When describing the huge success of Stranger Things, it’s common to say that brothers Matt and Ross Duffer caught lightning in a bottle. The Netflix series combined rising ’80s nostalgia with sci-fi, fantasy, and horror tropes, while giving viewers around the globe the experience of watching the cast go through their own “coming of age” story across five seasons from 2016 to 2025. Its popularity broke Netflix servers several times, and there are now several spin-offs centered on the characters’ adventures in the fictional town of Hawkins. The Duffer Brothers didn’t just capture the lightning; they turned it into a franchise.
The difficulty with lightning is that it’s hard enough to capture it once, never mind twice. The Boroughs, described by those involved as “Stranger Things meets Cocoon“, proves that, with the Duffers as executive producers, snatching lightning once more isn’t impossible.
Created by Jeffrey Addis and Will Matthews (Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance), the series follows Sam Cooper (Alfred Molina), a grizzled curmudgeon who moves into a New Mexico retirement village called The Boroughs to be closer to his daughter. Unlike the other retirees, Sam doesn’t see this community as a new start but as a prison for his grief after the recent loss of his wife.
In many ways, The Boroughs treads the same path as the very first season of Stranger Things. Sam, a far more aloof Eleven (with a far more compelling beard) arrives in a thriving community that, while seemingly picturesque like Hawkins, conceals a dark, horrific secret beneath its golden sand. At first, Sam’s prickly exterior and complicated past put him at odds with the rest of the retirees (a stacked cast of Geena Davis, Alfre Woodard, Denis O’Hare, Clarke Peters, and Bill Pullman). However, once the threat of The Boroughs reveals itself, the group puts aside their differences to stop it.
That something isn’t quite right with this paradise retirement village from the very start. Grace (Dee Wallace), one of the village’s retirees, is set upon in the middle of the night by a long, elongated creature that seemingly appears from nowhere inside the walls of her condo. One terrifying scream later, we cut to Sam moving into the condo that Grace died in only a few weeks before.
Yet for all the stark comparisons to the Duffer Brothers’ sci-fi sensation, Addis and Matthews don’t rely on following every aspect of what made Stranger Things great. The biggest diversion is the cast and characters themselves, with The Boroughs trading child actors for iconic industry veterans.
Let’s not beat around the bush: The Boroughs doesn’t star young kids or teens. The retirees we follow are all elderly, with a wealth of experience from their previous lives that make them rounded and enriching characters from the get-go. As I’ve grown older, I’ve become more and more averse to the “coming of age” story. I don’t begrudge its popularity, nor do I deny its relevance and importance in storytelling. The bildungsroman is a classic for a reason, and much of the art that’s impacted me over the years explores the emotional growth of protagonists as they ‘lose their innocence’ and reach maturity after harrowing events.
However, I also can’t deny how refreshing it is to see a sci-fi show that doesn’t rely on jokes about old age for its elderly characters or reduce them to eyeroll-worthy stereotypes. There’s an occasional quip about bad joints, but it’s obvious to anyone watching that Addis and Matthews see the characters’ ages as something to celebrate, rather than the usual Hollywood temptation to treat aging as a moral failure. There’s a particularly moving scene in the first episode where the group sits and talks about their “battle scars” (healed or healing marks from surgery). A lazier scene would have made the characters more jaded and resentful, but here the scars represent more than age — they represent a life well lived. Doesn’t that deserve to be upheld just as important (and celebratory) as youth? Addis and Matthews seem to think so, and it is delightful to watch.
Yet even as the showrunners ensure the plot doesn’t frame the retirees as jokes but as heroes in their own right, drawing on their decades of experience, Addis and Matthews also don’t shy away from confronting the reality of aging — namely, the prejudices so often directed at older people. When our heroes are put between a rock and a hard place by what they uncover in the Boroughs, their enemies are quick to remind them that, regardless of their credibility or experience, no one will believe them because of their age.
When conflict arises, the threat of being mistreated by people far younger and stronger than they are is a sobering reminder of the potential for cruelty that comes from organizations that are, in fact, positioned to help. It’s a dark mirror to how the kids of Stranger Things bemoan they won’t be believed by the adults in their lives, but unlike the kids, the retirees’ very lives are put under threat that, at times, feels far more frightening than even the menacing presence hiding within the retirement village.
With a concept that is as fantastical as it is terrifying, as well as a truly phenomenal cast with off-the-charts chemistry, there’s a lot about The Boroughs that feels as though you’re sitting down to watch Stranger Things for grown-ups. However, it’s what lies beyond the Duffer Brothers’ influence, where we get into the weeds of human connection and the psychology of who we are within our souls, regardless of age, that The Boroughs truly becomes magical.
The Boroughs is streaming now on Netflix.
