Stranger Things came out of the blue. In 2016, while I was back east in Massachusetts visiting my parents, and my sister was there too, we watched this show that had seemed to receive no marketing at all from Netflix. I guess the streaming service didn't expect that this revisionist 80s sci-fi horror riff would draw much of an audience. The Duffer Brothers, who created and run the show, have talked about how their pitch was shot down because it was a show aimed at adults but starring mostly children.
However, in those children, you had a whole bunch of Gen Xers who grew up in that era and Millennials like me who grew up on the residual pop culture of the 80s who saw themselves in these pre-teens dealing with government conspiracy and cosmic horror.
A Stephen King-style story (with a lower body count) mixed with John Carpenter music and a little touch of Spielberg made for what turned out to be a really effective story.
Seasons two and three struggled, I think, to retain some of the magic of that first season. I think 2 is probably the weakest, including what feels like the obligatory episode that introduces a whole bunch of new characters and concepts that are so out of place that it feels like a different show and you get the sense it'll never be mentioned again (this being when Eleven runs away from home and joins up with a bunch of anarchist punks led by another survivor of Brenner's lab). The third season was a marked improvement, with, I think more solid themes and stakes, though a weird tonal choice to use rather cartoonish Soviets operating out of an American mall.
Season four, to me, is the strongest season since the first, largely by trying new things, including a different kind of villain, known initially as "Vecna," named after another classic D&D villain (in D&D, Vecna is a specific character who is the quintessential example of a "Lich," a powerful, undead, extremely intelligent, wizard that is more or less built to serve as the ultimate villain of a campaign).
While the creatures of the Upside Down in Stranger Things have been truly alien, and all apparently expressions of a singular intelligence (the Mind Flayer, also named after a D&D monster, though ironically this one being simply a type of monster and not a specific character,) Vecna is more human - literally performed by an actor in heavy prosthetics and make-up, and his behavior seems more akin to an 80s slasher villain like Freddie Kruger (incidentally, Robert Englund, who played Kruger in the Nightmare on Elm Street movies, has a supporting role in one episode). So, there's a slasher killer invading peoples minds to destroy them from within, but he's also tied to the unfathomable and still very much unexplained Upside-Down (personally, I hope that we never get too much of an explanation about its nature).
Like the previous two seasons, the show divides the cast in a way that is still a little frustrating, but at the very least, the division of the cast is in bigger, fewer chunks. After the Byers moved away from Hawkins with Eleven after Hopper's apparent demise, Mike goes to visit them on Spring Break, though Nancy, despite doing the long-distance thing with Jonathan, decides to stay home.
As such, we have Mike, Eleven, Will, Jonathan, and Jonathan's new stoner friend Argyle forming one of the major "cast groups." This, I'll be honest, is maybe my least favorite one. Meanwhile, and spoiler alert if you haven't watched any of the trailers, Hopper is very much alive, and so we follow him in a Russian prison (or is it really just a prison?) while Joyce and Murray go on a mission to rescue him. Finally, the last cast "clique" has Dustin, Nancy, Lucas, Lucas' sister Erica, Steve, Robin, Max, and newcomer Eddie, who runs the high school's D&D club, known as the Hellfire Club.
This last group is the one that I find the most enjoyable, as it feels the most tied to the show's roots of young people having to solve enormous crises, but also gives us some of the most effective emotional beats, including a tremendous one centered around Max.
The season was released in two chunks - part two, which is just the last two episodes, came out only a few days ago. Episodes are longer, but with perhaps a few exceptions earlier in the season, it does not drag.
One thing of note is that, while the Soviets still play a role in this season, their presence I think works better now - it's a bit easier to imagine sketchy things happening in a secret prison in Siberia than with a bunch of Russian soldiers wearing uniforms in a secret base within the U.S.
I'm hoping the final season can at least match this one in quality, and hopefully put the cast together in Hawkins more.
With news of the new "Upside Down" production shingle Netflix has given the Duffer Brothers, I hope that Stranger Things is not milked totally dry of its charm, though given the way showbiz works these days, I can't be too confident it won't.
In any case, I'd say that if you're a fan of the show already and somehow haven't seen this season yet, you'll love it. If you found the last two seasons disappointing, try this one on for size.
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