The fifth season of Stranger Things has the town of Hawkins locked in by a military ban while the show's protagonists do recon runs to the Upside Down.Netflix/Supplied
If you’re looking for something other than football to binge over the American Thanksgiving weekend, Stranger Things is finally back on Netflix after a three-year wait. With aging kid actors, the giant time lapse and hundreds of fan theories swirling the internet, expectations and pressure to get it right are high. The good news is the Duffer Brothers deliver once again. The bad news? There seems to be a full-on rush to close this series on a high note.
The first four episodes of the fifth and final season dropped this week with plenty of action and high stakes to drive things forward. Although the Upside Down was leaking into Hawkins at the end of Season 4, time has passed and the town is back to a seemingly peaceful state. That’s courtesy of the military ban keeping residents locked in, as well as the overall denial of citizens who are unwilling to believe monsters are lurking in the shadows.
The protagonists know better of course, so while they’re going along with the routines they’re also secretly making recon runs to the Upside Down whenever possible. Vecna is still out there somewhere, and they’re determined to find him and avoid the dystopian future he showed Nancy (Natalia Dyer).
This is all to say that a final battle is brewing, and the first four episodes set up the stakes with a cliff-hanger that wouldn’t be fair to share widely before everyone has had a chance to catch up. But, it brings some of the stories full circle while reigniting the Upside Down in a new way, plus it’s bound to spark another wave of fan theories in the coming weeks.
That build-up is the strongest element of the first batch of episodes (the next three arrive on Christmas while the finale drops on New Year’s Eve), which also serve as a catch-up for viewers. This is necessary, considering the time gap, and to its credit the show makes a clever attempt to deliver its exposition through Robin (Maya Hawke) and her new radio show.
The biggest problem with the episodes is the actors themselves. Everyone has aged over the past nine years and despite certain CGI attempts to slow it down, they are clearly no longer the kids that initiated this universe. The Hawkins time-jump helps, of course, but it takes a beat to get over. That’s especially true in the case of Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo) who has upgraded his look to chunky rings and a trench coat.
Joyce Byers (Winona Ryder) struggles with letting Will and Eleven meaningfully help.Netflix/Supplied
Adding to that is the overprotective nature of Joyce (Winona Ryder) and Hopper (David Harbour), who are officially together but unwilling to respectively let Will (Noah Schnapp) and Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) contribute in meaningful ways out of fear. Those feelings are valid given what the children have gone through, but the parenting style hits differently when you’re talking about adults playing children. (Brown is now 21 years old, for those wondering.)
Lore-wise, however, the show is as strong as ever with plenty of D&D threads to dissect and full-circle moments to excite fans. Familiar faces return, there are big stakes, the series is brimming with that ‘80s nostalgia it’s known for and there’s still that tone of Goonies-like adventure tinged with horror that makes Stranger Things so unique.
Other ongoing developments, such as Robin dating another woman, Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin) watching over a comatose Max (Sadie Sink) or Will grappling with his sexuality add more personal stakes outside of the doom and gloom of the world potentially ending. But with so much else going on it’s hard to linger on those moments or dissect how they will affect the characters. There are at least 10 characters to be invested in at this point, so giving even a handful of them a satisfying emotional arc is a tall order. It’s no wonder the second through fourth episodes often feel rushed.
The series is full of the ‘80s nostalgia it’s known for and there’s still that tone of Goonies-like adventure tinged with horror that made Stranger Things a hit.Netflix/Supplied
This is a typical problem for final seasons in general. It’s tough to balance a nostalgic send-off that hits on all of the things viewers love while continuing to embrace the uniqueness that first made the series a hit. In the case of Stranger Things, the final season seems to be building toward that proper goodbye while wrapping up as much as possible. To do that effectively it has to overexplain and offer neater threads, versus creating more of the mysteries and horror that so many people fell in love with.
To be fair, it’s always a bad idea to go into a final season of a show such as Stranger Things with high expectations. This series has had an extraordinary run over the past decade and created plenty of cultural moments, and topping that year after year is no easy feat. For now, it’s impossible to rank the season as a whole before watching the back half, but if it continues at this pace it could be a satisfactory ride that skips a few emotional punches. So, grab some waffles, top them with Scoops Ahoy ice cream or invest in that box of Demogorgon cereal you saw at the grocery store the other day and get watching. Because no matter how this show ultimately goes down, it is the definitive end of an era.