Stranger Things Season 2 Premiere, Rocky Biopic Reactions, Walking Dead Finale Secrets, and More — In The Vending Lot

Netflix’s animated spinoff Stranger Things: Tales From ’85 returns for its second season this Thursday, September 17, 2026, just five months after the show’s debut in April. That kind of turnaround bypasses the multi-year production gaps that defined the original live-action series, and it signals something important about how Netflix intends to keep Hawkins alive between major releases. The new 10-episode arc is set during the winter of 1985, landing between the events of live-action Seasons 2 and 3, and follows the Hawkins Investigators Club dealing with Valentine’s Day chaos, ghostly apparitions, and a swarm of creatures the show is calling hate sprites. It’s a weirder, more playful chapter than the season premiere suggested the show would attempt, and that’s a good thing. Meanwhile, Millie Bobby Brown and David Harbour are executive producing and starring in a brand-new untitled Netflix thriller about a disgraced FBI agent searching for his missing daughter. Harbour has confirmed the first two scripts are in hand. The Duffer Brothers remain attached to a separate live-action spinoff featuring an entirely new cast and time period, focused on the deeper mythology of the Mind Flayer. And Universal Studios Hollywood just opened a dedicated Stranger Things 5 haunted house at Halloween Horror Nights, modeled on the Upside Down. On the personal side, Maya Hawke, who plays Robin Buckley, married singer Christian Lee Hutson earlier this year in a Valentine’s Day ceremony attended by several of her Stranger Things co-stars.

It has been 40 years since the finale of Knight Rider, the beloved NBC action series starring David Hasselhoff as Michael Knight and the AI-powered Pontiac Firebird known as KITT, voiced by William Daniels. The show ran four seasons and spawned spinoffs, TV movies, and revival attempts, but the original remains the one people actually remember. Hasselhoff went from the show straight to Baywatch, appeared in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, released 15 albums across four decades, and most recently starred in the travel docuseries Hoff Roading with Rhys Darby. The show belongs in the same conversation as The A-Team and Magnum P.I. as a defining piece of 1980s American television. And the franchise isn’t finished: Cobra Kai creators Jon Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg, and Josh Heald are developing a Knight Rider feature film. A talking car, a leather jacket, and a movie. It’s happening.

The Season 3 finale of The Walking Dead: Dead City ended with Negan stabbing Maggie as part of a tense gambit to fool antagonist Dillard, played by Jimmi Simpson, before Dillard was ultimately killed in a brutal confrontation. But it almost went differently. Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who serves as an executive producer on the series, pitched filming two versions of the finale, one where Dillard lives and one where he dies, specifically because he didn’t want to lose Simpson from the cast. “I didn’t wanna lose Jimmi,” Morgan told Entertainment Weekly. He brought the idea to Simpson, then to co-star Lauren Cohan, and then to showrunner Seth Hoffman. The dual-ending pitch didn’t go forward, and Dillard died with Negan at his side saying, “I hope you find what you’re looking for.” Morgan was also clear that Negan stabbing Maggie was not payback for their long, brutal history. It was survival strategy. The question now is what comes next for Negan in Season 4.