Why Stranger Things Was Such a Phenomenon
Back in 2016, Netflix was still relatively young when it came to its original streaming programming. There was House of Cards, followed by Orange is the New Black, but few shows on the platform had the kind of mainstream appeal that a Marvel blockbuster had at the time. This meant that a big budget horror/science fiction series from two relatively unknown creatives would be a major gamble for the company, and yet, that gamble paid off in spades.
Stranger Things was simultaneously nostalgic and fresh. The series draws upon enduring cultural phenomena from the 1980s, from Spielberg’s E.T. to Poltergeist, and includes actors from that era like Winona Ryder in the cast. As for the younger actors, nearly all of these performers were initially brand new to viewers. Several of them like Milly Bobby Brown, Sadie Sink, and Maya Hawke have since become household names.
Stranger Things was a hit both commercially and critically, ultimately becoming one of the most watched Netflix series of all time while earning Emmy nominations for “Outstanding Drama Series” for each of its four seasons. However, while each season of Stranger Things has continued to rack up impressive streaming numbers, the current and final entry has felt more like reheated nachos than any other season. Part of that has to do with its age problem.
How Age & Time Became the Achilles Heel for Stranger Things
Not long after the first season dropped on Netflix, the cast of Saturday Night Live performed a parody of the series that included several adult performers playfully impersonating the central friend group of Mike, Eleven, Dustin, and Lucas. Part of the humor of this sketch was, of course, the hilarity of seeing actors like Kyle Mooney and Kate McKinnon playing children. The irony is that now in its final season, the actual child actors on Stranger Things are beginning to look a lot more like those SNL comedians than their younger selves.
The age of the young actors began to show in the fourth season, which was delayed after the shutdown of film and television production in 2020. It started to feel weird to see these now older characters up to the same hijinks and tomfoolery, complete with their walkie talkies and childish attire. This has been far more apparent in this fifth season, which also experienced several delays in production due to the actors and writers’ strikes of 2023. Watching the show today, it’s hard not to wonder if these kids should be studying or applying to college. In fact, many of them should already be in college or even be graduates by now. It’s hard to suspend one’s disbelief when the actions and behaviors of the characters have not changed, but their physical and vocal appearances certainly have.
Another key contributing factor that has made these characters and their situations less and less believable is what we know about their off-screen personas. For instance, Milly Bobby Brown has a child of her own and Noah Schnapp has divided fans with his outspoken remarks. Audiences even have to reckon with one of the adult actors, David Harbour, who has been weathering widespread backlash after his ex, Lily Allen, released an epic tell-all album about his affairs. Overall, it’s hard to look at any of the characters in the same light given how much they have evolved, both onscreen and off, before our eyes.
How to Avoid The Trap of Aging Teenagers
Stranger Things is not the first television show to struggle with an aging cast. Ryan Murphy’s Glee included actors who were too old for their roles from the start. In some ways, that allowed for some suspension of disbelief from the very beginning, but the show took way too long before it finally acknowledged that the main characters needed to graduate high school. After that third season, Glee continued for another three seasons, following both the current and former glee club members through various storylines, although the show’s quality did experience a decline during this back half.
Then there is the more recent teen-centric show, HBO’s Euphoria. Only time will tell if the third season, which returns in April 2026, will have the same problem. Creator Sam Levinson has chosen to combat the passage of time by setting this third and potentially final season five years after the events of its season two, with the majority of the characters having graduated from both high school and college.
This is the antithesis of what the Duffer Brothers have chosen to do with the return of Stranger Things, which was to largely ignore the passage of time and all believability associated with it. The question that remains is whether or not Euphoria will still feel like the same show now that its characters are in a completely different phase of life. It’s hard to imagine how Sam Levinson will retain the basic structure of the series without having these characters’ lives constantly intersecting in high school hallways and house parties.
Based on these different approaches, it feels nearly impossible to find a proper solution to retain both the premise of an episodic series following teenagers while embracing the inevitability of their emerging adulthood. The only ways to do both at once are to either go the Degrassi route and follow the next generation of kids if the show must go on, or to create a hard end date. Yes, that would mean Stranger Things wouldn’t be able to run for as long as it has, but it also would mean that the threshold of age believability would not be as egregious as it is now.
After all, wouldn’t you rather get lost in the world of the “Upside Down” for, say, three seasons without any of these distractions? Isn’t that better than watching two more seasons of fully grown adults cosplaying as middle school children? The former option would allow the cast and creatives to get out while they’re still young. The latter, as exemplified by this final season, looks so ridiculous that it almost undoes the magic of Stranger Things and its promising beginnings.
via @FilmUpdates