"Stranger Things Season 5" The Best is Yet to Come

 

    I'm going to be honest with you, I was never the biggest Stranger Things fan. While I thought that this season one and two were both very good, season three sort of lost me. Personally, it just felt like everything was becoming too stagnant and the series was experiencing many of the same pitfalls of other Netflix shows, leaning too much into "Teen Drama" rather than the "Horror" that made people fall in love with it in the first place. Luckily, its safe to say that season five is like a return to roots, with the shows sights set on much larger ambitions than before.

    Personally, I'm not too sure how to feel about the release cycle of this show. While I do enjoy binging, it just felt like these episodes were so long that this show would have definitely benefited from a weekly release cycle. I mean when the final episode is quite literally 2 and a half hours long surely you could have cut something out? This is very much a hard season to digest for the average viewer, and I think something could have been done to fix it. While most of the time they did take advantage of the extra time allotted to the show, it just felt like there was a lot of extra things that could have been cut out, especially if they didn't feel the need to have all the characters get at least some amount of screen time.

    Like I kid you not, if you killed off Jonathan, Mike, Will, and Dustin, not much would be lost from the show and you would be able to easily work around it. Like take Dustin for example, he is a very stagnant character who hasn't grown too much from season one, and his arc can basically be summarized as nerdy, wholesome child, who finds a girlfriend and just is told to take care of the nerds at high school. Basically, he doesn't change or do much, and while not every character has to have their own arc, isn't that the entire point of making each episode basically an hour and a half long?

    Luckily, not all arcs during this season were complete garbage, as I actually really enjoyed what team Hawkins, team Secret Base and team Russia did this season. In fact, I thought that at least for the first half of the season the show did a masterful job of constantly switching between storylines to ensure nothing really dragged on for too long and so that all viewers wouldn't feel bored. On a side note, why was this season divided into two parts? Especially when the second half was quite literally just the last two episodes, but I digress.

    I suppose it doesn't matter, this is the moneymaker of Netflix and it really shows. After watching countless Disney+ shows from both Marvel and Star Wars, Stranger Things really makes me appreciate all the time and money that went into making this show look as wonderful as it does. The action scenes are well thought out, and the production quality blows any Disney+ miniseries out of the water, so at least the 15 million dollars per episode went somewhere.

    I suppose if I had to summarize my feelings about this show it would be, the good parts are fantastic, but the boring parts feel absolutely useless. Mike, Will, Jonathan and Pizza Boy could have easily been reduced to about 15 minutes, and the entire point would get across, considering nothing barely happens with Will coming out. On the other hand, the Hawkins storyline/Russia storyline was incredibly captivating and held me in my seat just waiting until we switched back into their storylines.

Final Score: 75/100

    I suppose ultimately, I would have to say I'm looking forward to season five. Vecna is a villain with great CGI and a compelling backstory, and I look forward to see how they hopefully end this series in the next season. Although, I'm a little confused on how they intend to address the time jump considering the imminent danger shown in the cliffhanger, and personally I do hope they give some characters something meaningful to actually do.