At some point throughout its five-season, nine-year run, Stranger Things decided it didn’t really want to be a TV show anymore.
The shift began as early as Season 2, when the show dropped the word “season” from its marketing. Stranger Things Season 2 simply became Stranger Things 2, the change positioning the new season less as a TV continuation and more as a tentpole sequel in the vein of a Marvel movie. The shift continued in the three-year wait between Seasons 2 and 3, a ludicrous timeline that has now unfortunately become a norm for a medium where the standard was once one season per year.
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By the time Season 4 rolled around, the de-TV-ification of Stranger Things was complete. Creators the Duffer Brothers delivered a blockbuster season chock-full of epic battles, new Upside Down mythology, and supersized episodes. Every installment was over an hour long, two crossed the 90-minute mark, and the finale was a taxing two-and-a-half-hour affair. As gripping as the season was — we all remember where we were when Max (Sadie Sink) escaped Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower) with the help of Kate Bush — it felt too big, too unwieldy to truly be called TV.
Those maximalist urges are once again on full display in Stranger Things‘ fifth and final season, which I can only sum up as “gargantuan.” That scale can often be frustrating, bordering on exhausting, as Stranger Things has moved light-years beyond its more intimate, sleeper hit beginnings. But even with all the flaws that come with overstuffing a season, I can’t help but admit that Stranger Things Season 5, Volume 1 signals the beginnings of an effective send-off for the characters (and actors) we’ve watched grow up over the last nine years.
What’s Stranger Things Season 5 about?
Credit: Netflix
When last we left the town of Hawkins, it had been split apart by an apocalyptic rift to the Upside Down. In the year since, however, the citizens of Hawkins have settled into a new normal — under military quarantine, that is.
However, the Stranger Things squad isn’t taking their tentative safety lightly. They know Vecna is still out there, and every so often, they set out on elaborate “crawls” through the Upside Down to find him. These are all-hands-on-deck operations, meaning everyone, from the Hawkins high schoolers to adults like Joyce (Winona Ryder) and Hopper (David Harbour), is in on the plan.
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The involvement of everyone is both refreshing and tiring. Refreshing, because in the past, Stranger Things has tended to split its cast into groups with varying levels of information. While it’s been fun to watch these disparate crews piece together different elements of each season’s big mystery, it’s sweet to watch everyone banding together and getting something to do from square one. Yet it’s also tiring to watch Stranger Things spin tens of plates from the get-go. There’s little to no time to ease back into the world of Hawkins. Instead, it’s all systems go, right from the jump, which can be tough when you’re adding new main characters to focus on in addition to all the Stranger Things mainstays.
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The most egregious example of this is the character of Holly (Nell Fisher), the younger sister of Nancy (Natalia Dyer) and Mike (Finn Wolfhard). In prior seasons, she’s been a toddler mostly confined to a high chair. Now, all of a sudden, she’s 10 years old and extremely central to the plot. Fisher is immediately endearing, bringing the plucky sweetness of her turn in 2024’s indie gem Bookworm to the massive new stage of Stranger Things. Yet the intense focus on Holly, especially in the first episode, had me groaning, “Great, there’s more?”
Stranger Things Season 5 is TV maximalism at its most dangerous.
Millie Bobby Brown in “Stranger Things.”
Credit: Netflix
That sentiment of “Oh man, more?” permeates the entirety of Stranger Things Season 5, as the Hawkins squad goes from convoluted plan to convoluted plan to… you get the idea. Yet those plans are as fun as they’ve always been, especially an early season highlight that calls to mind Home Alone booby traps and the Nancy, Jonathan (Charlie Heaton), and Steve (Joe Keery) Demogorgon takedown from Season 1. Is it strange to be nostalgic for an episode of TV from only nine years ago? Maybe! But Stranger Things is a series built on nostalgia, and during its marathon run, that nostalgia has also become self-reflexive.
The trap scenes also highlight the effectiveness of Stranger Things‘ more grounded action scenes, ones that are just a bunch of kids against one monster, as opposed to psychic showdowns in the sinister tentacle-palooza of the Upside Down. There’s quite a lot of that this season, which brings car chases, helicopters, and even full military bases into the Upside Down. On the “dumb-cool” continuum, these skew more towards “dumb,” especially as the overly murky Upside Down begins to lose its mystique the more time we spend in it.
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It also loses more of its mystique as the Duffer Brothers further expand it and Vecna’s mythos. Case in point: a five-minute cold open that returns us to Will’s (Noah Schnapp) time in the Upside Down in Season 1, when Vecna apparently encountered him. Frankly, I preferred it when Season 1 was just about a boy and the monster chasing him, and when the Upside Down was just a spooky, mysterious place. Sometimes, less really is more.
The case against Stranger Things‘ growing maximalism lies, once again, in the real-world scenes, especially the return of the flashing Christmas lights that came to be one of the defining visuals of Season 1. Their comeback here is glorious (and yes, a case of that self-reflexive nostalgia), but also proof that Stranger Things‘ simplest tricks are often more effective than the several massive set pieces set in another dimension.
I still can’t get enough of Stranger Things‘ characters.
Winona Ryder in “Stranger Things.”
Credit: Netflix
But what Stranger Things can never give me enough of is the myriad distinct relationships across its ever-expanding cast of characters. And thankfully, we get that in spades this season.
Much of the focus here is on the Stranger Things mainstays, like Hopper and Eleven’s (Millie Bobby Brown) father-daughter bond, or Mike, Will, Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin), and Dustin’s (Gaten Matarazzo) tight-knit adventuring party. It’s moving to just see where their arcs have brought them: Eleven, training her powers harder than ever, is basically a full-fledged action hero. In grieving Eddie (Joseph Quinn), Dustin has basically become his mini-me, alienating himself from his friends, including Steve. Lucas is similarly brought low by grief, routinely sitting by Max’s hospital bedside and playing her Kate Bush in the hopes she’ll wake from her coma, a scene that’s a real twist to the heart. The internet often jokes about how much older the child actors are now than when they started, and it does take several heaping tablespoons of disbelief to accept them as high schoolers. Yet their visible maturity weirdly ends up working to their advantage, emphasizing how much the Hawkins kids have had to grow up before their time.
Stranger Things Season 5 also fleshes out new partnerships this season. Will finds an ally in Robin (Maya Hawke), who endeavors to be his queer mentor. Jonathan and Steve, so often vying for Nancy’s affections — a storyline that I cannot wait to die — get some surprising heart-to-heart time. And any chance for more Nancy and Mike sibling sleuthing is a welcome one. The effectiveness of each combination proves that whatever Stranger Things loses in its attempts to outdo itself on an “epic” level, it wins back a hundredfold in its focus on character.
Ultimately, that’s what resonates most about Stranger Things Season 5’s first four episodes. The flashy battles and lore bombshells can get the blood pumping, but it’s the characters who have kept viewers coming back for many, many years. Knowing we’ll be saying goodbye to them only makes these episodes sweeter, exhaustion be damned.
