Goosebumps Season 2 Revisits The Best Twist From R.L. Stine's Books - But Wastes It
Warning: This article contains SPOILERS for Goosebumps (2023) and Goosebumps: The Vanishing
Although Goosebumps: The Vanishing does borrow the best twist from the source novel series, the show squanders this revelation. 2023’s Goosebumps adaptation might have borrowed certain plot points and scenes from RL Stine’s iconic ‘90s novel series, but the show mostly used the Goosebumps books as a launch pad. Season 1’s mixture of teen drama and a small-town supernatural mystery took elements from titles like The Cuckoo Clock of Doom and Say Cheese and Die but, byGoosebumps season 1’s ending, it was clear the show had a personality and storyline of its own.
Similarly, Goosebumps: The Vanishing’s cast of characters are entirely original even if their story takes inspiration from numerous Stine titles. Goosebumps: The Vanishing follows botanist Anthony Brewer, whose brother went missing mysteriously in 1994, and his teen twins, Devin and Cece. When the twins befriend the local Gravesend teens CJ, Frankie, Alex, and Trey, they end up inadvertently uncovering the mystery behind the disappearance of Anthony’s brother years earlier and discover a bizarre conspiracy involving shape-shifting aliens. In the process, Goosebumps: The Vanishing’s various RL Stine references ensure the series feels like part of the Goosebumps universe.
Goosebumps Season 2’s Hannah Is Revealed To Be A Ghost
Hannah Was The Heroine Of Goosebumps Book 10 The Ghost Next Door
Image via Disney+
In season 2, episode 6, “The Girl Next Door,” Devin’s mysterious new friend Hannah is revealed to be a ghost in a twist that will be familiar to anyone who recalls Stine’s Goosebumps novels. Goosebumps book 10, The Ghost Next Door, centers on a girl who becomes convinced that her new next-door neighbor is secretly a ghost. In one of the most genuinely unsettling twists in the entire original novel series, Hannah herself is eventually revealed to have been the real ghost all along in the novel’s twist ending.
Hannah’s conversation is strange and stilted and Devin appears to be in a trance when he speaks to her.
This twist might be familiar for Goosebumps super-fans but, unfortunately, Goosebumps: The Vanishing does not pull off the revelation anywhere near as well as the original novel. Goosebumps: The Vanishing’s Hannah is obviously eerie and blatantly off from the first moment she is introduced, sitting alone on a park bench and trying to seduce Devin. Hannah’s conversation is strange and stilted and Devin appears to be in a trance when he speaks to her, meaning viewers know that something is seriously wrong long before Goosebumps: The Vanishing’s ending. This is an unfortunate waste of a great twist.
Goosebumps Season 2 Wastes This Potentially Great Twist
Hannah Is Introduced Too Late And Is Obviously Not Normal
Devin meets Hannah immediately after a bad fight with his love interest Frankie, so Goosebumps: The Vanishing could have treated her as a legitimate new character and kept her real origins a secret. However, Hannah’s uncanny manner of speaking, her unblinking stare, and the creepy music that accompanies her arrival all blatantly telegraph the twist, as does the episode’s title. Hannah is clearly a ghost or something otherwise supernatural in Goosebumps: The Vanishing, and viewers never get a chance to engage with her as a real person or a human character.
This is what made The Ghost Next Door so notable among RL Stine’s Goosebumps novels, as the book led viewers to empathize with Hannah and see the world through her eyes before revealing the truth about her. In contrast, Goosebumps: The Vanishing immediately makes it obvious that Hannah is a villain, so she never seems normal or trustworthy as her plot progresses. By the second time she appears on-screen, Hannah is straight-up hypnotizing Devin to follow her to his potential doom, and her role in the show makes Goosebumps: The Vanishing’s conflicted aliens less sympathetic than they otherwise could be.
2015’s Goosebumps Movie Used This Twist Better
Odeya Rush’s Hannah Turning Out To Be A Ghost Was Surprising
Bizarrely, the Goosebumps franchise already used this twist effectively in 2015’s live-action Goosebumps movie, wherein Odeya Rush’s love interest Hannah was also revealed to be a ghost all along. Everything from her eerie demeanor to the musical stings that accompany her appearances warns viewers Goosebumps: The Vanishing’s Hannah is obviously not real, whereas 2015’s Goosebumps movie presents Hannah as a real character for most of its runtime. It seems like Hannah’s overprotective father is her only problem, so the revelation that she has always been a ghost comes as a truly shocking surprise.
In the show’s rush to make Hannah a threatening villain, Goosebumps: The Vanishing’s Camp Nightmare storyline squandered a potentially great twist.
Goosebumps: The Vanishing could have repeated this success, but Devin’s encounter with Hannah is tonally misjudged. In the show’s rush to make Hannah a threatening villain,Goosebumps: The Vanishing’s Camp Nightmare storyline squandered a potentially great twist. Instead of getting viewers invested in the character and then revealing she was a ghost all along, Goosebumps: The Vanishing makes it clear that she is a ghost from the outset and saps the subplot of any mystery, tension, or gratifying twist.
Goosebumps: The Vanishing is currently streaming on Hulu.
Goosebumps
- Release Date
- October 13, 2023
- Cast
- David Schwimmer, Jayden Bartels, Francesca Noel, Galilea La Salvia, Elijah M. Cooper, Ana Ortiz, Zack Morris, Justin Long, Ana Yi Puig, Miles McKenna, Will Price, Isa Briones, Rachael Harris, Rob Huebel
- Writers
- Nicholas Stoller, Rob Letterman, Kevin Murphy
- Franchise(s)
- Goosebumps
- Creator(s)
- Rob Letterman, Nicholas Stoller
- Seasons
- 1
