Goosebumps is back for its second season on Disney+ and Hulu, but fans who might have been expecting to see the same characters pick up where they left off were met with quite a surprise when they turned on the Season 2 premiere. As revealed when the show was renewed for its second installment, Goosebumps has taken on an anthology format similar to American Horror Story, where each season follows different characters on a new frightening adventure (inspired by R.L. Stine’s iconic books).
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The new season, titled Goosebumps: The Vanishing, kicks off with a new take on Stine’s Stay Out of the Basement and is set thousands of miles from the events of Season 1. This time around, David Schwimmer plays the adult lead, following Justin Long’s starring turn in the first installment. Everything looks different in The Vanishing, but it is still inherently a Goosebumps tale.
Ahead of the season launch this weekend, ComicBook spoke with executive producers Rob Letterman and Hilary Winston about the choice to pivot to a new story, especially when the first season had such a wide open ending. According to Letterman, who also co-created the TV series, it was all about recreating the feeling of the original Goosebumps books.
“It took us a while to grow into the idea,” Letterman explained. “And the way we thought about it is Goosebumps is an anthology series by nature. So each book is its own thing. And they don’t end tied up in a perfect little bow. They actually all end with a door opening with a twist or whatever. So it just felt natural to the canon of Goosebumps. It allowed us to explore a whole new set of books, where we could start fresh, explore different genres, and be scared again.”
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Letterman went on to add that pivoting to an anthology format for Goosebumps also helps to sell the story as the years go on. Putting the same characters into scary scenarios season after season makes it less believable for the audience, as those characters would either become jaded by the horrors they’ve faced, or they’d simply leave their situation.
“We joke about this but there’s some truth to it: How often and how many years can a character experience horror without it just becoming totally jaded by the next monster? Like if an abominable snowman showed up on Season 3 with the same set of characters, not the same reaction,” Letterman told us. “So I think, for all those reasons, it just felt like a natural thing to do.”
All 10 episodes of Goosebumps: The Vanishing are streaming on both Disney+ and Hulu.
