Goosebumps: The Vanishing's Monster Explained: Origins, Powers & Different Forms
Although Goosebumps: The Vanishing’s monster seems tough to understand at first, a close re-watch of the season explains how the creatures work and what their powers are. 2023’s Goosebumps reboot adapted numerous RL Stine novels into an original story of small-town teens banding together after encountering various mysterious paranormal events. Goosebumps season 1’s cliffhanger ending left the fate of the show’s hero a mystery, but season 2 did not pick up where the series left off. Instead, Goosebumps: The Vanishing’s story is not connected to the plot of season 1 and centers on all-new characters.
Goosebumps: The Vanishing introduces botanist Anthony Brewer, whose older brother Matty went missing in the abandoned fort Fort Jerome, nicknamed “Camp Nightmare," when the pair were teenagers in 1994. Matty and three friends seemingly disappeared that night and Anthony always wanted to know the truth about what really happened. However, he first must focus on looking after his twin teenagers, Devin and Cece. Devin and Cece are spending the summer in Gravesend with Anthony, and they soon befriend the local teens, Alex, Trey, Frankie, and CJ. Goosebumps: The Vanishing’s cats of characters eventually find out what caused the disappearances.
Goosebumps: The Vanishing's Alien Crash Landed At Fort Jerome In 1968
The Spaceship Is First Seen Attacking A Camp Counselor
In the cold open of season 2, episode 7, “Welcome to Camp Nightmare,” viewers finally learn how and when the aliens from Goosebumps: The Vanishing first appeared. Goosebumps: The Vanishing’s alien spaceship crashed into Fort Jerome in 1968 while a group of Boy Scouts was touring the facility, and the spaceship’s inhabitants immediately emerged as a cloud of sentient black spores that grabbed the group’s counselor. Throughout Goosebumps: The Vanishing’s story, the spore form of the aliens repeatedly reappears. Hannah, the “Ghost” that Devin talks to, turns into a cloud of black spores when she disappears at Fort Jerome.
The aliens manifest as killer plants that worm their way under Anthony’s skin after contact with them.
Similarly, the monstrous blob that pursues Cece through the city in episode 4, “Monster Blood,” is initially depicted as a cloud of black spores in her kombucha cup. To facilitate Goosebumps: The Vanishing referencing various Stine stories, the alien spores take on the form of various monsters. In the season’s two-part opening episode, “Stay Out of the Basement Parts I & II,” the aliens manifest as killer plants that worm their way under Anthony’s skin after contact with them. In the same outing, the plants turn Trey into a scaly, humanoid monster that Frankie soon crushes to death with his own car.
The Alien Ship Was Studied By Avi & His Team Under Fort Jerome
Avi And His Daughter Tried To Understand The Alien Craft
After being crushed, the alien monster that was Trey became a cloud of spores again and took control of his beloved car. The alien spores that controlled Trey’s car later entered Cece’s kombucha cup, proving that the entities could change their form at will. In episode 5, “The Boy Who Cried Monster,” Anthony’s body was taken over by the spores, and he bounced between his normal self and an alien imitator. The alien’s ability to body-snatch people is explicitly confirmed in “Welcome To Camp Nightmare,” when viewers see Dr. Pamani and his daughter, Ramona, experimenting on the spaceship with a team.
Pamani’s experiments prove that the spaceship effectively takes hostages by injecting humans with their spores and placing them in pods that keep them cryogenically frozen. Goosebumps: The Vanishing’s story sees Dr. Pamani argue that the aliens are aggressors who could take over the human race with this ploy, while his daughter points out that they may merely be acting in self-defense. The younger doctor turns out to have a good point when viewers learn how the pods work and why the aliens are using them. For them, self-preservation turns out to be a bigger concern than world domination.
The Alien's Pods & Powers Explained
The Pods Can Preserve People By Making Them Aliens
Image via Disney+
The alien pods preserve people but turn them into alien creatures in the process, which seems to explain why the teenagers from 1994 only remain their old human selves for a few hours after they are rescued from Fort Jerome. Since he was one of the first humans to be “Podded” in the late ‘60s, Dr. Pamani only survives as a human for a few moments before he transforms into an alien creature. In contrast, Matty, Hannah, and the rest of the teens from 1994 last at least a few hours since they were all “Podded” at the same time.
Although Trey was “Podded,” he wasn’t stuck in the spaceship for so long that his DNA started to merge with that of the aliens.
They all transform into creatures simultaneously and start attacking Frankie, CJ, Trey, Cece, Alex, and Devin, eventually placing the teens into pods. This makes sense since, although Trey was also “Podded,” he wasn’t stuck in the spaceship for so long that his DNA started to merge with that of the aliens. This is why Trey vomits up a strange alien bug in the finale’s closing moments, since his time in the spaceship had to have some impact on his body. Goosebumps season 2's story changes the powers of the aliens frequently, but they do add up in the end.
Every Form The Alien Takes In Goosebumps: The Vanishing
The Alien Becomes A Humanoid Monster, A Blob, A Ghost, Black Goo, And Creatures
The alien from Goosebumps: The Vanishing turns into a carnivorous plant, a sentient black goo/cloud of spores, a humanoid Trey monster, a giant blob, a talking ghost in the form of Hannah, and numerous alien creatures throughout the story of the season. The true form of the aliens appears to be the creatures seen in the final episode, which are first introduced in episode 6, “The Ghost Next Door.” During an extended found footage sequence, Hannah walks around the spaceship in 1994 and repeatedly encounters one of these creatures. This is how they appear when not disguising their true form.
Throughout most of Goosebumps: The Vanishing's story, they appear as the cloud of spores that manifests as Hannah’s ghost, possesses Trey’s car, and becomes a blob after hiding in Cece’s kombucha.
However, the aliens are masters of disguise. Throughout most of Goosebumps: The Vanishing's story, they appear as the cloud of spores that manifests as Hannah’s ghost, possesses Trey’s car, and becomes a blob after hiding in Cece’s kombucha. However, they also infect Anthony and Trey’s bodies before “Podding” them. They also transform their older victims, like Matty, Hannah, and Dr. Pamani, into alien creatures. If the alien monster from Goosebumps: The Vanishing has any known weakness, it is the ray gun that Dr. Ramona Pamani developed to vaporize the creatures and the antidote that she used to revive Anthony Brewer.
Goosebumps: The Vanishing is currently available to stream 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
- Story By
- R.L. Stine
