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Wow. See How Much the Young 'Stranger Things' Stars Have Grown Up

Millie Bobby Brown, who plays Eleven, was just 11 when the show premiered in 2016.

Gael Cooper
CNET editor Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, a journalist and pop-culture junkie, is co-author of "Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? The Lost Toys, Tastes and Trends of the '70s and '80s," as well as "The Totally Sweet '90s." She's been a journalist since 1989, working at Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, Twin Cities Sidewalk, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and NBC News Digital. She's Gen X in birthdate, word and deed. If Marathon candy bars ever come back, she'll be first in line.
Expertise Breaking news, entertainment, lifestyle, travel, food, shopping and deals, product reviews, money and finance, video games, pets, history, books, technology history, generational studies. Credentials
  • Co-author of two Gen X pop-culture encyclopedia for Penguin Books. Won "Headline Writer of the Year"​ award for 2017, 2014 and 2013 from the American Copy Editors Society. Won first place in headline writing from the 2013 Society for Features Journalism.
Gael Cooper
Millie Bobby Brown in season 1 and older in season 4

Millie Bobby Brown plays Eleven. The actress was just 11 when she took the role, as seen in the season 1 photo on the left. She's now 18, as seen on the right in a photo from season 4.

Netflix

Stranger Things blasted onto Netflix in 2016, and viewers fell into the spell of 1980s Hawkins, Indiana, a town with ordinary kids and an extraordinary secret. The show became a huge hit, and the first episodes of the long-awaited fourth season are dropping on May 27, with more on July 1.

The show juggles a variety of different age groups. Adults like Police Chief Jim Hopper (David Harbour) and frazzled mom Joyce Byers (Winona Ryder) don't change in appearance much from year to year. But the younger actors -- especially the middle-schoolers -- are changing fast. Millie Bobby Brown, who plays telekinetically powered Eleven, was herself just 11 when the show premiered. Now she's 18, and dazzled fans in a striking black-and-white evening gown at the season 4 premiere on May 14. 

Flip through our gallery of images from the first four seasons to see how the main characters have grown up. No worries, the season 4 images don't reveal any spoilers.

'Stranger Things' Stars Then and Now: Wow, They've Really Grown Up

See all photos