Stranger Things 3 shows the limits of kids saving the world

The New Yorker

"Watching a ragtag group of kids save the day never seems to get old," says Maya Phillips. "That’s what the Netflix series Stranger Things, the third season of which premièred on July 4th, continues to bet its success on. The Duffer brothers, the creative team behind the show, have blatantly plucked inspiration from a whole subset of popular films that feature children as saviors. But despite the nerdy fun of Stranger Things, its titillating action sequences and over-all pluckiness, the show reveals how the kids-save-the-day model represents a romantic but ultimately uneven idealism that has echoes in our current political moment. Guns in schools, climate change, terrorism—will the kids save us from those monsters?" Phillips adds: "These stories about the courage of children and teens suggest that bravery and heroism are innate qualities of youth. But in that assumption also lies its counterpart: that youths are simply more capable than adults, and that some vital majority of adults are, at best, unable to rise to the occasion of grave danger and, at worst, are the cause of those very catastrophes."

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