Entertainment
The Duffer Brothers’ New Series ‘The Boroughs’ Is Netflix’s Latest Sci-Fi Gem
Upside Down Pictures’ string of post-Stranger Things releases continues with Netflix’s new 8-part sci-fi, The Boroughs. If you expected it to be another Spielbergian pastiche, just with older people as the heroes rather than children, then you’re only half right. The Boroughs is both a mystery and a memento mori. When “The Grey Rebellion,” fronted by Alfred Molina, uncovers an otherworldly threat preying on the residents of their senior living facility, they embark on a dangerous pursuit and are asked to confront not just how to kill a monster, but how far they are willing to go to revisit their youth.
What Is ‘The Boroughs’ About?
Sam Cooper (Molina), a retired aeronautical engineer, moves into The Boroughs — an idyllic 1950s idea of community that’s so perfect it becomes eerie. His wife Lily (Jane Kaczmarek) had opted for the couple to make the transition, but prematurely died of a stroke, and Cooper is locked into his contract to stay in “God’s waiting room.” Cantankerous and reclusive, Sam initially rejects meeting his fellow neighbors, but when pushed by Bill Pullman’s Jack, he attends a welcome BBQ.
Here, Sam meets Judy (Alfre Woodard) and Art (Clarke Peters). Judy is a journalist who stalks each new resident online because she misses being on the beat. Art is a marijuana enthusiast who claims he tees off on the golf course each morning but is really tending to his hallucinogens in the desert and has a therapeutic relationship with a crow. Geena Davis plays Renee, a glamorous teacher at the community center who drives a convertible and turns the heads of even the younger employees. There’s also Wally (Denis O’Hare), a skilled doctor who was at the forefront of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s and is the comic relief of the core team.
Socializing proves too much for Sam, who is still in the raw stages of grief, so he runs home and breaks down on his front porch. Pullman’s Jack comforts him by saying, “Grief makes your past feel too close to your future,” reinforcing the idea that you really do begin a new life at The Boroughs. While the premiere is hopeful and the pair look set to become best buds, later that evening, Sam has to break into Jack’s home and wrestle a monster off him.
‘The Boroughs’ Is Another Spielberg Pastiche From the Duffer Brothers, and It Works
While created by Jeffrey Addiss and Will Matthews (The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance), The Boroughs is a product of Upside Down Pictures and executive produced by the Duffer Brothers. The pair saw unprecedented success with their first series, Stranger Things, which was Netflix’s flagship sci-fi for a decade. Their own filmic interests and childhood favorites inform much of their work, and the pair note Steven Spielberg and Stephen King as large influences. The Boroughs continues this tradition of honoring elements of sci-fi stories that came before, and the familiar is immediately immersive.
The Boroughs begins like The Truman Show — the homes are carbon copies of each other, everything is in pastel, and the staff seems to be indoctrinated, talking to the residents in a patronizing, childlike manner. There’s a cult-like, religious, almost Stepford quality to the neighborhood, which has everyone reciting, “You’ll have the time of your life!” Each home is fitted with a hard-wired communication device, akin to 2001’s HAL, named Seraphim. The managerial team, Blaine (Seth Numrich) and Anneliese Shaw (Alice Kremelberg), are too pristine to trust and are seen watching monochrome classics throughout (including Double Indemnity, famous for femme fatales and secret plots).
It’s going to be nigh on impossible to shake the Stranger Things comparisons with anything produced by Upside Down Pictures, but it is a lazy comparison; The Boroughs deserves more than to be discussed as a copy. It clearly borrows its charm from sci-fi conventions and has the same DNA, but it works.
‘The Boroughs’ premieres this week on Netflix.
Netflix’s ‘The Boroughs’ Puts a New Spin on Sci-Fi Heroes
The Boroughs treats its older characters with respect from the off. It refuses to infantilize or depict them through stereotypical images of retirement. Instead, they are active, intelligent, and resilient with ongoing emotional lives. After 45 years, Art and Judy’s relationship is strained due to her interest in another man, and Art’s busy puffing away on his Blue Dream weed — hardly the actions of has-beens. (Although dialogue is creatively muffled in some scenes until Art puts his hearing aids in!) The series directly challenges the notion that old age means decline and that youth is something to be clung to. However, The Boroughs frames prolonging life as something seductive but ultimately unsustainable, as it is wrong to disrupt the fullness of life’s arc.
At times, The Boroughs is an emotional watch due to its sharp commentary on real-world dynamics. What’s more terrifying than the monsters is how older voices are suppressed, manipulated, and dismissed as dementia. In the neighborhood, this works in favor of the show’s most insidious threat, as anyone heard discussing otherworldly beings is institutionalized in “The Manor,” a central medical hub that supervises those with the most complex needs.
In stories like these, it’s usually children who find themselves at the center of the mystery, and there is a nostalgic pull to that as the world is still waiting to be discovered. Society ignores both older people and children, assuming they are incapable, yet they are the ones who can see what others cannot, which makes them effective in sci-fi stories. The Boroughs forces viewers to confront their own future. We want the group to succeed, and not just because it makes for a triumphant ending. If Sam, Wally, Renee, Art, and Judy can remain perceptive, brave, and capable in a world that has already written them off, then aging itself becomes less frightening.
In the final third of the story, however, the show’s conflict becomes less straightforward. What first seems like simple horror starts to connect to The Boroughs’ bigger questions about the cost of extending life beyond its natural limits, and this sometimes diverts attention away from the main quest. The story moves away from a clear good-versus-evil setup, and a simpler version with a hero and villain might have felt more satisfying, even if it meant losing some of the deeper ideas and ambiguity the series deliberately leans into.
The Boroughs also includes flashbacks to Sam’s wife to explore his grief, and his panic attacks and visions of her underline how deeply her absence affects him. However, this can sometimes feel unnecessary, as his emotional state is already clearly established through his behavior and dialogue. Other characters, such as Wally, Art, Judy, and Renee, have equally rich potential backstories that are only heard rather than seen. While Wally’s experiences of loss during the AIDS crisis and Renee’s past as a music executive are touched on, depth could have been distributed more evenly across the ensemble rather than focused so heavily on Sam. Even so, the cast remains one of the show’s strongest elements. O’Hare’s Wally, in particular, provides comedy throughout without undermining the horror stakes — whether it’s packing a tote bag for the mission with granola bars and a meat cleaver or playing a YouTube tutorial to pick a lock at the funeral parlor.
Despite some later narrative choices around the monsters feeling more complex than expected, The Boroughs remains a magical sci-fi adventure about an unlikely group of heroes standing up for themselves in later life. Beneath its mystery, it becomes a moving exploration of grief that challenges how we think about old age and the inevitability of death. To answer Jack’s question to Sam in the premiere — “What do you do with the time you’ve got left?” — nothing seems more exciting than monster hunting.
The Boroughs is now streaming on Netflix.
- Release Date
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May 21, 2026
- Network
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Netflix
- Showrunner
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Jeffrey Addiss, Will Matthews
- Directors
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Augustine Frizzell, Kyle Patrick Alvarez, Ben Taylor
- Alfred Molina leads a captivating ensemble cast of aging heroes.
- The Boroughs honors elements of sci-fi stories that came before and the familiar immediately immerses you.
- The series directly challenges the notion that old age means decline and that youth is something to be clung to.
- The story moves away from a clear good vs. evil setup, and a simpler version with a hero and villain might have felt more satisfying.
- Wally, Art, Judy, and Renee have potentially rich backstories that are only heard and not seen.
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