Turning an era upside-down: the ten year pop culture impact of Stranger Things

Stranger Things is on the TV. The characters are immersed in the world of the 1980s with their soft pastels, grunge fashion, vintage product designs, and the hits that now play on the throwback station on the radio. The average young viewer feels a wave of nostalgia and a desire to go back in time. But how can someone be nostalgic for a time they never lived through? With the final season of Stranger Things set to be released towards the end of November 2025, it’s undeniable that the TV show has left its impact on modern day culture. 

The core five cast of Stranger things ride off into danger on their iconic bikes in new promotion photos for the upcoming final season. Photo courtesy of Netflix.

Going all the way back to 2016, the very first season of Stranger Things was released onto the streaming service Netflix. The show was met with immediate praise, receiving a 97% on Rotten Tomatoes. Although Netflix was popular before Stranger Things, the swift rise in obsession over the TV show from viewers put the streaming service on the map and Netflix set a new standard for what a streaming original could achieve. The Duffer Brothers, creators of the show, credit this success to the creative freedom they were given and the resources that wouldn’t be as easy to capture today.

Matt Duffer, one of the co-creator of Stranger Things, commented on the show’s instant shot to fame saying, “It’s a little scary. It puts pressure on every season because it has to perform better than the one prior to it in order to justify growing the scale of the show.”

To dive in further, the attraction to the show that viewers felt wasn’t for no reason. Stranger Things’ formula was the solution for a multi-generational favorite. The accuracy of the set designs and the constant callbacks to 1980s culture appealed to the older viewers. On the other hand, the younger fans quickly fell in love with the main character friend group, the supernatural storyline, and the unfamiliar yet recognizable aesthetics of the bygone era. Because of its wide appeal, audiences are able to watch it together as a family.

William Sharp, a teaching professor of psychology at Northeastern discussed this sentiment saying, “So much of what happens in the show speaks to this wistfulness for something we don’t have anymore. We want to go back there, but at the same time we would be afraid if we went back there and it wasn’t exactly like we remembered it.”

To explain this, retro marketing and pseudo-nostalgia play a major part in popularizing the show. Retro marketing is described to be when a company purposely sells merchandise or goods that feed into nostalgic memories for the purpose of driving up excitement. Stranger Things is famous for doing this throughout every season, some examples being: releasing season 1 on VHS or selling frozen pizza and ice cream with fictional company labels featured in the series. These novelty items draw in fans and let the viewer have something tangible to resemble the 1980s aesthetics of the show.

In an article written by the Foundation for Economic Education, Brittany Hunter commented, “There is something about nostalgia that the human psyche craves. And as consumers living in the most prosperous time in history, we increasingly have the luxury of making purchasing decisions based on how products make us feel.”

But that might still leave the question of how that marketing tactic works on people who didn’t

experience the 1980s themselves. Pseudo-nostalgia is the most likely cause. Pseudo-nostalgia is

when people become nostalgic or attached to an era they never experienced because of the media they consumed. Many tend to think that the way Stranger Things is like a time capsule of the 1980s which makes an inexperienced era seem easy to understand for young viewers.

Tom van Laer and Davide Christian Oraz, two college literature professors, mentioned “As

young consumers become pseudo-nostalgic for the 1980s, they look to evoke that decade through ‘compensatory reconsumption’: they immerse themselves in eighties pop culture to cope with their wistful affection and sentimental longing for this period of the past. Consuming 1980-esque products and services allows them to pretend they were really a part of that historical period.”

Because of these two factors, 1980s culture has sprung in popularity over the past ten years. With scrunchies making a comeback in 2019 with the release of the third season where the main character Eleven sported one in her hair, or the mullet making an appearance in popular

hairstyles in 2022 when season four was released and Eddie Munson became the talk of the

internet, retro fashion has been easily influenced by what the characters on Stranger Things wear. More than fashion however has been the music. The Kate Bush song “Running Up That Hill” hit number one on Spotify following the release of season four even though the song was released 40 years ago. Stranger Things isn’t just about making throwback references to 80s movies, the appeal of the 1980s culture also comes from the social atmosphere of the time.

Hadley Freeman, a journalist for The Guardian, wrote “Stranger Things, by contrast, rather than being hamstrung by its 80s template, realized that what people love about 80s movies is not the plots but the feelings they provoke.”

All in all, Stranger Things’ influence on modern day culture can’t be missed. Fans even crashed Netflix following the release of Stranger Things season four volume two. Besides just impacting the products and media we consume, the series has also brought modern day people together to bond over a common interest at a time where most media is catered to the individual, something rare to be found.