Stranger Things (Netflix Original)

[Andrew NDB]

Saw all the new ones. Good but not great. I was imagining we'd have gotten a lot more crazy stuff in these "middle" episodes but mostly it's just a lot of people/kids shouting at each other in rooms. They left a LOT to wrap up with just 1 episode left and I'm not sure how they're going to do it satisfyingly.

And I'm STILL betting on Eddie. They keep mentioning him. Also, they're suddenly inferring that the Mind Flayer is something other than Vecna? Huh?

[Andrew NDB]

Watched the series finale. Not great. Pretty definitive, though... there really isn't anything else to possibly do after this. Watched a review that sums things up pretty well, my general sentiment: "it's sad that a show that started 10 years ago about 4 boys and their weird friend Eleven ends as a big 'girls get it done' bonanza." It's true. The male characters effectively did nothing meaningful in this finale.

[CyberCubed]

The season overall was kind of meh but I liked the finale a lot. The big group fight against the giant monster controlled by Vecna was great. The soldiers sideplot was completely pointless though, especially since they let them go at the end. Linda Hamilton was completely wasted too, she did practically nothing. Also do none of the soldiers care that a few of them were shot and killed by the protagonists? I mean I'm sure those guys are dead who were shot with the machine guns.

I did like Winona Ryder chopping off his head while they showed flashbacks to all the kids experiences. And the 40 minute epilogue showing them graduate, the older kids talk about their jobs, and the final dungeons and dragons scene realizing El was alive and then passing it to the younger generation like Holly was also fantastic.

Also it's 1989, none of these kids have a Nintendo? (NES?) By then kids were playing videogames more than that table-top stuff. Also where are the TMNT action figures, at this point the TMNT craze was huge.

[ToTheNines]

If you want to believe the TMNT crossover comic is canon, maybe that’s why they don’t exist as a cartoon in Stranger Things.

[CyberCubed]

Maybe, I consider it canon.

Also does anyone else think the actor who plays Mike is really damn ugly? His face is so weirdly structured and boney, when he was screaming out, "Eeeeeeellllllll" at the end it looked like his skeleton was trying to leap out of his skull. Man he is so damn ugly, I can't see him with a career after this show.

[Andrew NDB]

Originally Posted by CyberCubed

Maybe, I consider it canon.

Also does anyone else think the actor who plays Mike is really damn ugly? His face is so weirdly structured and boney, when he was screaming out, "Eeeeeeellllllll" at the end it looked like his skeleton was trying to leap out of his skull. Man he is so damn ugly, I can't see him with a career after this show.

If they ever do another Ghostbusters sequel he will most likely be back. Similarly if they want to do a Stranger Things reunion movie or something in 10 years. But that's about it. He's done. The novelty of Finn Wolfhard died when he stopped being a cute, small sarcastic child and turned into a really weird-looking gangly adult and now is only getting work that he's already grandfathered into from previous stuff like Frozen Empire and these last couple seasons of Stranger Things.

Millie Bobby Brown also... some really bizarre acting in this.

[CyberCubed]

Also no major characters deaths, all the main kids survive (and yes El is alive), but I'm surprised they killed off that Indian girl. I mean she was ugly as hell especially with the shaved haircut, but I'm surprised they were allowed to kill of a minority. I'm sure there's someone on twitter or reddit somewhere "raging" that only the brown Indian girl died.

[Andrew NDB]

Originally Posted by CyberCubed

Also no major characters deaths, all the main kids survive (and yes El is alive), but I'm surprised they killed off that Indian girl. I mean she was ugly as hell especially with the shaved haircut, but I'm surprised they were allowed to kill of a minority. I'm sure there's someone on twitter or reddit somewhere "raging" that only the brown Indian girl died.

All of that, and the Indian chick still had a better story arc this season than any of the main boys. We should've had a minimum of 2 main character deaths this season. Instead, they import a character that hasn't been seen since an episode of season 2 that nobody liked (I liked it, personally) so that they could have someone to kill off.

Things that still don't make any sense:

* Season 4 showed and told us that Henry Creel killed his parents when he was 12. And at that time he instantly went into a coma and was delivered to the care of Doctor Brenner and all that. He NEVER went to high school or anything. Yet in his mind this season, he was attending high school and even putting on plays, in a school occupied by people he wouldn't know like the Wheelers and Hopper? Did the writers forget their own scripts from last season? Very, very sloppy stuff.

* The Mindflayer wants to merge Earth with the Abyss world... but how would that make any sense with its actions in Season 3, becoming a great big meat puppet in the real world marching around Hawkins absorbing bodies? How does that get him any closer to merging worlds and, in fact, wouldn't that just unnecessarily expose himself to risk? You think he'd just keep a low profile while Henry is developing his plan.

* If Mike's hypothetical story about Eleven at the end is even mostly true, that'd mean Mike was kissing a mental projection from the Indian girl and not a mental projection from Eleven, right? Also, it's highly unlikely the Indian girl would have survived that long as she got shot at close range and was bleeding out pretty heavily right away. The only way this works is if she never got shot and that was just imprinted on the mind of Hopper and it was all planned out. But it doesn't really work because they wouldn't have had time to plan that given they got unknowingly ambushed by the military guys. I think what the Duffers are planning is that Linda Hamilton's character and the military guys DID get Eleven, and she'll be stashed away for 10 years to be studied and take blood from so they can unlock some other Upside Down-like thing. Just in time for the Stranger Things reunion movie or show.

* Where's all the Demigorgons in the Abyss OR the Upside Down this episode? We don't see a single one, and they just got done telling us the Demigorgons COME from the Abyss world. Also, where's all the swarms of bat creatures from the last season? It should have been a shooting gallery for the gang when they arrived in the Abyss and that also would have given everyone a lot more to do.

* Where could that piece of the Mindflayer (or whatever it was) possibly have come from to infect young Henry Creel? The Upside Down wouldn't be created for another 20 years and that Upside Down was the only way to get to the Abyss, where the Mindflayer is from. It was SUPER lazy storytelling to literally make Creel's heel turn into a mystery box they don't explain. It would have been better just to leave him naturally evil and super-powered by random genetics than this.

* Why does the Mindflayer want to merge the Abyss with Earth, exactly? They keep saying that's what it wants to do over and over again but they don't offer a single reason that could explain the rationale there. And Creel is just going along with it, for what reason?

* There isn't going to be any sort of an investigation into Hopper and Nancy murdering like 20 US Army soldiers in cold blood? Those guys weren't like some kind of dark ops, secret division or anything... they were just normal, everyday US Army soldiers following orders and trying to do their best to contend with a town invaded by alien/demon things that have been snatching up and killing kids for 4 years by that point.

[CyberCubed]

I haven't watched the older seasons in a few years so I don't remember the Henry stuff. I really got to marathon the whole show now that it's over because I've literally forgotten most of the key details of each seasons. I'd be surprised if they retconned stuff from the main villain from just one season before, but I don't remember.

The lack of any other monsters outside the giant one was odd, probably a budget reason? They put all their special effects department on the giant monster fight (looks like a creature I fought in a videogame, but can't remember which one), so they didn't have time for anything else.

I did comment on the death of some of the soldiers being overlooked was weird, especially since they let all the kids go at the end (off-screen, we don't even know why when they skip ahead 18 months)

[Andrew NDB]

Originally Posted by CyberCubed

I haven't watched the older seasons in a few years so I don't remember the Henry stuff.

ALL of the Henry stuff was in the very last season. There was no Henry prior to season 4.

Originally Posted by CyberCubed

(off-screen, we don't even know why when they skip ahead 18 months)

I think a combination of wanting to hand-wave away the military presence in Hawkins and forcing a bookend with the kids' graduation. Which would have been 18 months later. But obviously you still end up with stuff like Derek (the fat kid) and Holly looking exactly the same as 18 months before that.

[CyberCubed]

Oh man, I didn't even realize Holly and Derek looked exactly the same despite being 18 months later. And when you're a young teenager you age rapidly between years. Man that's a plothole I didn't even think about.

The writers cleverly disguised this with the main cast making them look older by simply using the actors "real life" haircuts and looks and not being 80's styled anymore (and all the girls were wearing make-up), so they all looked older despite those scenes likely being filmed the very next day from the previous ones.

But yeah, Holly and Derek looking exactly the same, that fat kid should be a lot taller (and either lost weight or gotten chubbier as most fat kids are that age), and Holly should be much taller and look well...more adult (don't want to sound creepy here but you know what I mean)

[sdp]

man, glad I stopped at S1, I had a blast, didn't feel I needed more from the show. The 'cliffhanger' at the end of S1 is just a normal trope for the genre, I didn't need it 'resolved.

Stranger things should've been an anthology show, with S2 being something different.

[Andrew NDB]

Honestly, they could have just satisfyingly ended it with season 4. All they had to do was show Vecna definitively burned to death on the ground and then don't do the portals ripping open throughout Hawkins. Season 4 inferred that Vecna was either controlling the Mind Flayer or WAS the Mind Flayer, so no need to see anything more there with Vecna dead.

Probably would have been better off than what we got.

[CyberCubed]

Watching the ending again, did it ever strike you just how white this cast is? All the main kids are white besides one black kid, all the older kids are white, all the adults/parents are white, etc. And besides when they brought the minor indian girl back, there were no minorities throughout most of the show and especially in this season. For a netflix show airing between 2016 and now, I'm really surprised just how "white" the cast is.

I mean I guess it's true to the 1980's, as minorities didn't really exist back then. Like back then EVERYONE was white, and you had maybe 1 token black friend like in this show. You never saw Asians unless you ate at a chinese restaurant, and muslims just plain did not exist. Hispanics? Hardly any.

I guess they wanted to keep spirit to the 1980's when everyone was white. Minorities weren't really invented yet in that time era.

[Andrew NDB]

This almost works. Just needs at least a few bats in there.

[IndigoErth]

Decent final season and last episode was pretty good. The rare show that didn't make the ending feel rushed. My favorite monster is the original 'big bad' and exists as a physical creature? I do wish there was some kind of explanation why it wanted all this though... what was its point? Is it like one of the cosmic monters?

I also kind of wish though that we got confirmation that Eleven is still out there, rather than doing the old loose speculation, open to interpretation thing. I was half expecting it to end with briefly hearing her voice on the radio, but no other characters hear it. But if she still exists... I'd like some one-off future thing, even a short comic, that at least allows poor Hopper to know she's out there and okay.

Side note... you guys see there is an animated series coming? "Stranger Things: Tales from 1985." Saw it listed and "coming 2026" when I searched something else. If you ask me... an adaptation of the TMNT crossover might fit nicely into that!

[XERO]

The fact that the final line of the show wasn't "Well... stranger things have happened" irks me in ways I can't even fathom.

[IndigoErth]

Aw, well thanks, now I'm annoyed they missed that opportunity as well.

[CyberCubed]

The show ended fine, although I think Season 5 as a whole was the weakest season, but I'll need to rewatch all the seasons to remind myself of them. I am surprised they gave Holly such a big role in the final season, she was practically the main character. Why give a big role in the last season to a character who was a toddler for the first few seasons? Although Holly's actress was really good. That fat kid Derek was fine too, he reminded me of all the fatso kids that used to be in my classes back then.

[Andrew NDB]

Originally Posted by CyberCubed

I am surprised they gave Holly such a big role in the final season, she was practically the main character. Why give a big role in the last season to a character who was a toddler for the first few seasons?

Can you believe Holly is supposed to be 7 in this latest season but the actress was 14?