Why hasn't Caleb McLaughlin had a big role since Stranger Things?
Fans have an answer they like, an answer they fear, and a third one nobody in the thread wants to hear.
The honest answer is that since Stranger Things ended on New Year's Eve 2025, Caleb McLaughlin's one big credit is voicing the lead in Goat, the animated sports comedy that opened February 13 with Gabrielle Union, Stephen Curry, and Jennifer Hudson in the cast. Ten years as Lucas Sinclair, then an animated goat. That gap is exactly what a thread on r/StrangerThings spent the weekend arguing about, and the most popular explanation isn't a failure at all:
"MCU keeping him locked down as Miles Morales."
— a commenter on r/StrangerThings, 388 upvotes
The theory has fuel. McLaughlin posted gymnastics-and-flips videos that went so viral as a "soft audition" that he had to clarify — "That wasn't a soft audition. That was just Caleb being Caleb" — and he has openly campaigned for the part, saying "I would love to play Miles" at the Goat premiere and telling E! News: "If Kevin Feige sees it and calls you… I'm very interested. Very interested."
The problem with the theory
The same thread supplies its own counterargument, and it's the one with 158 upvotes: "too old now for the role," plus the prediction that casting him as the Afro-Latino Miles "will spark a whole racial debate." The age math is real. Tom Holland was 19 when Marvel cast him as a high-schooler; McLaughlin turned 25 last week.
There's also no movie to be locked down for. No live-action Miles Morales project has been announced, and Sony's Amy Pascal has long said one only happens after the animated trilogy wraps — Beyond the Spider-Verse is currently dated for June 2027. A theory that Marvel is hoarding McLaughlin requires Marvel to be planning a film it hasn't greenlit, for a character whose animated version is still mid-story.
The Sadie Sink precedent
Here's what makes the waiting strategy look genuinely costly. While fans were reserving Miles for McLaughlin, his Stranger Things co-star went the other way: Sadie Sink followed the show with indie work (O'Dessa, The Whale) and a Tony-nominated Broadway run in John Proctor Is the Villain — and then Marvel came to her. She's Jean Grey in Spider-Man: Brand New Day, the $2.5 billion biggest movie of 2026.
Fans believe Marvel is saving Caleb McLaughlin for a future role. Marvel did cast a Stranger Things kid this year — the one who stopped waiting.
That's the path I'd want for him: stage and indie roles that rebuild him as an adult actor, so that when a call comes — Miles or otherwise — it's for who he is now, not for the kid from Hawkins. The fan comment that opened this thread meant "locked down" as a compliment. For a working 25-year-old actor, it describes a cell.
Previously we wrote: HBO's Harry Potter costs more than any Potter movie — fans did the math in a minute