The Stranger Things crew set out to scare up some Emmy buzz Tuesday night at Netflix’s FYSee Space in Beverly Hills, but we arrived at the event with a slightly different mission: to procure as much Season 2 intel as humanely possible and without getting anyone fired. The juicy fruits of our labor are below:

THE FRIGHT FACTOR | The new season — all nine episodes of which drop on Halloween — will be “darker and more eerie” than the ’80s-set phenom’s rookie run, confirms Noah Scnapp (Will). Finn Wolfhard (Mike) flat-out says “scarier stuff happens” — with one character in particular. “Something happens to Will in the first couple of episodes that’s very, very disturbing.”

SPEAKING OF WILL… | His cronies are well aware that something has changed about their pal since he returned from the Upside Down realm. “They know he is not well,” previews Gaten Matarazzo (Dustin). “But they are just trying to pretend [nothing] happened.”

THE FUN FACTOR | Don’t worry, there will still be plenty of levity amid the darkness. Season 2 “maintains that sense of fun, which was so important to the first season,” says Matt Duffer, who created Stranger Things with brother Ross Duffer. “We didn’t want to lose that sense of wonder.”

MIKE MINUS ELEVEN EQUALS DESPAIR | “He’s kind of somber,” Wolfhard teases of his alter ego’s mood since Millie Bobby Brown’s Eleven vanished in the finale. “He’s kind of given up on life. He has no one to fight for until, slowly as the season progresses, he [becomes] more and more like [the] leader he was in the first season.”

FRESH BLOOD | Among the fresh additions to the cast is American Odyssey‘s Sadie Sink, who plays Hawkins’ newest tomboy Max, a character Matarazzo is “very excited” for viewers to meet. Wolfhard, meanwhile, predicts fans will fall for Max’s older brother Billy (played by newcomer Dacre Montgomery). “He’s a bit of a bully who gives Steve a run for his money,” he reveals. “[He’s] a little weird [and] disturbing, but people will love it.”

HEARING AND SEEING THE EVIL | Season 2 will introduce a new monster and, unlike Season 1’s Big Bad, this beast will be getting more screen time. “Last season, a lot of the horror and a lot of what was happening with Will was off screen in the Upside down,” notes Ross Duffer. “That’s not the case [in Season 2]. The horror is more up-close and personal.” (Reporting by Vlada Gelman)