Just beyond the world you know, is another world. Full of strange beings, mystical occurrences, and other things that surpass your imagination or understand. In this other world, full of witches and ghosts, enchanted apps and alternate dimensions, alien parents and brainwashing teachers, a few unfortunate children have to navigate the twists and turns of growing up and finding yourself in addition to overcoming the threatening dangers of this unpredictable reality just beyond our own.
Just Beyond is a horror comedy anthology live-action television series created by Seth Grahame Smith exclusively for Disney+. It is based on the graphic novels of the same name by R. L. Stine.
Each episode is a new story about a kid or teenager experiencing events that are unordinary, magical, or just downright diabolical, and must figure out how to deal with the turn of events or thwart the threats to their lives and identities.
This series include the following tropes:
- An Aesop: One per episode.
- Boarding School of Horrors: Miss Genevieve’s School for Difficult Girls in "Leave Them Kids Alone".
- Cruel Twist Ending: The only episode that doesn’t have a happy ending for the main character is "Standing Up For Yourself". But the main character in that one is a Barbaric Bully whose Downer Ending is very much deserved.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: Unlike most horror series, each episode has a happy ending, with the protagonist learning their lesson and/or finding new happiness.
- Fantastic Racism: "Which Witch" takes place in a world where witches and warlocks live alongside ordinary people after years of persecution. The episode uses the premise to gently satirize the ways in which racism manifests in the modern world, featuring things like an annual "Witch History Month". When accused of being prejudiced toward witches, Luna's teacher indignantly replies "I'll have you know, I voted for a witch in the last election!"
- Formula-Breaking Episode: While most episodes take place in a seemingly normal world where people are generally unaware of the supernatural, "Which Witch?" is set in a world where people know witches exist and even co-exist with them.
- The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: The show's opening has a family watching Disney+, with the TV glitching out, a ghost hand coming out of the screen, the family's house being sucked into a void, and the parents turning into aliens.
- In Name Only: The stories have very little to do with the graphic novels the series is named after.
- Perky Goth Girls Know Magic: Luna, the witch girl from the episode "Which Witch?" is very friendly and outgoing, despite her gothic sense of style.
- Shout-Out: The title of "Leave Them Kids Alone" is an homage to Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall, Part II" from The Wall, which is also about a horribly oppressive and dehumanizing high school.
- Tomato in the Mirror: The kids in "Parents are from Mars, kids are from Venus" discover that they are aliens from another planet. The episodes ends with them going with their parents to visit said planet.
