How Stranger Things Took Over the World

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Welcome to Spotlight. I’m Paula Devis.

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And I’m Roger Basick. Spotlight uses a special English method of broadcasting. It is easier for people to understand, no matter where in the world they live.

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Mike, Will, Dustin, and Lucas sit in the basement of a house playing a game. The game is called Dungeons and Dragons. The focus of this game is storytelling. The group of players tells a story. They guide their imaginary heroes through dangerous times. They search for treasure. They battle deadly foes and monsters. They attempt daring rescues. Will, Dustin, and Lucas create characters such as elves, dwarves, or human warriors for their imaginary adventures.

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Mike is the Dungeon Master. He tells the story and controls the details of the imaginary world. The boys’ characters must fight monsters and solve problems. Each of their characters could die at any minute. The four boys love the game. They play it all the time in Mike’s basement. When they finish playing, Will, Lucas, and Dustin ride their bicycles home. Dustin and Lucas head in a different direction than Will. As Will rides alone, he sees a frightening creature in the road. Will is so frightened that he crashes. Will runs into the woods. The creature chases him. Will reaches a shelter in his backyard. He hides from the monster. But the monster finds Will. The next morning, Will disappeared.

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On today’s Spotlight, we look at the television program Stranger Things. The streaming service Netflix began showing Stranger Things in the summer of 2016. Stranger Things is set in a fictional small town called Hawkins, in the state of Indiana, in the United States. It was the 1980s. The television show offers a blend of science fiction, horror, mystery, and drama. It’s a story about friends growing up together.

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Stranger Things is a show about unusual incidents happening around Hawkins. It follows Mike and his friends, and several other teenagers and adults. They uncover supernatural mysteries and government secrets. After Will disappears, they meet a girl named Eleven with strange powers. She can kill people using her thoughts. She also can open gates to the land of Upside Down. The Upside Down is another dimension. The gates let people and monsters travel between Hawkins and the Upside Down. Eleven and her new friends fight the monsters, called Demogorgons and Demodogs. Vecna and the Mind Flayer are the masters of these monsters. They want the Upside-Down dimension to control Hawkins.

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Mike and his friends almost did not get the chance to stop Vecna. Stranger Things was created by two brothers named Matt and Ross Duffer. Their idea for the show was rejected by fifteen Hollywood studios. The studios did not believe the show could work. One told the Duffer brothers:

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“You either must make it into a show for kids or make it about this Hopper character investigating supernatural reports around town.”

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Hopper is the chief of police in Hawkins. He is one of the adults who helps Mike and his friends search for Will and fight the monsters. The Duffer brothers wanted Stranger Things to be a show about kids that appealed to everyone. They wanted to write the show so that adults could also enjoy it even though the show focused on kids. The brothers also wanted to choose young actors who were not famous. They thought people would like young actors.

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Netflix believed in the Duffer brothers’ idea. They agreed that people would fall in love with the young characters. Fans could watch the kids grow up on the show. The characters would become close friends—even loved ones—for the audience. Netflix understood that a television show has much more time than a film. A film usually only lasts two hours. But a television show can spread over several seasons. The television season is a series of episodes broadcast in a one-year period. Stranger Things ended up becoming successful. It had time to develop the main characters over five seasons. This let fans get to know the characters. It did not matter that the actors were not famous when Stranger Things started. They were by the end of the show.

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One of the biggest reasons Stranger Things became popular with both kids and adults is the friendship between the show’s characters. They were not just involved in battles together. The characters were close friends defending each other. They supported and encouraged one another. The friends were largely alone in their fight against the monsters. They also had to battle the United States government that wanted to catch Eleven and control her special powers. But Eleven and her friends had each other.

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Adult fans could relate to this because they remembered their own childhoods. Their best friends were often the only people to whom they could tell their deepest secrets. They loved their parents, but their closest friends shared their same hopes and fears. They experienced the same daily problems. Having a best friend in childhood is a strong and memorable relationship. A best friend is an attempt to find a person outside the family whom someone can trust. When this new friend returns the trust, the person is thankful to have chosen correctly. The best friends value and protect their new friendship.

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In an episode of Stranger Things, Mike remembers meeting Will on their first day of school. Mike says:

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“Do you remember the first day that we met? It was the first day of school. I knew nobody. I had no friends. I just felt so alone and so scared. But I saw you on the swings. You were alone, too. You were just swinging by yourself. I just walked up to you, and I asked if you wanted to be my friend. And you said yes. It was the best thing I have ever done.”

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Many adults also remember growing up during or around the 1980s when Stranger Things is set. They enjoy seeing the clothes, hairstyles, and cars from those years. The Duffer brothers used music from the 1980s. In fact, several songs like Kate Bush’s song “Running Up That Hill” and Tiffany’s song “I Think We Are Alone Now” became popular again over thirty years after these were first released.

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But more than seeing cultural fashions from the past, fans of Stranger Things get to enjoy a world that no longer exists. It is a world without smartphones or the internet. It is how society used to look just before the Digital Age changed daily life. Instead of watching videos on social media, kids used to spend their free time riding bikes, building camps in the woods, and playing games with their friends. They read books, painted pictures, or climbed trees. They played outside for hours. They gathered in homes like Mike’s to play Dungeons and Dragons. They used their imaginations to create new fun every day.

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Most of all, Stranger Things shows the importance of spending time with others. Before the Digital Age, kids like Mike, Will, Lucas, and Dustin did not have the choice of hiding in their bedrooms looking at their phones. They had to spend time with each other. There was no FaceTime or texting. The digital age has made life easier and more entertaining. But there is no replacement for personal connections. As the world watched Stranger Things, kids and adults got to look back into the past when developing friendships was one of the most important things. It still is. But kids today do not always make time for it. They have other ways to have fun by themselves.

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Stranger Things became Netflix’s most successful show. It made over $1,000,000,000 for Netflix. The show made $1,400,000,000 in the United States economy through production, jobs, and travel. Writers created The First Shadow, a Broadway play based on Stranger Things. Several new television shows connected to Stranger Things have been released. Many books and video games based on Stranger Things stories and characters have been made.

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The final episode of Stranger Things has been released, but its cultural importance continues. The actors are all grown up. They have new television shows, films, and music coming out. They are no longer unknown children in a show only a few people believed in. They have become successful actors. Their show will never be forgotten. But in the beginning, they were just twelve-year-old kids playing a game. They only had each another. But they took over the world.

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Have you ever watched the show Stranger Things? Have you seen the final season? Who is your favorite character? You can leave a comment on our website at www.spotlightenglish.com. You can also find us on YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, and X. You can also get Spotlight episodes delivered directly to your Android or Apple device through our free official Spotlight English app.

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The writer of this episode was Peter Anderson. The producer was Michio Ozaki. The voices you heard were from the United Kingdom and the United States. All quotes were adapted for this episode and voiced by Spotlight. No A.I. or artificial intelligence was used in this episode. Spotlight episodes are written, voiced, and produced by real people for real people, no matter where in the world they live. This episode is called, “How Stranger Things Took Over the World.”