The final installments of \u201cStranger Things\u201d are set to hit Netflix in three different episode drops later this year, marking an end to a nearly decade-long saga that transformed the lives of all of its young stars. Fans of the show have seen its child cast grow up in front of our eyes, and at this point, rewatching season 1 feels a bit like stepping into a time machine \u2014 to both the \u201980s and the 2010s.<\/p>\n
While season 1\u2019s wide-eyed Millie Bobby Brown-Bongiovi, high-pitched Caleb McLaughlin, and baby-faced Gaten Matarazzo have been the subject of countless \u201cbefore and after\u201d photo comparisons along with their fellow kid cast members, several \u201cStranger Things\u201d stars actually got their Hollywood starts before being cast in the massive Netflix series. Finn Wolfhard was in an episode of \u201cSupernatural,\u201d Sadie Sink popped up in \u201cThe Americans,\u201d and Noah Schnapp even voiced Charlie Brown in the 2015 Peanuts movie. Yet few pre-\u201cStranger Things\u201d roles have been quite as unsettling as that of Rachel Barnes, a murderous little girl in a season 12 episode of \u201cNCIS\u201d played by Brown-Bongiovi.<\/p>\n
Before she was Eleven, Brown played a killer kid<\/p>\n
Brown-Bongiovi appears in the \u201cNCIS\u201d episode \u201cParental Guidance Suggested,\u201d and it\u2019s clear from the start that she\u2019s been cast to play the most adorable elementary school kid in the world (the actress herself was 10 years old during shooting). Early in the episode, the pigtail-wearing kiddo heads home from school alongside another boy her age and his father, all the while making the case for why it\u2019s cool to wear a \u201cHarry Potter\u201d costume three Halloweens in a row. When she gets home, Rachel seemingly finds her mother dead of a gunshot wound to the back.<\/p>\n
The \u201cNCIS\u201d episode takes its time getting to its big twist, instead using a good chunk of its runtime to endear us further to Rachel. Her dad, we discover, is on a Navy commander on a terrorist hit list, and she\u2019s grown up expecting the worst. In one scene, Special Agent Gibbs (Mark Harmon, who starred in the show for its first 18 seasons) lures her out from a hiding spot with popcorn and hot chocolate, then helps her build a fort so she can feel safe. Given his character\u2019s own dead daughter (and wife, and mom), this moment is especially sweet.<\/p>\n
Then Rachel is revealed to be the killer<\/p>\n
\u201cParental Guidance Suggested\u201d seems to pull a bit of inspiration from the 1956 film \u201cThe Bad Seed,\u201d in which a little pigtail-sporting girl named Rhoda becomes a cold-blooded killer when her dad leaves on military duty. The episode builds on that film\u2019s premise by making Rachel\u2019s relationship with her father \u2014 or lack thereof, since he\u2019s gone all the time for work \u2014 the source of her deadly misbehavior. Before her death, Rachel\u2019s mom was consulting with an infamous serial killer for advice on Rachel\u2019s dark impulses, and Rachel ultimately shot her in the back to get her father\u2019s attention. Even worse, she shows no remorse when confronted by Gibbs, asking for another juice box even after the stakes are explained to her. Brown-Giovani\u2019s effortless performance and an always-freaky killer kid plotline have led some \u201cNCIS\u201d fans to dub Rachel the show\u2019s creepiest villain, which is high praise when it comes to a show that\u2019s aired 487 episodes to date<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The final installments of \u201cStranger Things\u201d are set to hit Netflix in three different episode drops later this year, marking an end to a nearly decade-long saga that transformed the lives of all of its young stars. Fans of the show have seen its child cast grow up in front of our eyes, and at…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2851,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"default","_kad_post_title":"default","_kad_post_layout":"default","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"default","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"default","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buzzflash1.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buzzflash1.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buzzflash1.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buzzflash1.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buzzflash1.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2850"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/buzzflash1.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2850\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2852,"href":"https:\/\/buzzflash1.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2850\/revisions\/2852"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buzzflash1.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buzzflash1.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buzzflash1.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buzzflash1.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}