Early drafts of Stranger Things: Tales From '85 featured way more Steve, Hopper and the adults, but the creative team cut scenes to bring back the franchise's "youthful innocence"

It's safe to say that fans were… disappointed when it was announced recently that Billy Hargrove and Joyce Byers wouldn't be appearing in the upcoming Netflix series Stranger Things: Tales From '85. But at least we have brief scenes with Steve Harrington and Jim Hopper, right?

Turns out, though, that the flagship show's adult characters were originally going to play a much bigger part of the new animated spin-off.

"In those early stages, we were leaning a little bit heavier; live-action style with bigger stories and some more of the adult characters and what have you," showrunner Eric Robles tells GamesRadar+. "But we felt like once we started focusing too much on the adult story, we lost the youthful innocence of what the journey was supposed to be. We kind of reset ourselves, and said, 'You know what? Let's buckle down and figure out what these kids are really kind of figuring out in this mystery.'"

Just a week out from the show's debut, the kinds of secrets cartoon Eleven, Mike, and co. will have to unravel across the 10 episodes are still being kept under wraps. But Robles has made no secret of the fact that the adventure will feature a bunch of "awesome monsters".

We also know that it'll bridge the gap between seasons 2 and 3, as we're clued in on what our pint-sized Hawkins heroes got up to in the weeks that followed the Snow Ball – and that it'll feel notably small-scale fresh off their 3D counterparts' confrontation with Vecna.

"One of the big things we talked about is that these versions of the kids were not worrying about saving the world – once we got to those later seasons, the stakes were pretty high," Robles explains. "And there's just something really nice about the idea of, like, trying to save their town, trying to save just their friends or community.

"Things hadn't gotten that dramatic yet. The relationships are still very fresh. You know, Mike hasn't seen El for so, so long. You know, she's been gone, right? And he didn't even know if she was still alive, and he was just hoping that that would be a thing.

"Now these two kind of get to spend more time together now that you know that she's there and she's around," he concludes. "We didn't really get to see that relationship develop between seasons 2 and 3 in the flagship series."

Stranger Things: Tales From '85 premieres on April 23. While we wait, check out our picks of the best Netflix shows for some watchlist inspiration.