After waiting over three years since the previous season’s apocalyptic cliffhanger, viewers like me have developed high expectations for “Stranger Things'” grand conclusion. Many asked questions like: What is Vecna’s Plan? Is he the main villain or is the Mind Flayer still his superior? How will life in Hawkins change as its secrets are uncovered to the public? All of these questions put a lot of pressure on the writers to deliver. With both writers’ and actors’ strikes occurring within the hiatus, there were many challenges that the show had to tackle.
Despite this, Stranger Things season five was a hit with a viewership of 59.6 million in its first five days of streaming. Nevertheless, what once was a loyal fanbase has been divided on their opinions of Netflix’s new release.
Initially, the season implemented a year and a half long time jump that majorly cut the suspense that season four built towards. I was excited to see the transformation of Hawkins into a Mad Maxian dystopia and was disappointed. For the supernatural to be released as public knowledge, the show treats the entire situation as not strange at all. The biggest oddity to me was that, despite the possible end of the world, children all throughout Hawkins were going to school. With this, the radio stations' secret messages and the crawls, I felt as if the writers were not taking the threat of the upside down as seriously as it had been in past seasons.
The show transitioned to a larger scale than four kids hunting their kidnapped friend as the federal military took offensive precautions against the forces of the Upside Down.
Director Matt Duffer touched on the scaling of the show in an interview. “In terms of television, we always looked to “Game of Thrones” and what [showrunners] Dan [Weiss] and David [Benioff] did. They used the success to scale up the show and evolve it, and it snowballed. We would always take that example to Netflix for reasons why we should scale up the show: It’ll scale up the audience. At least, that was what we told them,” he said.
While it is true that viewership has increased as the genre of the show has fluctuated, I, along with others, am hesitant to continue watching based on the show being almost unrecognizable from its origins.
With every season having multiple interlaced subplots, season five continues this pattern by trying to explore and redefine character dynamics.
I thought that they did a suitable job bringing the original kids together, but I wish there was more emotional depth to them. Furthermore, I was personally disappointed in the role of both Hopper and Eleven in this season. Although there has been growth in their character, there seems to be nowhere near the amount of depth to their dialogue and actions as they had in earlier seasons.
The infamous love triangle between Nancy, Jonathan and Steve is similarly back this season, though given more focus than before. I think the competition between Steve and Jonathan relied heavily on common tropes and felt very forced and catered to the fans.
Another major plotline was the connection between Mr. Whatsit and Holly Wheeler. I thought that the recast, Nell Fisher, did a phenomenal job and was a believable replacement. However, what was intended to be Vecna’s new puzzling plan was nothing more than recycled material from the first season. Instead of evoking a chilling master plan that displays his threatening villainy, I now perceive Vecna as an idiotic opposer who knows about as much as the rest of the crew. I was baffled that the writers made him take a year and a half to come up with the same kidnapping plan he had since the beginning.
A major complaint was the power scaling in this season compared to the others. In the past, we, the audience, have been scared of the upside down. When Will was captured and hiding from the Demogorgon, we felt powerless and terrified of what could happen. We have seen countless occurrences of brutal deaths dealt by the teeth of the monster. Now, we are comfortable seeing characters inhabit the upside down, not fearful of the monsters because they are no longer unknown, something that feels as absurd as it feels anticlimactic.
My favorite scene in the season so far was the kidnapping of Holly Wheeler. The domestic invasion that occurred was truly terrifying and visually gripping. Yet my belief was suspended most when Mrs. Wheeler single-handedly incapacitated a Demogorgon with a broken wine bottle. I was frustrated by this because of the scenes that followed, in which military professionals with guns and flamethrowers were powerless against the same kind of monsters.
As Vecna made his major appearance and faced Will to reveal his master plan, I was not left excited to watch the next release. I was left confused, with more questions added to the pile that was made in 2022. Where previous seasons utilize a slow episodic reveal formula to keep the viewers interested in the mystery, this season seems like it's holding out on its viewers, and the payoff does not seem worth it.
With Will’s acquisition of psionic abilities, many were left excited and shocked. I personally found this predictable and poorly executed. The suspense of threats to his friends did not take long enough to make the audience truly feel danger. This made his grand reveal fall flat.
Overall, I was dissatisfied with what I saw of the final season of “Stranger Things.” Did I lose interest because of the absurd wait? I do not think so. I lost interest because the show that used to be an epic mythologizing of the 1980s is now unrecognizable to its inspirations like “The Goonies” and “Stand by Me.” The season is genre androgynous at best, losing what I loved most about “Stranger Things”: the investigative mystery. With future episodes being released for Christmas and New Year's eve, I hope that the final vision for the show can shine through despite an unnecessary setup with a total runtime of four and a half hours.
Photo Courtesy of Rafal Werczynski on Unsplash
