When I started middle school, my love of film and TV shows peaked. In my free time, I was watching anything and everything, eager to see what hot, new show I would be obsessed with next. When my family got our Netflix subscription, I was ecstatic. So many shows and movies I could watch, and I could finally expose myself to shows I was never able to watch before I went to middle school. Digging through all the original content, one show caught my eye, and it was a show that would end up changing my life: Stranger Things.
Stranger Things season 1 is one of the greatest seasons of TV to ever grace our screens. It was such a refreshing and unique concept, using the Dungeons & Dragons board game and ‘80s movies as the foundation of a missing person story. Everything about it was perfectly executed. You have never seen a child cast with not only this much talent, but this level of chemistry with each other. The story was impeccably paced, getting intense when it mattered, funny in the right moments, and emotional when it truly needed to be.
The best part, at the time, was how the Duffers, who directed the show, kept the momentum going by making each season feel better than the last. Season 2 showed the consequences of season 1 and introduced Max, who is still my favorite character in the show. Season 3 is my second favorite season of the show, with an amazing setting and story, and one of my favorite finales of any show. Season 4 was a masterclass in horror, bringing us Vecna and the most iconic scene in the whole show, Max’s escape in the episode “Dear Billy.” It built up to an insane cliffhanger that left me wondering how season 5 was ever going to live up to it.
So how did it all go wrong?
Let’s start with what this season did right. Volume 1 was a great start. It kept the pacing tight, the dialogue, while cringe, kept the heart of the show going, and it gave us some amazing character development, especially for Will. Season 5 was easily Will’s season. It was a season that showed him finally coming into his own after being shunned for being gay throughout the entire show. Episode 4, “Sorcerer”, has my favorite twist of the whole show, which shows Will accessing the Hive Mind and using his newfound powers to kill the Demogorgons.
It’s a brilliant twist that feels so full circle after everything Will was put through in the show. Characters such as Nancy Wheeler and Steve were incredible this season, and Derek is one of the best new inclusions I’ve seen on the show. The season started off strong, so I was anticipating a great closing to a great show.
Volume 2 was where everything went wrong. To start with, the pacing was horrendously slow. Every scene felt like it took ages to finish, and the characters talked more than they actually took any action.
Everything was overexplained to the point of oblivion, as if the audience wouldn’t understand unless we were constantly told what was about to happen. While characters like Steve, Nancy Wheeler, and Will all got to shine, characters like Mike and Eleven lost any character development they had, to the point where it was almost insulting. The inclusion of Holly Wheeler as a central character, while interesting, took away from any development that could’ve been given to these characters, and instead made them completely unrecognizable.
Their unwillingness to kill off any main characters, while a problem since season 2, completely killed any sense of stakes in season 5, as it really showed no one was willing to take any risks. All of these problems multiplied in the series finale, where no main character truly died, and the one death they attempted with Eleven was left to interpretation. The final battle was less than ten minutes long, and instead of tying the series together, we ended with plot holes so big that not even the Duffers could properly answer questions about the finale of the show.
In the documentary about season 5, they even admitted that they not only went into production without a finished script, but also filmed the finale without even finishing it. It was an unfinished episode that was aired to millions of people, and it did not make the Duffers look good at all.
Stranger Things will always have a special place in my heart. It was the first show I truly loved as a kid, as I could connect with the entire cast, and it made me feel seen. The show made me think about television in a completely different way, and it made me so passionate about writing stories because of the stories it gave us in the first four seasons.
However, I think the way season 5 was handled is not only a huge disappointment for every fan that has followed the show from the beginning like me, but it also shows the complete disregard the Duffers have for their viewers, failing to give the audience, the crew, and the cast the closure they deserved.