Netflix has finally released the official Stranger Things season three trailer and the series continues to give off strong Stand By Me vibes. Everyone is eager to find out what the big bads have in store for our favorite Hawkins residents, but season three is as much about growing up as it is about fighting monsters. With the main characters getting older, expect to see them experience some growing pains when the season launches on July 4.
The coming-of-age series flashing with its signature ’80s aesthetic might be told through a sci-fi horror lens, but the real storylines lie with its characters, especially the young leads. To celebrate the new footage from the highly-anticipated season, we put together some of the best unique and current coming-of-age shows.
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Stranger Things Coming-of-Age
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'Sex Education'
Netflix's comedy-drama features a group of teens navigating the complicated world of sex, high school, complex relationships, discrimination, bullying, and everything in between. Add on the main character using his sex-therapist mother's knowledge to start a sex therapy clinic at school, and you have a story ripe with hilarity, heartbreak, and genuinely heartwarming moments.
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'On My Block'
This coming-of-age comedy, streaming on Netflix, follows four bright and street-savvy friends navigating their way through triumph, pain, and the newness of high school. Set in their predominantly Hispanic and black neighborhood in L.A.'s South Central, friendships are tested as they confront challenges of life and adolescence.
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'Deadly Class'
In SYFY's adaptation of Rick Remender's comics, Deadly Class follows a teenager recruited off of the streets into a mysterious high school for assassins. Outcast teens, all with disturbing and traumatic childhoods, strive for a sense of normalcy while constantly surrounded by violence and death. The story is funny, bonkers, bloody, gut-wrenching, and touching as these doomed kids come-of-age in the most dysfunctional setting.
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'Shrill'
Hulu's newest comedy is encouraging audiences to be loud and proud, and we're absolutely here for it. In the series, a young woman named Annie wants to change her life, but not her body. Sharing the lesson that embracing yourself is the best way to stir stuff up, this adult coming-of-age tale will inspire you to feel comfortable in your own skin.
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'Elite'
Elite is Netflix's soapy teen drama set in Spain that follows three working-class teens who enroll in an exclusive private school. They inevitably clash with the wealthy students which, naturally, leads to murder.
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'Marvel's Runaways'
Superhero teens are like any other kid, just trying their best to grow up as normally as possible. Hulu's sci-fi drama shows that can prove tricky when you discover your parents are evil supervillains and you have to go on the run, but growing up really isn't easy for anyone, is it?
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'Chilling Adventures of Sabrina'
Growing up might be hard for everyone, but try becoming an adult when you're struggling to balance your dark, wicked, witchy self with the mortal world. And don't forget the complex, newly-brewing love triangle. Who says you can't raise a little hell while dealing with teenage drama?
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'Big Mouth'
Netflix's edgy adult animated series from Nick Kroll and Andrew Goldberg centers on growing pains and the glorious nightmare that is teenage puberty through a funny, fresh, over-the-top perspective.
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'PEN15'
This half-hour Hulu comedy takes you back to the year 2000 and follows two seventh-grade girls dealing with the awkwardness of being a teenager. Played by Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle as 13-year-old versions of themselves, the two friends deal with being outcasts and the nightmare that is middle school.
