For better or worse, Brown is our first Stream Queen

‘Stranger Things’ star Millie Bobby Brown has eschewed the usual A-list route, instead committing to a run of middling to poor) Netflix originals. Louis Chilton considers her rise

- Louis Chilton

Is Millie Bobby Brown in trouble? Watch The Electric State, Netflix’s mindblowingly expensive new sci-fi blockbuster, and you might think so. The 21-year-old Stranger Things star fronts the film alongside Marvel’s Chris Pratt, and it’s nothing short of awful: a soulless, derivative farrago with two ciphers drifting around a barren plot. In a one-star review, The Independent’s Clarisse Loughrey described The Electric State as “punishingly obvious and completely incoherent”; most other critics have concurred.

The film is the latest in a run of lacklustre films Brown has produced and starred in for the streamer – the others being Sherlock re-hashes Enola Holmes and Enola Holmes 2, and the creaky fantasy thriller Damsel. While many young actors who found fame on Netflix (Wednesday’s Jenna Ortega; Bridgerton’s Jonathan Bailey; several of Brown’s Stranger Things co-stars) have leveraged their streaming success to launch buzzy careers in theatrically released films, Brown has starred in just two: the middling kaiju blockbusters Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) and Godzilla vs Kong (2021).

But while Brown’s commitment to making straight-to-streaming slop has done little to boost her credentials as a heavyweight actor, she has somehow built her own kind of stardom. She has a massive following – 64 million people on Instagram alone – and is, undeniably, a draw for viewers. Damsel is said to have clocked 143 million views last year, a figure that would make it one of the year’s most-watched films. For better or worse, Brown is rapidly becoming cinema’s first ever Stream Queen.