Stranger Week Day 4 – POP! Television: Lucas (Stranger Things)

It’s become something of a trope for every show with supernatural elements to have a sceptical character, providing a counterbalance to the weird happenings around them. Sometimes they’re a genuine voice of reason; other times they’re excruciating to watch, as their scepticism in the setting of the series flies in the face of anything resembling commonsense. To provide an example (though Gillian Anderson was great in the role), Agent Scully’s scepticism in the face of all evidence to the contrary wore increasingly thin for the audience over the course of 9 seasons, two movies and a miniseries of The X-Files.

Fortunately, Lucas leans towards the former type of TV sceptic, rather than the latter. He’s the most overtly suspicious of Eleven, initially believing her to be a questionable influence (and asking all sorts of not entirely unreasonable questions about where she might have come from), and once outright accusing her of being a “monster”. But once convinced of her goodness and power, his resistance decreases – this is a much more plausible arc than Scully went through.

Like the Dustin and Mike POPs (reviews to come), Lucas is dressed in his pseudo-commando gear, from towards the end of Season 1. This is a good choice; while it was fair enough for Will to be decked out in his regular clothes, it would have been a little bit on the dull side to essentially have plainclothes versions of all of the main kids. Lucas is equipped with his binoculars (which would be virtually useless on the huge head size of a POP, a backpack and a Batman-style utility belt. Everything is nicely sculpted, and the paint is surprisingly well executed. 

Assuming that these figures sell well (by all indications they are) I strongly suspect that we’ll see Season 2 figures of the main guys somewhere down the line. Though Lucas and Dustin are unlikely to ever receive the same level of merchandising as Eleven, they’re still core characters and good additions to the collection.