The first four episodes of Stranger Things Season 5 are out on Netflix now. This piece discusses details from the show; if you'd rather avoid those, come back after you've watched.
There is a certain kind of magic to a show like Stranger Things, which somehow manages to re-engage fans with every new season — despite a sense it is often telling the same story, over and over again.
After more than three years away, Netflix has turned its final season into its holiday gift to the world, releasing four episodes on Wednesday, three on Christmas Day and the series finale on New Year's Eve. Still, whether this truly feels like a holiday present may depend on how eager viewers are to dive into yet another adventure hanging the world's fate on a bunch of teenagers from small town Indiana.
Creators Matt and Ross Duffer — known collectively as the Duffer Brothers — have their work cut out this time around as showrunners and regular writers and directors.
But the real question is whether the Duffer Brothers can come up with a finale that truly feels like a satisfying conclusion, after nine years of gory jump scares, inexplicable plot twists, extra-dimensional bad guys and pink-laced, '80s nostalgia that helped redefine the streaming age.
Life under quarantine
This season begins, as always, with an intrepid band of young people working together to sidestep adult venality and cluelessness to save the world from a monstrous, super-powered entity. Courtesy of Netflix's decision to release the first five minutes from the first new episode weeks ago, fans know this season begins with a horrific flashback. A young Will Byers — played by a younger actor camouflaged with digital technology to look like a de-aged Noah Schnapp — is captured in 1983 by murderous extra-dimensional psychic bad guy Vecna and connected by a pulsing umbilical to his hive mind.
Talk about foreshadowing. When the story picks up again four years later, Will's hometown of Hawkins, Ind. is under quarantine, sealed off by the military. And Will has a mysterious connection with Vecna and his monstrous minions.
Last season saw the horrific alternate dimension the Upside Down intrude into the real world. Now the military is regularly testing residents in Hawkins and guarding a portal between the worlds, which pulses and throbs like a gooey outtake from an Alien movie. Inexplicably, the military has required the town's denizens to stay put, going to school and work like they don't live at the epicenter of a psychic and extradimensional phenomenon that nearly engulfed the world.
Most of our heroes are trying to fly under the radar — spearheaded by can-do group leader Nancy Wheeler (Natalia Dyer). Eccentric motormouth Robin Buckley (Maya Hawke) and heroically coiffed Steve Harrington (Joe Keery) now run the local radio station, while Gaten Matarazzo's angry nerd Dustin Henderson joins friends Mike Wheeler (Finn Wolfhard), Lucas Sinclair (Caleb McLaughlin) and a more mature Will in navigating a high school where their fellow students resent their presence.
Millie Bobby Brown's character, the psychic-powered orphan Eleven/Jane Hopper, is in hiding around Hawkins, hunted by authorities who believe she caused the problems with the Upside Down and might be key to understanding it. She's in training to refine her powers with Winona Ryder's Joyce Byers — Will's mom — and father figure Jim Hopper, played by David Harbour.
And Sadie Sink's character Max, the show's flame-haired tomboy, remains in a coma after surviving an attack by Vecna last season aimed at helping him open a portal from the Upside Down to the real world.
Making old plotlines feel new again
There is a lot about this new batch of episodes that reminded me of previous storylines, as this kooky new-school Scooby Gang repeatedly pulls off elaborate plans to get past the military, sneak inside the Upside Down and search for Vecna.
Once again, there's a ruthless doctor empowered by the military to probe the Upside Down — this time, played by Terminator alum Linda Hamilton. Our young heroes keep devising elaborate-yet-successful plans to outwit the military and access the alternate universe where Vecna is hiding. We have generous sprinkles of '80s pop culture, from a surprising reference to pop star Tiffany to the sly use of Diana Ross' 1980 dance hit Upside Down.
There are also winking nods to movies, with scenes that recall moments from Aliens, Good Morning, Vietnam and even Home Alone. Deft as these touches are, however, they are also moves we have seen before in this show.
And there's a series of attacks by Demogorgons — super strong, super-teethy humanoid creatures from the Upside Down controlled by Vecna — who motivate our heroes by targeting children in Hawkins for kidnapping. This seems a deliberate callback to the way Will's abduction jumpstarted everything in the show's first season.
Stranger Things often juxtaposes action sequences and physical danger with protagonists separating and reuniting emotionally. So the new episodes feature Eleven pushing back against Hopper's efforts to keep her out of the fray and safe from capture by the military, while Steve struggles with feelings for ex-girlfriend Nancy, Robin bumbles a relationship with her girlfriend and Will is continually on the verge of declaring something about his romantic feelings. Again, little of this will seem new to longtime fans.
Last season, I noted the show's tendency to resolve emotional conflicts with "confessional monologues" — where one character turns to another and neatly, emotionally explains exactly the problem in their relationship. This time around, those monologues have become arguments, with characters revealing themselves in irritating fights aimed at fracturing the team, even as they resolve to work together.
Still, the Duffers are so skilled at keeping the plot hurtling along — fueled by smart, suspenseful cuts between situations, sprinkled with lots of breathless exposition and meticulous planning — that many may not notice how much these new dangers feel like old storylines.
When it gets tough to suspend disbelief
Absurd as it may be to grouse about improbable storytelling in a series featuring psychic-powered villains from an alternate universe, it remains true that more fanciful moments play better when they are surrounded by stuff that feels grounded and authentic. So moments where Stranger Things loses that plot can be oddly annoying.
In one climactic moment, for instance, soldiers spend a lot of time shooting at Demogorgons after it is obvious bullets don't stop them. Though one character wounded a Demogorgon with a broken wine bottle and another hurt it with a shotgun. Sigh.)
In a different scene, a Demogorgon is tearing up a screaming child's bedroom while her mother is taking a bath, blaring an ABBA hit and zoning out. But, unless you've got headphones stapled to your head, it seems it would be tough to miss that kind of ruckus a few feet away.
It's also tough to believe a military force that has spent millions occupying the town couldn't figure out which local kids were close to Eleven and might understand a bit about this supernatural force which has impacted the world.
All of this produces a feeling that the Duffer Brothers have come up with a newly beguiling, action-packed way to lead viewers down a very familiar road. Critics have only seen the four episodes debuting Wednesday, so perhaps there are more surprising storytelling turns in episodes to come.
But, depending on how much you enjoy the journey, what they've pulled off so far could be achievement enough.
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