The year is ending and with that I decided to do a summary of Winona’s career in 2016.

We finished 2015 with Winona being the face of Marc Jacobs’ Velvet Noir, and her first public appearance, in January 18, was a launch dinner held by Marc himself.

Still in January, Netflix released the date for Stranger Things during the TCA’16 panel: July 15. At this point we only knew Winona was going to be a mother of a disappeared boy in a 8-part miniseries.

In February 5, Winona was photographed on set of Stranger Things in Indiana. The same happened in March 01. At this point, the first promotional images from the show started to be released.

With the promotion for Stranger Things comes written coverage in multiple magazines. In February Winona was cover of Interview’s The Queens of Cool March issue, photographed by Mikael Jansson. For the February 28 issue, Sunday Times Style also released a cover with a pretty new photoshoot by Phil Poynter. She also had features on People and Entertainment Weekly magazines, and the big promotion didn’t even have started yet!

In June, Netflix released several images and promotional trailers and videos to promote Stranger Things. Winona started doing interviews, and in June she sat with Time for an amazing piece, talking about her ‘comeback’ (and if you follow us for enough time you’d know I hate this expression, because she has been working for long enough to be always receiving this ‘comeback‘ status bullshit every single work she do).

I get asked a lot, ‘What does it feel like to be a ’90s icon?’ And I’m like, ‘You think I sit around and think of myself like that?’ You can’t think about yourself in those ways, because who does that?’

Also she did an interview to Neo Zealander website Stuff, and talked about the Beetlejuice 2 sequel, that’s being rumoured since Winona attended Sundance last year.

“I don’t really know what’s happening. I think it’s a situation where the script has to be perfect and everyone has to be available. It can’t be made without Tim, Michael and a perfect script. It is just an iconic and beloved film. I get stopped all the time, even by little children, by people who want to talk about it, so I don’t want to do it unless its perfect.”

A week before the release of Stranger Things, the majority of news portals had reviews that got us all excited. The series has all elements to become a huge success!

On July 7, Winona attended a press conference for Stranger Things in Beverly Hills. On July 11 she attended a premiere with the whole cast at the Mack Sennett Studios in Los Angeles.

Still before the series release on Netflix, two more publications featuring Winona on cover was released: Harper’s Bazaar Germany, with photos by Sofia Sanchez & Mauro Mongiello, and Net-a-Porter’s The Edit, photographed by Drew Jarrett.

On July 15, Stranger Things started streaming. The NY Times set an interview with Winona to be published on its July 17 edition. It was a very honest interview, talking from the infamous episode of her arrest to her previous interview talking about Johnny Depp/Amber Heard.

“The whole thing is so weird,” Ms. Ryder said. “I was 17 — that’s almost a quarter century ago. But I gave an honest answer.” Her response — that Mr. Depp was “never abusive” to her — was taken by some as coming to his defense. “Maybe it was naïve of me to not realize it was going to feed the monster. But I’m not going to backpedal on it. You can’t win. If I’d said, ‘No comment,’ it would have been, ‘Ryder is silent,’” she boomed in a deep, suspicious voice. “‘What’s she hiding?’”

Stranger Things was already a huge success. It became the most popular show on Netflix (taking the previous spot of Daredevil and Making a Murderer) and, of course, no one was happy with it being a limited 8 episodes series only. Everyone and their mothers was asking for a second season, when Shawn Levy gave an interview addressing it to Neflix.

Still on hold if we’ll have or not a second season, Winona attended the Summer TCA press in July 27, leaving us delighted with the interaction with Millie-Bobby Brown. Producers was so aware of it that paired Winona and Millie for an exclusive portrait at the event.

In August, Winona was featured in three more publications as part of Stranger Things promotion. The fall issue of Porter magazine had the same pictures we got on The Edit, but with an (another) great interview. New York Magazine brought us an amazing new session by Norman Jean Roy and Nylon magazine featured Winona for its September issue in an amazing photoshoot (probably my favourite of the year) by Ash Kingston.

On August 31 Netflix confirmed that Stranger Things will receive a second season, with NINE episodes.

On September 3, Winona visited Jimmy Kimmel Live. On the interview she talked about being Tom Waits’ kids babysitter. What is her life?

When I was about 14, I went with my friend to babysit these kids and I didn’t know whose kids they were. And they were wonderful, they were little. And in walks Tom Waits, who is like my hero. They were Tom Waits’ kids. I remember he was doing a play at the time and he didn’t have the 20 bucks and so he gave me a T-shirt from Franks Wild Years … and I was thrilled, and literally I couldn’t speak.

On September 9, Tim Burton was honored with the Chinese Theater imprint ceremony and Winona was the one to introduce him (with Martin Landau in the attendance as well).

On September 13, once again Winona and Millie attended an event together. This time was the NYFW Coach 1941’s show.

On September 28 Winona attended the PEN Center Literary Awards Festival in Beverly Hills honoring the ‘The House of Spirits’ author Isabel Allende. Winona was chosen to present Allende with the Lifetime Achievement Award.

The year is ending but we still had time for more publications. Winona was featured on Italian Flair magazine, still as part of Stranger Things promotion. With this, we had an amazing total of 18 magazines focusing on Winona/Stranger Things in 2016, which for us is a record break on this decade (and last decade as well).

In November 27 she attended a screening of her Reality Bites co-star Ethan Hawke new project, Born to be Blue. She was also set to present him the next day, November 28, at the Gotham Awards. All the feels we had with this reunion!

In December, with the start of the award seasons, we had some great news! Winona was nominated for a Golden Globes, a Critics Choice, a Satellite Awards and a SAG Awards for her performance in Stranger Things! The show also won an AFI Award as TV Program of the Year. That means we’ll see a lot of Winona in the next months, which is fantastic!

Winona’s last appearance in 2016 was last December 15 and she’s not even sorry to let the better for the end. She attended Jim Jarmusch’s new film Paterson screening in New York, wearing that iconic Tom Waits t-shirt.

For 2017, the only confirmed project we have so far still is Stranger Things. The release date wasn’t decided yet but we think it will come around the same time, July. The show is already being filmed in Atlanta, and the first photos (which won’t deliver too much) was published by hollygorock. We had also, in November, the Stranger Things Twitter account sharing an upside down image of the cast read through saying “back in production.”

The show will be a sequel, not a new story. So we can expect to see what happened with the cast after the previous events. And the 80’s aura still is on board with the casting of Sean Astin, Paul Reiser and Linnea Berthelsen.

So, that’s it! This is our last update of the year and, with it, I want to wish all our visitors a very happy New Year! Thanks for another year, for your visit, your comments, your friendship!

We’ll try to make this an annual series, and I want to give a thanks/shout-out to my friends Frederik from Simply Streep, Lindsey from Rachel McAdams Online and Jess from Glamour Reese for the inspiration on the ‘Year in Review’ special.

To finish, I wish Winona and her family the best in this coming year. Happy 2017!