Stranger Things, five reasons why season 5 doesn't have the usual magic
Netflix has released seven of the eight concluding episodes of the Duffer brothers' saga. Action abounds but the story appears weaker
Key points
We loved the first season and loved the fourth. We patiently waited three and a half years for the fifth, aware that - never more so than in the age of biting emotions - working on beauty takes time. Having come to the point, the glimpse leaves us perplexed: having watched seven of the eight episodes of Stranger Things's final season, we must confess to some disappointment. Netflix may have invested $480 million to bring down the curtain on its most iconic product, but this time the Duffer Brothers appear less inspired, the episodes full of scholastic narrative solutions and the season, unfortunately, lacking the magic we were used to. To write these lines, we have to wrestle with an inner demon that may not be Vecna but is nonetheless powerful: the affection we have for what the Duffer Brothers have shown (and wisely avoided showing us) in the 34 episodes of Stranger Things released from 2016 to 2022. For the sake of candour, we line up here five reasons why season five (at least so far) has not convinced us. With one caveat: this article contains spoilers.
1. They have torn the veil of mystery
Without mystery, no mass is sung. That's as true in church as in TV series. The first four seasons of Stranger Things worked like a charm because you didn't quite understand where the driver wanted to drive the bus. You'd take a scenic drive, between forbidding switchbacks and breathtaking views, and only episode after episode would you gain a little more insight into the big picture. The beautiful fourth season revealed the unrevealable. It was clear that it would be very difficult to move the narrative further. In the first seven episodes of season five this difficulty is very much in evidence.
2. A team-up that never ends
The fortune - and the problem - of contemporary Hollywood is called The Hero's Journey, a seminal book by Christopher Vogler that has bred generations of screenwriters, dictating to them a precise scheme according to which to construct stories. The typical dynamic of the Hero's Journey is that the 'Guardian of the Threshold' character (the antagonist, the 'monster' that prevents the protagonist from crossing the level), once overcome, becomes an unexpected and welcome ally of the 'good guys'. Stranger Things begins to abuse this dynamic somewhat and so, by the fifth season, we are witnessing an unprecedented team-up of characters. With this high concentration of good guys, it is inevitable that the narrative cores multiply and the narrative breaks up.
3. The video game effect
What do you make the 'good guys' do when there are so many of them? The Avengers teach: you make them fight. And here we come to another problem with the fifth season of Stranger Things: there is too much action, too much video game effect. Sometimes it's a shooter, sometimes even a platformer where you headbutt against the wall and earn the mushroom that makes you invincible. Every couple of episodes, the condominium assembly of the protagonists gets together, devises a plan and goes in and out of the Underworld to lash out somewhat generically at Vecna, the evil scientists and the thieving US government. Sure: the actors are good, we have long been fond of their characters, but that is not enough.
4. The great quotationist binge
Quotes have always been the salt of Stranger Things. Season after season: Stephen King's books, in particular Stand by Me - Remembrance of a Summer, the Nightmare franchise, The House... there was a bit of everything, cleverly dosed. Therein lies much of the success of this series set in the 1980s that is uniting generations of viewers in front of the screen. In the fifth season, however, we find that the Duffer brothers' citationism has become a little confused. Above all, it no longer refers to the 1980s alone: there is the Matrix saga (the kids intubated by Vecna in the muddy squalor and forced into a florid apparent life), the wormhole of Interstellar, even The Shark (The Oxygen Tank Exploding Demo Dogs). Then, in the story of Holly's abduction, there is an explicit tribute to In the Folds of Time, a novel by Madeleine L'Engle that became a Disney film in 2018. And the 1950s-1960s setting of the parallel world in which Henry/Mr Cosè/Vecna imprisons children is so Welcome to Derry. A great quotable binge.
