Starting this week, 2025 will be dominated by one cultural event: the farewell to Stranger Things. The series that debuted in 2016, carrying the label “the new Goonies,” now reaches its final chapter in the very year The Goonies turns 40. Coincidence? Perhaps. But within pop culture’s collective imagination, it feels more like a poetic alignment: the film that inspired a wave of ’80s nostalgia meets the concluding arc of the show that inherited its spirit.

The connection between The Goonies and Stranger Things isn’t just aesthetic — it’s emotional. Both draw from the same well: the adventure films of the 1980s, where groups of children and teenagers faced colossal dangers while juggling bikes, school schedules, and oblivious parents. The Duffer Brothers have openly acknowledged The Goonies as a direct influence on the first season of Stranger Things — and you can feel it in every flashlight beam, every tunnel, every whispered conversation between friends.

And curiously — or not — Stranger Things says goodbye in the same year The Goonies celebrates its four decades. In June, the original cast reunited online and in person to honor the milestone, almost as if 1985 had never ended. Mikey, Data, Mouth, Chunk… names that now belong as much to pop culture as to the actors themselves. Time has passed, of course, but the film’s most iconic line — “Goonies never say die” — has become a kind of silent pact among fans, cast, Hollywood and everyone who grew up believing in maps, pirates and infinite possibilities.

When the cast celebrated the 40th anniversary publicly, it wasn’t just a nostalgic gesture. It felt like an acknowledgment of how that small, suburban, improbable story carved itself into generations because it believed deeply in us — in our friendships, our fears, and our fragile but expanding courage. It was a film that trusted its audience, especially the children watching, and maybe that’s why it remains so intimate, so alive.

The Goonies was born as a classic Amblin project. Released in 1985, directed by Richard Donner and written by Chris Columbus from a story by Steven Spielberg, it may have looked like a “kids’ film” on paper, but it grew into one of the foundational works of modern adventure cinema. Its now-mythic cast included a young Sean Astin, newcomer Josh Brolin, the unforgettable Jeff Cohen, plus Corey Feldman, Kerri Green, Martha Plimpton and Ke Huy Quan — who would return to Hollywood’s center decades later with an Oscar in hand.

The plot, simple and universal, begins in Astoria, Oregon, where a group of kids discovers a pirate map and decides to save their homes from foreclosure. What follows — tunnels, traps, skeletons, improvised bravery — is pure Amblin spirit: real danger wrapped in humor, warmth and loyalty. The adventure unfolds like the perfect Saturday matinee, culminating in the discovery of the pirate ship Inferno, intact and waiting in the cavern like a secret preserved for centuries.

The Fratellis, both ridiculous and threatening, complicate everything. Chunk forms one of cinema’s sweetest unlikely friendships with Sloth. Andy, Stef and Brand complete the group. And in the finale, when Rosalita finds the jewels in Mikey’s marble bag, it’s not just the Walsh home that’s saved — it’s their whole world.

The film earned nearly $70 million in its initial run and became an instant cult favorite. In 2017, it was selected for the National Film Registry as “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant.” And in February 2025, the news fans had waited decades for finally arrived: the sequel is officially happening, with Steven Spielberg, Chris Columbus and Potsy Ponciroli involved.

And this is where the bridge to Stranger Things becomes even clearer.

Both stories center on a group of kids functioning as a small resistance squad. In The Goonies, the mission is to save the neighborhood. In Stranger Things, it’s to fight literal monsters — but the logic is the same: no one survives alone. Mike Wheeler, in many ways, is a modern echo of Mikey Walsh: the reluctant leader who improvises, fails, tries again, and insists because he believes friendship has a power adults tend to forget.

The underground passages in Stranger Things mirror the Goonies’ cavern crawl. Both are set in small towns where the impossible finds a way to happen. And the ’80s atmosphere is not just setting — it’s affection, memory.

And then there’s the most explicit connection: Sean Astin. The Mikey of 1985 reappears in season two of Stranger Things as Bob Newby, the man who is almost too good for Hawkins. His casting was a gesture of love. His reference to monsters and maps is a direct nod to The Goonies. And when Bob shows up, it’s as if the series itself were admitting: “We exist because The Goonies existed first.”

In the end, The Goonies and Stranger Things share the same emotional core: stories about friendship, loyalty and fear told from the perspective of those just beginning to understand the world — and who, for that very reason, can confront it with a courage adulthood tends to forget.

And maybe that’s why, forty years later, The Goonies remains.
It never said goodbye.
It never would.
After all, Goonies never say die.