Stranger Things returns for its last season this year, with three parts airing on November 26, December 25, and finally ending on New Year’s Eve. The hit series by Matt and Ross Duffer owes a lot to the influence of two people. Those two people are Steven Spielberg and Stephen King. It is easy to see the influence of Spielberg, with hints of family stories from movies like E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. However, there are also a lot of moments in the first four Stranger Things seasons that feature Easter eggs related to Stephen King stories.
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This is especially true for one specific story that was already made into a movie in the 1970s. That novel is Firestarter, and it shares a lot of themes in common with the story of Eleven in Stranger Things.
Eleven in Stranger Things Owes Her Existence to Firestarter
The big twist in Stranger Things saw an alternate dimension called the Upside Down, to which a scientific laboratory accidentally opened a portal. However, while the various monsters in the Upside Down bring a lot of the horror moments, it is the organization that opened the portal that plays into the big Stephen King connection. That is because this organization captured young children and ran experiments on these test subjects. One of these children was Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown).
This is when viewers learn Eleven is a telepath with psychokinetic abilities thanks to the experiments run on her by Dr. Brenner (Matthew Modine) at the Hawkins National Laboratory. She eventually escapes the lab, finds people to take her in, and becomes the adoptive daughter of the local police chief, Jim Hopper (David Harbour). The two then have to survive attacks by the monsters and people from the Hawkins National Laboratory who want to cover up their experiments and eliminate Eleven.
If that sounds familiar, it is because the Hawkins National Laboratory and Eleven’s story sound like Matt and Ross Duffer pulled it straight out of the Stephen King story Firestarter. Released in 1980, the novel tells the story of Charlie McGee, a young girl whose parents gained superhuman powers in government experiments before they escaped from the agency. Now, the agency wants to find Charlie and bring her in because she has gained powers from her parents, although it was pyrokinesis rather than telepathy.
There was also a Firestarter movie based on Charlie and her life on the run from the agency with her dad. Nine-year-old Drew Barrymore starred as Charlie in a movie that helped her break out, alongside her performance in the Steven Spirlberg movie E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial. The film showed the terror Charlie felt, and the anger that flowed out of her when she unleashed her power fighting back. It was easily a precursor to Eleven, as the two characters share similar DNA. Add in a terrifying George C. Scott as the military man hunting Charlie down, and it shared much in common with Stranger Things, at least for Eleven’s story.
Ignore the Firestarter Remake From 2022
While the original Firestarter movie has developed a cult classic status, especially for Stephen King fans, it was not nearly as brilliant as the source novel. With that said, the 1984 film is a masterpiece compared to the remake that came out in 2022. The studio released the remake simultaneously in theaters and on Peacock streaming, which caused the movie to end up as a box office disappointment, making only $15 million on a $12 million budget.
However, as much as the film was a box office disappointment thanks to its release format, it was also a critically panned release. This film stars Ryan Kiera Armstrong as Charlie and Zac Efron playing her father, which had to be a shock for people who grew up looking at him as a heartthrob from High School Musical. Michael Greyeyes stars as John Rainbird, a clear step down from George C. Scott. The Firestarter remake has a 10% rotten score on Rotten Tomatoes, one of the lowest-rated Stephen King adaptations ever made.
The good news is that, while only one of the Firestarter adaptations is worth watching for fans of the novel, Stranger Things went a long way into showing how to tell the story of an extraordinary girl fighting for her life from an impossibly overpowered agency right. Any Stephen King fan who loved the story in Firestarter should be excited to see how Eleven’s story ends in Stranger Things Season 5.
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