Someone, “Stranger Things is basically The Goonies” – Me- “I think the fuck not”!

It’s true if you ignore the part where The Goonies ends with waving off a century old Pirate ship with more booty than Cardi B. Stranger Things ends with mass murder, the exorcism of 12 children, and these children attending more funerals than birthday parties.

Kids on bikes- Yes. Small town-check! Nostalgia- Lots of it! Adventure- More like Freddy Kruger crashing your DND campaign.

Why do people keep making the comparisons?? Because it is comforting and less like adulting.

The Goonies is about kids almost losing their homes. That’s scary, but it’s an adult problem explained at a kids level- We gotta save the Goondocks!! Enter Thanos- I mean, Big Brother Brent.

The threat is real, but manageable. In the end, adults show up, childhood remains intact- One eye Willy avoids capture again. Arrrrgh!!!

Stranger Things does not do that. Stranger Things lets the adults try and fail and fail again and again. Mainly fail Eleven, repeatedly- Where is CPS??

In The Goonies, danger has rules- Don’t raid Willy’s personal stores and you live to see another day.

In Stranger Things, danger eats your cat (RIP Mews) and neighbor while dragging their asses to hell- Bye, bye Mrs. Driscoll.

The kids in Stranger Things don’t “grow up.”

They watch people die- violently. They lose parents, siblings and friends. (We miss you Eddie). They learn that authority lies or is useless. They become responsible for stopping evil before they even have their first snowball dance.

Apparently the fastest path to “character development” is some domestic terrorism, basic battlefield wound dressing, and the casual takedown of a ninety-foot monster from a dimension that sits over another dimension in a wormhole- i’d like to nominate Mr. Clarke for teacher of the year.

Very normal middle-school milestones- Right? -Hell no!

This is the point where the nostalgia comparison stop. Because once you remove the 80’s soundtrack, the bikes, and the bowl cut, what’s left is something way less comfortable.

There are children right now, in countries all over the world we conveniently refer to as somewhere else, who do not experience childhood as a protected phase. They do not grow out of innocence. They are pushed out of it.

Not because they are exceptional, But because the adults who were supposed to intervene didn’t- You are like Papa!!!!

They learn survival before safety and grief before adulthood.

Stranger Things doesn’t romanticize this. It doesn’t frame these kids as heroic because they’re brave. It tells a nastier story: they are brave because the adults didn’t step in soon enough. For them Childhood ended the moment survival became a skill set.

The punchline?? It’s the moment Eleven disappears when the bomb goes off in the Upside Down. It’s not as a win, not as a sacrifice, but absence. A child removed from the story the same way childhood is removed from people who never got to finish it because adults suck- Just like Papa!!

Stranger Things ends with a truth we prefer to keep fictional:

The Goonies went home.

Stranger Things children- it’s not home anymore..

They watched people die and they watch the lousy adults in power fail.

The party- they hack, they fight, they kill monsters bigger than any, one, adult could imagine.. They lose themselves and loved ones in the same stroke.

Eleven disappears in the Upside Down. No applause. No memorial. Truly traumatic. She is the lost childhood.

Floating away in the void, untethered, forgotten. It is the existential loneliness we all fear. Her childhood never arrived. The pure horror of innocence erased by trauma created by the adults who thought they knew better- I hope you’re burning in hell Papa!

That is what people prefer to explain away.