There’s something uniquely unsettling about watching children grow up on screen, especially when we’ve formed emotional attachments to their fictional counterparts. The recent TikTok trend highlighting how the Stranger Things cast has “aged like milk” reveals more about our collective discomfort with the passage of time than it does about the actors themselves. We fell in love with these kids when they were battling Demogorgons in Hawkins, Indiana, and somewhere along the way, we forgot that real people were playing these roles—people who would inevitably grow, change, and evolve just like the rest of us.
Millie Bobby Brown’s poignant response to criticism about her changing appearance cuts to the heart of this cultural phenomenon. When she asks, “What do you want me to do about that?” in response to people complaining that she no longer looks like her 10-year-old self, she’s highlighting the absurdity of our expectations. We want our favorite characters to remain frozen in time, preserved in the amber of our nostalgia, while the actual human beings playing them continue living their lives. This disconnect speaks volumes about how we consume media and form parasocial relationships with celebrities, particularly those we’ve watched grow up before our eyes.
The technical challenges facing the Stranger Things production team for Season 5 underscore just how dramatically time has passed. What began as a show featuring actual middle schoolers now stars young adults in their early to mid-twenties playing teenagers. The magic of television requires suspension of disbelief, but the seven-year gap between the show’s premiere and its final season creates a unique storytelling challenge. How do you maintain the illusion of teenage characters when your actors are old enough to have college degrees and mortgages? The creative solutions the production team employs will be fascinating to witness, but they also serve as a reminder that time marches on, regardless of our desire to pause it.
Caleb McLaughlin’s experience adds another layer of complexity to this conversation. While all child stars face the pressure of public scrutiny, McLaughlin’s revelation about racial bias in fan support highlights how intersectional these challenges can be. Growing up in the public eye is difficult enough without having to navigate the additional burden of racial prejudice. His story reminds us that the entertainment industry doesn’t exist in a vacuum—it reflects and sometimes amplifies the same societal issues we grapple with in our daily lives.
As we approach the final season of Stranger Things, perhaps we should reflect on what this journey has taught us about growth, change, and the passage of time. The show itself has always been about nostalgia—for the 1980s, for childhood, for simpler times. But the real lesson might be that we can’t actually go back, no matter how much we might want to. The actors have grown up, the world has changed, and we’ve all moved forward. Maybe that’s not something to mourn but to celebrate—the beautiful, messy, inevitable process of becoming who we’re meant to be, both on screen and off.
About the Author
