When Netflix announced The Boroughs, a new sci-fi adventure series about a group of friends who take down a strange creature terrorizing their community, plenty of people had the same thought: it’s just Stranger Things but in a retirement community. It’s easy to see why, as there’s that unmistakable Stephen King tone, a bunch of 1980s needle drops, and, most obviously, Stranger Things creators The Duffer Brothers as producers. There was even a theory that the characters in The Boroughs were actually the Stranger Things kids all grown up.
Showrunners Jeffrey Addiss and Will Matthews are very aware of the comparison. “We both wanted to tell coming-of-age stories,” Addiss tells Inverse. “We just picked a different age, but it's all still unlikely heroes. If a group of kids comes to somebody and says, ‘I saw a monster,’ they're not going to be believed. If a group of older folks comes and says they saw a monster, they're not going to be believed.”
