Four girls inadvertently time travel from 1988 to 2019, meeting their older selves and discovering their individual strengths. What is the future like? How much danger are they in? And can they salvage humanity? Paper Girls, streaming on Amazon Prime Video from July 29, promises to answer all these questions. Here's everything you need to know about the eight-episode show:
Starting a new job is hard. It only gets harder when you're zapped to the future on your first day. On the morning after Halloween in 1988, Erin Tieng (Riley Lai Nelet), a 12-year-old rookie paper girl, embarks on her first morning run along with her more "senior" colleagues – Tiffany Quilkin (Camryn Jones), Mac Coyle (Sofia Rosinsky), and K.J. Brandman (Fina Strazza). If Erin thought that being "the new girl" was the only tribulation she was going to face, she's in for a surprise. Instead of a usual Cleaveland sky, the four girls are met with a thunderous, purple overcast. Scared, they rush to Erin's house only to find an older, suspiciously familiar-looking woman living there. It's none other than – no points for guessing – Erin (played by Ali Wong – yay!), more than two decades later. The girls have somehow time travelled to 2019. As if this isn't bizarre enough, they also find that time travelling makes them capital offenders and potential targets for laser-shooting time-cops in white coats.
Riley Lai Nelet plays Erin, the lead character of the four girls. Previously seen in the sci-fi series Altered Carbon, Nelet will surely be bringing her experience of the sci-fi genre to the character. Tomboy Mac is played by a promising Sofia Rosinsky, imbuing her character with the experience of being the first female "paper boy". Fans might remember her as Zora Morris from the comedy series Fast Layne. Before playing Tiffany Quilkin, Camryn Jones had multiple minor roles in Law and Order: True Crime as well as Amazon Prime's Pete the Cat. Fina Strazza plays KJ Brandman, who witnesses her older self kissing a woman, placing her in the unique position of coming out to her own self. Fina was previously seen in Madam Secretary and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.
The series is adapted from a 2015 graphic novel series of the same name by Brian K. Vaughan and Cliff Chiang. The novels are highly celebrated for their seamless blend of science fiction, a strong mystery and real characters. The books depict female characters, queerness and growing up in the 80s with refreshing nuance.
As executive producers, Vaughan and Chiang worked with the show's writers on the characters' backgrounds and concept art. "If you've never heard of Paper Girls, if you're not familiar with this comic, then the show is still 100 percent accessible and I think you will love it. But if you're a hardcore fan of the comic, it's still going to be extremely surprising to you. With our blessing, they go to some places that we never could as a comic and there are new characters, there are new threats," Vaughan told EW in an interview.
Paper Girls is streaming now on Prime Video