a lot of subplots to tap into so much that it even has the time to finally grant Barb the sort of justice that'll at least appease the Internet mob that has been demanding an acknowledgement of her existence on the show ever since she tragically disappeared into the Upside Down.

The season has a lot of fireworks to set off as the lovable cast of cheeky young lads and accomplished veterans return with a host of new characters that slot into the story without missing a beat.

Sadie Sink features as Max, a new student at the boys' school who instantly seems like a direct substitute for Eleven, especially for Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo) and Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin), even though she is almost a direct opposite of season one's Emmy-nominated star.

Sean Astin plays Bob Newby, a cheerful former schoolmate of Will's mother Joyce (Winona Ryder) who is now her boyfriend, giving her a little bit more cheer than she was afforded in the first season.

The other new characters of note are Max's hypermasculine step-brother Billy Hargrove (Dacre Montgomery), empowered illusionist Kali/Eight (Linnea Berthelsen), and Sam Owens (Paul Reiser) who is the new head of the shady Hawkins Laboratory.

For a show that had a critically acclaimed first run, it's unsurprising that Stranger Things 2 sticks very closely to the formula that made the first one a huge success.

Despite understandably lacking the thrill of discovery of the first season, the new season's biggest spark is that it does a good job of picking up nicely from the events of last year.

The season effectively lays down its chills in the opening scenes with a tormented Will dealing with the trauma of his abduction into the Upside Down.

Along with the viewer, Will is made to believe he's merely reliving the horrors of his harrowing experience until it is evident that his trials are not even remotely close to being over.

Will, who was largely a bystander in his own story last season, is more dominant on the screen here as he delivers a truly captivating performance that chillingly mirrors his inner demons that are about to bring about the ruin of the world.

While this new season indulges in spreading side narratives across its rich crop of characters, it never at any point fails to lose sight of the ultimate endgame.

One of such subplots is the fitting resolution of Barb's death that was significantly glossed over last season and inspired an intense Internet campaign demanding a rethink.

The show uses this opportunity to give Nancy Wheeler (Natalia Dyer) a little bit more expansive role as she dedicates herself to the mission of getting some form of justice for her deceased friend despite the risk to her personal safety and that of everyone she cares about.

In the end, this ties neatly with what could be considered a happy ending in the world of Stranger Things that's always in danger of breaking into supernatural chaos.

In what is equally frustrating as it is satisfying, Eleven is kept away from her friends for most of the season as she hides away with the help of Chief Jim Hopper (David Harbour) to stay clear of the Hawkins Lab still hunting her.

In the time that she's split up from the group, she develops a strained yet familial bond with Hopper and retraces her roots to find out more about how she ended up at Hawkins Lab to begin with.

In Chapter 7, a standalone episode that focuses squarely on Eleven's journey, she encounters Eight who was also in the lab with her and equally escaped with the powers to manipulate illusion, an ability she has been using to get her own piece of revenge on everyone involved in making her life miserable.

Unlike when she almost always served as a plot convenience with her powers in the first season, when Eleven reunites with her friends at their hour of greatest need, it feels thoroughly earned as all the characters have grown just a little bit more than the kids the viewer fell in love with only a year ago.

The season's big bad is a giant shadow monster, the Mind Flayer, who controls a hoard of feral dog-like creatures who are as terrifying for their appearance as they're useless when it's time to kill important characters.

While it's considerably reasonable to expect that the kids will survive anything this world throws at them, they're put in harm's way enough times to put that belief to test.

At a modest nine episodes, only one more than the previous season, Stranger Things 2 manages to match the astronomical expectations heaped upon it as a result of its earlier success.

The season does a good job of hanging on to the heart and charm that defined the first season even if some of the familiar arcs appear too on the nose at times.

And again, just like the ending of the first, the season ends on a terrifying note signifying that while another battle may have been won, the war against the supernatural is far from over.

See you next year.