Unlike previous versions of Goosebumps, the Disney+/Hulu series is an anthology series, meaning you're free to jump into Goosebumps: The Vanishing without having seen season 1. This time around, we focus on a brand-new story set in the world of R.L. Stine's iconic novels.
Twins Cece and Devin arrive in Brooklyn to spend the summer with their recently divorced dad, Anthony (David Schwimmer). Anthony has something of a reputation in town because of his involvement with an incident that occurred in 1994, an incident that left his brother, Matty, dead.
The episode starts with that fateful 1994 night. Matty and his friends snuck into a creepy tunnel known as Fort Jerome, and Anthony, the annoying younger brother nicknamed "Stink" by everyone, tried to follow them. But Matty kicked him out. Deep within Fort Jerome, the trio of teens triggered a disc-like mechanism in the ground that slowly opened up to reveal a plant-like entity.
It emitted spores into the faces of the kids and all three of them simultaneously heard an ear-splitting noise. Matty, however, seemed to get the full effect of the spores as his eyes immediately started bleeding black goop.
Back in the present, we learn that Matty died that night, though the story is that he drowned and his two friends vanished without a trace. Anthony is the only one who was there that night who actually makes it back.
He spends his days taking care of his ailing mother, recently diagnosed with dementia and relocated to a nursing home, and tending to his impressive basement botany lab. The main rule he gives his kids is not to venture down there. Despite the supposed "closure" regarding his brother's death, Anthony remains obsessed with finding out what happened that night.
As for his kids, they quickly meet a group of friends in town consisting of CJ, a delivery driver who works for his parent's restaurant; girl-next-door Frankie who Devin has been crushing on since he was a kid; and her boyfriend, the resident bully/bad guy Trey. There's also Alex, the rebellious sort who seems to take a liking to Cece after watching her steal some lip gloss at a local pharmacy.
Then there's the twins themselves. Cece is the straight-A type who plans to spend her summer at debate camp and intends to go to Brown University, whereas Devin is less sure of what he wants to do with his life and feels a little more lost.
On their first night in town, Devin talks a big game about Fort Jerome and his family's creepy history, so of course Trey dares him to go there. The group ventures below, with Devin alone going into the tunnel itself and the secret room at the end where his dad went all those years before. Trey, who is immediately jealous of Devin's connection to Frankie, takes it upon himself to spice things up.
Trey opens up a panel and breaks everything inside of it, blowing out a transformer. The lights go out and inside the tunnel, Devin experiences the same thing as those kids from 1994. A hole in the floor opens, and he sees a vision of Matty with his leaky eyes below, and then Devin's own eyes start oozing the same substance. He barely manages to make it out alive. CJ and Cece are forced to help walk back to their house.
Back in the basement lab, Anthony has gotten his hands on Matty's sweater, the one he was wearing the night he died. Anthony notices a strange substance on the fabric and scrapes it off into a Petri dish. Whatever it is, it summons a horde of vines that come shooting up into the basement from the sewage covering the floor. The vines attempt to drag Anthony into the sewer, but outside of the house, when they sense Devin instead, they take him into the sewer. It's like they're attracted to the spores and whatever infected Devin is much fresher than the scrapings from Matty's sweater.
The vines throttle Devin, ensnaring him completely. It's very Evil Dead. Before one can actually go down his throat, Devin finds a metal pipe and throws it at the gateway, severing the vines in half, forcing them to shrivel up and release them.
As for Anthony, he notices that his Petri dish of spores has been scoured clean by the plant life.
Odds & Ends
- Anthony takes Devin with him to the nursing home to visit his grandmother, Naomi. She has been rambling nonstop about Matty and how she still believes he is alive. Naomi has another episode when left alone with Devin, believing he might be Matty because he looks like him and smells like him. Maybe she can sense the plant or spore things?
- The final scene in the episode shows Jen (Ana Ortiz), the detective and old friend of Anthony's looking at photos of the teens from 1994 and the new kids, including Cece and Devin. She has all of their photos pinned to a board.