Stranger Things owes a lot to The Goonies and the Alien franchise. So the fact that the Duffer brothers have enlisted stars of those projects—Sean Astin and Paul Reiser, respectively—for season two is almost too perfect. Entertainment Weekly reports that Sean Astin, a.k.a. the inhaler-using Mikey from The Goonies, will play what sounds like a very typical Sean Astin character. He’s Bob Newby: “A kindhearted former nerd who went to high school with Joyce (Winona Ryder) and Hopper (David Harbour) and now manages the local Hawkins RadioShack.” Obviously, Stranger Things takes place in a universe where the The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring has not come out yet, but can you imagine how excited Mike, Dustin, and Lucas would be if they knew they were interacting with Samwise Gamgee?
Meanwhile, Reiser—you know, Burke from Aliens—has been tapped to play “a high-ranking member within the Department of Energy on a ‘clean-up’ assignment, tasked with containing the events of last year.” Reiser is currently on the Amazon series Red Oaks, which, like Stranger Things, is also set in the 1980s.
Finally, the series has cast Danish actress Linnea Berthelsen as Roman, a previously revealed new character, who is “an emotionally damaged, magnetic young woman who suffered a great loss as a child.” Berthelsen was not in a nostalgic touchstone, but we’ll forgive her. As for returning favorites, Netflix has indeed confirmed that Millie Bobby Brown will be back as Eleven.