Sean Astin Plays A Great Dad In ‘Stranger Things’ Because He Has FOUR Dads!

Good things don’t happen in the small town of Hawkins, Indiana. Despite being a sleepy, Midwestern town, Hawkins is also the home of inter-dimensional tears, a nefarious lab, and the demonic monsters and super-powered kids that emerge from both of those. That’s why when a sweetheart like Bob Newby (Sean Astin) showed up in Stranger Things 2, I immediately dreaded watching him turn out to be a scumbag, or a shapeshifting creature, or a government spy. But it turns out that something good did happen in Hawkins, and that good thing was the perpetually frazzled Joyce Byers (Winona Ryder) finding a lovable guy like Bob. Of course, spoiler alert, the bad things won out and Bob met a grisly fate towards the end of the season; we didn’t watch Bob turn evil, we watched Bob get eaten.

Still, we got plenty of episodes with Bob, and that’s way more than we got with Season 1’s doomed breakout character Barb. We got to see a legit nice guy get with the popular high school girl (albeit a few decades after graduation), and we saw him be a damn fine surrogate dad to the Byers boys, even if they rolled his eyes at his Kenny Rogers fandom. Not only did Bob bring brain teasers and puzzles over to the Byers house as soon as he heard Will was sick, this RadioShack manager confronted horrors without hesitation when he saw that Joyce and Will were besieged by supernatural evil. Bob Newby: Superhero, indeed!

There’s a reason why Astin, an actor best known for playing the equally good-hearted Mikey in The Goonies and Samwise Gamgee in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, slipped right into the best-dad-ever role in Stranger Things: Sean Astin has a lot of rad dads, and he’s always quick to tweet their praise.

Okay, yes, full disclosure: that second tweet was in response to me. I’m a big fan of Sean Astin and his dad John Astin (I was Astin’s Gomez for Halloween, after all!), and therefore Sean Astin’s real life Mamma Mia! moment is a fascinating bit of trivia to me. And, as indicated in the tweets above, that trivia helped add a level of sweet authenticity to Season 2’s unlikely hero.

Astin’s mother is TV legend and mental health advocate Patty Duke, and his father is, well, that’s where it gets interesting. The 23-year-old Duke was involved with three men all at around the same time, and/or back-to-back-to-back. They were: Lucille Ball’s son Desi Arnaz Jr., a rock promoter named Michael Tell who was subletting Duke’s apartment, and Addams Family actor John Astin. Duke and Arnaz Jr.’s relationship ended in the spring of 1970, just as Duke learned she was pregnant. To avoid tabloid drama, Duke rush married Tell–although the two divorced 13 days later and the marriage was eventually annulled. All through this, Patty was also reportedly dating John Astin (who himself was still married to his first wife). Sean Duke was born in February 1971, and then Patty–her marriage to Tell annulled–married John Astin in August 1972. John adopted Sean and Sean grew up believing John was his biological father. So John Astin is Dad #1.

Patty Duke also believed John was the father, but she also had a sneaking suspicion that Arnaz Jr. was really Sean’s dad. When he was 14, Duke told Sean that Arnaz was his biological father and the two started spending time together. So Desi Arnaz Jr. is Dad #2. Patty and John divorced in 1985, and Duke remarried a year later to a drill sergeant named Michael Pearce, making him Dad #3. But a decade after discovering that his father was Arnaz Jr., one of Michael Tell’s relatives approached Sean under the assumption they were related. After taking a paternity test, Sean learned that his biological dad was not John Astin or Desi Arnaz Jr., but was in fact Michael Tell! Hello, Dad #4!

Sean Astin has maintained relationships with all four men, saying in 2004, “I can call any of them on the phone any time I want to. John, Desi, Mike or Papa Mike … my four dads.” Astin knows firsthand that family isn’t about blood, it’s about love. That’s what we see in Bob Newby, a character that didn’t have to get involved with any of those stranger things. He could have just kept it casual with Joyce and peaced out the second he saw the Byers house covered in crazy maze scribblings. But he didn’t. He took on the responsibility and followed through, because that’s what great dads do. Sean’s own experience with his own dads no doubt allowed him to make Bob the best dad in Hawkins.

Now I leave you with this video from last year of Sean with Dad #1, because I want to yank on your heartstrings.

Where to stream Stranger Things