It’s a good time to be a Stranger Things veteran. Millie Bobby Brown re-established herself on Netflix in Enola Holmes 3, Sadie Sink is proving every fan prediction correct by appearing as Jean Grey in Spider-Man: Brand New Day, and Gaten Matarazzo is working on Octect, an adaptation of a musical directed by Lin-Manuel Miranda.
But for David Harbour, post-Stranger Things life looks a lot more brutal than you may expect. Four years after he starred as Santa Claus (formerly known as Nicomund the Red) in holiday action thriller Violent Night, he’s back for a sequel — and this time, he brought his wife, played by Kristen Bell. Check out the trailer below:
While the first movie followed Santa as he protected a home from a menacing group of burglars, this one is more focused on worldbuilding. Santa has found himself on the Naughty List and is living among humans, but when a gangster (Jared Harris) targets Santa, he has to defend his local mall.
“When Santa forgets the true meaning of Christmas, he finds himself in the heart of a lively mall community in desperate need of his help,” the description reads. “Sapped of his magic, he’ll need another way to take on the goons threatening the mall, and time is running out. Santa has to rediscover his faith in goodness and call in some last-minute reinforcements from the one person no baddie wants to tangle with: Mrs. Claus.” Mrs. Claus is played by Bell, and she looks just as battle-ready as her husband.
Kristen Bell appears in Violent Night 2 as Mrs. Claus, who Santa calls as backup.
Violent Night 2 sees the return of director Tommy Wirkola and writers Pat Casey and Josh Miller, so you can expect similar thrills to the first movie — but there will be a bit of a tonal shift. “I think it'll feel very similar to the first one in the way people want,” Casey told CinemaBlend in January 2025. “But maybe the one tease we can say that's not giving anything away [is] if the first one was drawing a lot from a certain type of action movie, we're trying to draw inspiration for this one a bit from Westerns. It’s not going to be a Western, but [has] some [Western] story elements and thematics.”
If anything, Violent Night 2 is following a proven formula: it’s exactly what previous (if decidedly more family-friendly) alt-Santa franchise The Santa Clause did with its sequel. The Santa Clause 2 sent Santa into the real world, limited his magic, and introduced Mrs. Claus. So while this may seem like a strange experiment in an already wild franchise, it’s really just following a Christmas tradition.
