This review contains spoilers.
Picture this: it’s 2016, you’ve just sat down at the TV to watch Netflix, and you come across a brand-new show about a kid who goes missing, and whose friends and family get tangled up in a government conspiracy while trying to find him.
Fast-forward to ten years later, and the final episode of Stranger Things is released. After all that Will, Mike, Dustin, Lucas, Max and Eleven had been through, along with a whole slew of other characters, it was gearing up to be one of the most dramatic conclusions of a television series of the twenty-first century.
Like most people, I loved the first season of Stranger Things. The story was fun and original, it was beautifully directed, and the music was fantastic. They absolutely nailed the atmosphere that they were going for, so much so that viewers became nostalgic about a time that most of us weren’t even alive for.
The very end of season four was nothing short of incredible. I think it’s safe to say that all our minds were blown as we watched the cast think that they had killed Vecna, only to realise that the Upside Down had broken into the real world. It was a fantastic setup for the last season.
After watching this, the audience was left to wonder: where do they even go from here?
Viewers are led to believe that nothing will ever be the same again for this town and its poor, unfortunate inhabitants.
It is clear that this decision meant nothing, however, when season five opens to show us that they’ve just covered up the disaster with some sheet metal, and the town has returned to normal.
The amount of urgency and suspense that was built up from the previous season immediately evaporates. Everyone in the town ignores the problem, and the stakes no longer feel as life-threatening as they once did. Practically nothing has changed.
That same sentiment is true for the entire season, which can be summarised in one word; underwhelming. The stakes were low, nobody dies or is even seriously injured, and everything went according to plan.
Stranger Things 5 has very clearly fallen victim to Netflix’s recent “second screen” mandate, a directive that the company has been pushing on its writers and filmmakers to simplify the plot of their shows so that viewers will be able to follow along while they’re on their phones at the same time. In layman’s terms, Netflix is deliberately dumbing down TV so people can watch while scrolling.
This season is a blatant example of this, almost to a comical extent. Many viewers took to TikTok after the season’s release to point out the fact that the characters spend a significant portion of each episode over-explaining everything they are doing and planning, again and again.
The result of this is a season that is hilariously dumb at times. Not trusting viewers to know what is going on without each character exhaustively repeating themselves makes for boring, repetitive television.
Now, that is not to say I didn’t think this season had strong points. ST5 committed the cardinal sin of any show by introducing a brand new character in its final season, Holly Wheeler. She went from a background character to being the major character of season five, which has famously gone awry for many shows in the past.
And yet, Holly was one of my favourite characters this season. Nell Fisher, who plays Holly, does a phenomenal job portraying her, and you really start to root for Holly throughout the season. But at times, I did find that Holly’s screen time took from the conclusion I wanted for the other character’s stories, the people we had been following since season one.
The final battle against Vecna and the Mind Flayer was an anti-climactic, ten-minute scene akin to that of any of the other battle scenes in other seasons, instead of the drawn-out, dramatic, high stakes fight that the whole series had been building up to. It is as if it is over before it even begins. The villain that they spent five seasons building up is defeated easily in a matter of minutes.
And of course, I must address the elephant in the room; Eleven’s death. El makes the decision to stay behind in the Upside Down when it is set to blow up, in order to stop the US Military from hunting her and her loved ones for the rest of their lives.
Since the beginning, Eleven has been the focal point of the entire story. The Upside Down, Hawkins Lab, Vecna, it has all tied back to her. But in season five, her screen time was fairly minimal, and when she was on screen, she barely contributed to the story at all before the final episode.
And yet, the Duffer Brothers couldn’t even do her the service of killing her off properly. The fact that they killed El off in the first place doesn’t sit well with me, considering they spent five seasons telling us how she was abused and dehumanised, fighting for a future alongside the people she loves. All of that, for nothing?!
By choosing this ending, they not only deny Eleven the chance to finally live as a human being, but they also condemn Mike to a deeply sad ending, watching his friends move on and live happily while he is trapped reliving his memories of Elle. So much so that he even dangles the possibility of Elle still being alive a year later, having escaped somehow and supposedly living out her life somewhere remote, where she will never be found.
I understand that this was supposed to be a comfort to the audience, but in the end, the open ending isn’t a happier one; how is this a happy ending when it is implied she will be living alone for the rest of her life without her loved ones, and Mike is left unable to move on?
There is a lot more I could say, about lazy writing, plot holes, or the Duffer Brothers’ inability to kill off any actual main characters. But season five can very much be summed up in one word: anti-climactic.
Maybe the real Stranger Things were the choices the writers made along the way.
