25 pieces of pop culture evidence we're living in the '80s all over again

The '80s are back in a big way. Whether it's old TV shows coming back to life, new movies paying homage to the era, or music that sounds like (or even comes from) the biggest artists from the time, it's all about the decade of decadence. Consider the evidence, ahead.

Party on, dudes: Bill S. Preston, Esq. (Alex Winter) and Ted "Theodore" Logan (Keanu Reeves) came back for a threequel. But who expected any less from this pair of time travelers? Strange things were afoot at the Circle K once again when Bill & Ted Face the Music hit theaters on Aug. 21, 2020.

Decades later, Tom Cruise still has the need for speed. Alongside Cruise on the highway to the danger zone, Miles Teller (as the son of Maverick's fallen friend Goose), Jennifer Connelly, and Glen Powell appeared in the 2022 sequel to 1986's Top Gun — which broke records and became the seventh-highest-grossing film ever at the U.S. box office.

"Juice," the lead single off Lizzo's 2019 album Cuz I Love You, is an irresistible '80s-inspired self-love fest with a totally rad music video to match. And she went down that same route in 2022, releasing "About Damn Time" — another '80s-influenced song with disco-funk melodies and a sample from World Famous Supreme Team's 1984 hit, "Hey DJ"  — as the lead single for her fourth studio album Special, which went No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Netflix's smash hit sci-fi series — which will be coming to a close with its impending fifth season — is as packed with '80s pop culture references as it is modeled after the decade's genre stories itself.

Less than a year after Bruce Springsteen's hit Broadway show arrived on Netflix, the Boss appeared on screens in another capacity as the unseen but spiritual star of Gurinder Chadha's Sundance crowd-pleaser Blinded by the Light, which is about a Pakistani-British teenager in Thatcher-era England for whom the music of Springsteen becomes a way of life.

The spirit of John Hughes is alive and well, proven by For the Record's immersive cabaret show, which brought back the Brat Pack to L.A. in a whole new way. Running from 2019 to early 2022, a Princess, Jock, Geek, Rebel, and Basket Case performed all the beloved '80s jams from your favorite teen movies of the era for four nights a week — and yes, there was a boombox-on-the-shoulder moment.

Try to keep breathing — breathless — heaving — breaths! Clue is coming back to the big screen, with a new adaptation in development from Ryan Reynolds, who will produce and star, along with Deadpool writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick. After all these years, that communism is still just a red herring!

The Queen of Pop has reinvented herself countless times over her long career, and, before ringing in the 2020s, she incarnated herself as Madame X in 2019 (a dancer, a professor, a head of state…). No matter how completely she transforms, however, any appearance the icon makes brings back shades of the decade in which she played such an earth-shattering, culture-defining role.

The 1984 fantasy rom-com, starring Tom Hanks as a lovestruck young man and Daryl Hannah as the mermaid who wins his heart, is getting a gender-swapped remake. Jillian Bell is set to star opposite merman Channing Tatum in the new film, which is still in development.

The original Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling first entered the ring in 1986; the first season of Netflix's comedy series inspired by the syndicated wrestling promotion premiered in 2017 (and was named the best series of the year by EW critic Darren Franich). Season 3 dropped in 2019, and the show was renewed for a fourth before being canceled by Netflix in 2020 amid the global pandemic.

Our karaoke queen Carly Rae Jepsen is following up 2015's '80s-tastic E*MO*TION  and 2019's Dedicated with another synth-y, sparkly pop collection, 2022's The Loneliest Time.

He-Man, the main hero of the Masters of the Universe, will have the power once again with his own movie (starring 2021's West Side Story actor Kyle Allen, replacing previously-cast Noah Centineo). The Masters of the Universe was originally a toy line launched in 1982; they previously inspired an animated series that ran from 1983 to 1985 and a live-action film in 1987.

The beloved book series, which Ann M. Martin began in 1986, got a whole new TV adaptation on Netflix, which ran for two seasons before getting canceled in 2022.

The 2018 marriage of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle (not to mention the 2019 birth of their son Archie and their exit from their royal duties in 2020), the deaths of Prince Philip (2021) and Queen Elizabeth II (2022), and Prince Charles ascending to the throne shortly after his mother's death has had all eyes on the royal family. These emotional events — as well as 2021's Kristen Stewart-starring film Spencer — have also had the late Princess Diana on everyone's mind 

The Carringtons persist on a reboot of the original primetime soap, which ran from 1981 to 1989. The CW's update on the '80s staple debuted in 2017 and was canceled after five seasons in 2022.

He-Man's twin sister She-Ra wielded the Sword of Protection once again when Netflix released the "funny-wonderful" new animated series in 2018. The show ran for five seasons, coming to an end on May 15, 2020.

Life is still like a hurricane here in Duckburg. The 1987 series was rebooted by Disney XD in 2017, 30 years after it originally aired. The second season — even better than the first — hit like a hurricane in May 2019, and concluded with its third season in 2020.

Tom Selleck starred as Thomas Magnum, P.I., on Magnum, P.I. from 1980 to 1988. In the fall of 2018, a reboot of the series, with Jay Hernandez in the title role, premiered on CBS (also home to '80s reboot MacGyver). It was canceled after two seasons in May 2022, but picked up by NBC, ordering two additional seasons from the series. 

The lead single off Janelle Monáe's Dirty Computer (one of EW's 10 best albums of 2018) strongly reflects the influence of the artist's late mentor Prince, who collaborated with her on the album. Even better, Monáe's predictably spectacular wardrobe in the track's music video includes such '80s elements as bright leotards, boxy jackets, acid-wash denim, and one pair of starry earrings reminiscent of Madonna's almost-virginal days.

Made in the present, set in the future, and obsessed with the '80s, the 2018 adaptation of Ernest Cline's sci-fi best-seller — which got a sequel in 2020 — comes from Steven Spielberg (a pop culture icon of the era himself) and exemplifies the current obsession with the decadent decade.

After six seasons, the critically beloved Cold War drama came to its conclusion (and Matthew Rhys finally won an Emmy) in 2018. Maybe its depiction of that particular geopolitical relationship started to hit a little too close to home?

The Steven Spielberg-created game show, which ran on NBC from 1985 to 1987, was revived by Apple TV+ in 2020. Once Upon a Time creators Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz were on board as showrunners and executive producers, and Spielberg came back to executive produce the new incarnation of the short-lived series as well.

The very first Spike Lee joint (made in 1986) was brought back to life, by the filmmaker himself, as a Netflix series in 2017. The second and final season premiered in May 2019.

Cartoon Network brought back the ThunderCats, the original animated series of which aired from 1985 to 1989. The feline extraterrestrials came to earth on a new show, ThunderCats Roar, which lasted for one season in 2020.

ABC throws it back every week with The Goldbergs, a family sitcom that takes place in the decade of decadence (and doesn't skimp on the '80s-tastic wardrobe).