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CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
142
Mixed:
32
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews
Dec 1, 2025
Season 5 Review:
As I watched the episodes that make up the first half, I found myself getting caught up despite the lack of emotional depth, if straining to remember some of the finer details of what was going on. .... I found the final moments of the final episode coming out this month both genuinely thrilling and genuinely moving. Almost despite itself, Season 5 pulls off a scene of impressive emotional payoff, pushing past all of the action of the earlier episodes to say something profound about being young.
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Dec 1, 2025
Season 5 Review:
“Stranger Things” lacks the wide-eyed, Spielbergian wonder of its early seasons. But even in its bloated, current form, there are still some charming character moments, bits of good humor and judicious use of ‘80s pop tunes (Tiffany’s “I Think We’re Alone Now” gets a spooky workout).
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Nov 26, 2025
Season 5 Review:
Stranger Thing Season 5 Part 1— streaming now — is full of gaudy special effects, nonsensical lore, and insane plot devices, and yet you will still somehow fall under the show’s spell. That’s because it was never the spectacle or super-sized episode run times that won audiences over. No, the best part of Stranger Things is still, as it’s always been, the sheer humanity of its characters and the incandescent talent of its young cast.
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The TimesNov 26, 2025
Season 5 Review:
Maya Hawke, meanwhile, is a star and David Harbour and Winona Ryder’s Hopper and Joyce are one of the engagingly imperfect couples on screen — let’s hope it doesn’t end badly, and she makes a confessional album about him. Episode four features a set piece that would be the envy of most movies and a revelation that sets up the final chapters very nicely indeed. The big question is: who will they kill off? Roll on Boxing Day.
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Nov 26, 2025
Season 5 Review:
Because what the fifth and final season of "Stranger" has going for it is in its spirit: it certainly feels like the "Stranger" we've come to know and love over nearly a decade. But it is a distinctly imperfect final bow; the season seesaws between thrilling and annoying, from emotionally satisfying to logically baffling.
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Nov 26, 2025
Season 5 Review:
Having seen four of the final season’s nine episodes, I can attest that there’s a lot of gratifying new material, particularly for fellow fans of author Madeleine L’Engle and Schnapp, and one very weird subplot. But the flashbacks are what interest me most; they feel anxious. There’s an urgency to them, a workmanlike sense of rigor that feels slightly at odds with the show’s mission and tone. Put simply: It feels, suddenly, like “Stranger Things” wants to explain itself. It wants to provide answers — and connections — that I both long for and fear the show can’t plausibly deliver.
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SlashfilmNov 26, 2025
Season 5 Review:
Ultimately, it feels like "Stranger Things" season 5 is too big to fail. If you've spent the last several years growing to love these characters and their Amblin-inspired adventures, you're pretty much in the tank and ready to get swept up in all the action one last time. But there's a weariness at play here, too — a sense that the show probably should've wrapped things up already. Better late than never.
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Nov 26, 2025
Season 5 Review:
What lingers is not just nostalgia for the ’80s, but nostalgia for the “Stranger Things” version of that decade. No longer merely a pastiche, Hawkins has become a place both familiar and extraordinary that we’ve happily visited for nearly 10 years...The TV world is going to feel a whole lot stranger without it.
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Nov 26, 2025
Season 5 Review:
the initial quartet of chapters are so packed with gory action, movie-grade visual effects and effortless, amusing interactions from its now-veteran ensemble that watching in spurts is probably advisable...You’ll want to savor the finely structured storytelling and extended shock setpieces that series creators Matt and Ross Duffer serve up. Additionally, those who indulge have extra time to obsess over all the nostalgic Easter eggs the Duffer Brothers plant. And considering the escalating pace at which the narrative barrels along on multiple tracks, viewers could need a breath-catching break; I know I was absolutely winded by the end of Chapter Four.
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RogerEbert.comNov 26, 2025
Season 5 Review:
While these four episodes stumble a bit in terms of pacing and urgency, especially early on, they end on such a satisfying, long-awaited note that fans who have literally grown up watching this show are unlikely to care. They’ll just be counting the days until the next drop.
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Nov 26, 2025
Season 5 Review:
After an unwieldy, exposition-heavy first episode, the Duffers quickly find their groove again in Stranger Things Season 5, Vol. 1. These four episodes are a welcome return to the town and characters of Hawkins. The fight against Vecna takes a new path and the show’s tone has matched the maturing of its cast and experiences of its characters.
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ColliderNov 26, 2025
Season 5 Review:
These four episodes make a statement that the Duffers are ending their series on their own terms, even while they serve as a culmination of everything that has come before. That's a good thing, and if Stranger Things can maintain that balance the rest of the way, the back half of the final season should be able to deliver the type of remarkable ending the residents of Hawkins and the viewers watching at home all deserve.
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Radio TimesNov 26, 2025
Season 5 Review:
The Duffer Brothers have had a monumental task in wrapping up this beast of a show and giving each and every character an ending that not only makes sense, but proves satisfactory after nine years. Many showrunners have tried to wrap up stories of this scale in style, and many have failed, and which camp the Duffers ultimately fall into remains to be seen...But, if these first few episodes are anything to go by, we could be looking at a finale for the ages. It might be a bit too soon to tell for sure, but, as we've seen over the past decade, when it comes to this TV phenomenon, stranger things have happened.
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Jul 5, 2022
Jul 1, 2022
Season 4.5 Review:
Stranger Things at this point feels nostalgic for itself: its characters, its lore, and more importantly the emotional connection its fans feel towards it. ... The show’s scope is getting bigger, its cast more expansive, and its stakes more universal. And it’s a miracle that it manages to keep all these plates largely spinning, even as its runtimes threaten to give Titanic a run for their money.
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iJul 1, 2022
Season 4.5 Review:
The action and the four-series storyline – all of which untangles into one simple, satisfying thread towards the end of episode two – are excellent, but secondary to what Stranger Things does best. That I was worried for every single character, that there was not one I would be willing to say goodbye to is a testament to the world building and relationships the show’s creators, the Duffer Brothers, have achieved.
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Jul 1, 2022Jul 1, 2022
Season 4.5 Review:
As big as Stranger Things has stretched in season four, the avenues by which its parallel narrative threads will converge are becoming more clear with the revelations of volume two. And that’s exciting, watching as all of these characters, long broken apart, find their way back to each other.
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Jul 1, 2022
Season 4.5 Review:
On a visual level, the season’s second volume delivers a blockbuster experience, full of epic special effects, though it’s moved much closer to a gory horror movie than to the ET and Goonies-style adventures of its early years. This overarching darkness, combined with the endlessly frenetic pace of the season, can make the long episodes exhausting to watch. ... Even so, I wasn’t prepared for the immense melancholy of these last two very long episodes.
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RogerEbert.comJul 1, 2022
Season 4.5 Review:
These last two episodes do a good job of paring down the action to four basic threads (instead of the eight or nine we had in Chapters Five through Seven). ... Most of it [the reunions and all the emotional beats] feels earned; some of it could go. As for the fun, these last two episodes have their moments, but the only new pop culture references one could dig into might be the role metal music plays in the group’s plan.
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The PlaylistJul 1, 2022
Season 4.5 Review:
It’s a massive production with characters that fans truly love finding their moments to be actual heroes instead of just playing ones in Dungeons & Dragons. And, despite its bloated, cluttered failures, it is a show that truly attempts to satisfy its fan base in every way possible.
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ColliderJul 1, 2022
Season 4.5 Review:
Ultimately, it speaks to the strengths of the show and its cast that Season 4 manages to extend moments of hope and poignancy even in the midst of greater circumstances that could quite literally signal the end of the world. The performances in these final episodes are staggeringly good.
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The GuardianJul 1, 2022
Season 4.5 Review:
The fireworks finally begin and they don’t disappoint, with no big surprises (various characters find themselves on the edge of defeat in a fight to the death before visions of what truly matters to them give them the strength to rally at the last second) but a lot of impeccable judgments.
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Jun 13, 2022
Season 4 Review:
Amid the show’s ballooning scale and scope, Stranger Things finds an unexpected anchor not in its ensemble of fan favorites but in its latest villain: a supernatural serial killer dubbed Vecna after—what else?—a Dungeons and Dragons character. Vecna resides in the Upside Down, but unlike previous visitors, he’s humanlike, with a voice, a face, and, most chilling of all, a worldview.
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Jun 2, 2022
Season 4 Review:
The visual effects are more sophisticated and so is the filmmaking; the transitions between scenes, which track four different running story lines, are more elegant and make a sprawling season feel relatively cohesive. Does it feel bloated given those longer run-times? At times, yes. But by episode three, I was again invested in what’s happening in Hawkins (as well as some new locations), and less concerned about the amount of minutes that investment required.
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May 25, 2022
Season 4 Review:
When it’s not rehashing plot elements of past seasons, “Stranger Things 4” foregoes the Amblin-esque, ‘80s movie joy of previous seasons in favor of a more gruesome, horror-tinged story. True believers may not care about this tonal shift but more casual viewers – and those who value not having a TV show waste their time with needlessly over-long episodes – probably will.
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The PlaylistMay 25, 2022
iMay 24, 2022
Season 4 Review:
This is a series so full of surprises, Easter eggs and references that it’s a delight to know you’ll be able to enjoy them in all their glory. But here’s what I can tell you: it’s fantastic. ... Series four is certainly a change in tone and even genre, but it’s all the better for it.
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ColliderMay 23, 2022
May 23, 2022
Season 4 Review:
To its credit, the lingering pace doesn’t translate to any boring moments. Stranger Things still injects an enthralling backstory into its well-established universe. It’s an indication that the final two episodes of Volume 2 (dropping on July 1), despite its movie length, will only elevate season four.
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The GuardianDec 4, 2019
Season 3 Review:
It’s a real and joyful return to form for the show that has been taken fiercely to the hearts of people who weren’t there the first time round and, perhaps even more fiercely, by those who were. The brothers continue to play with, reference and occasionally lift all the things that made the Johns, Carpenter and Hughes, and the Steph(/v)ens, King and Spielberg, enduringly great and mash them into something equally fun, racy and frightening as hell for us all on the small screen. It’s almost like being young again.
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TV Guide MagazineJul 8, 2019
Season 3 Review:
While the mayhem over eight episodes can grow repetitive and tiresome--I lost count of how many ties bodies were hurled against and sometimes through walls--there's a light touch even in the darker moments. [8-21 Jul 2019, p.14]
Jul 3, 2019
Season 3 Review:
A lot of John Hughes-style teenage rom-com material, especially in the early episodes, with the usual heavy overlay of ’80s nostalgia — “Cheers,” Jazzercise, Ralph Macchio, New Coke. The Duffers’ presentation of this is perfectly competent, but it can’t help feeling beside the point.
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Jul 2, 2019
Season 3 Review:
This is by far the most impressive season, even if the action sequences are — like the threat of the Upside Down itself — a bit repetitive. (You can set your watch to Eleven’s conveniently-timed arrival whenever a good guy is facing certain death.) But the growth of the characters — whether through age or, like Hopper and Joyce, through learning to deal with past traumas — means that they feel different and surprising, even when the story is traveling paths we’ve been on many times before.
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Jul 2, 2019
Season 3 Review:
This eight-episode installment available Thursday just might be my favorite of the series. It has more heart and far more willingness to address the messiness that comes with adolescence. It also features several genuinely creepy moments that have everything to do with something not of this world.
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Jul 1, 2019
Season 3 Review:
To some this may stand as evidence of a series relaxing into its baroque period, and depending on how much love a viewer has for the show, that’s probably fine. Kid fans are going to love it, although the frights have escalated this season. Adults yearning to be seduced by memories of a past injected into our brains by Hollywood will be amply satisfied. .. A summertime treat built for the broadest range of tastes.
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RogerEbert.comJul 1, 2019
Season 3 Review:
It’s such a finely-tuned and executed piece of escapist entertainment that I watched it twice. (Yes, the whole thing.) ... “Stranger Things 3” has absolutely no fat. It's the kind of show that I’d wager almost everyone who starts will find themselves finishing in one or two sittings. The rhythm of “Stranger Things” has never been tighter, but it helps that the cast feels elevated as well.
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Jul 1, 2019
Season 3 Review:
It’s a bit of a stretch to say this season is truly gory, but it’s definitely ookier than the previous two. It’s also much more blatantly aware of itself and its place in the Zeitgeist. ... There’s nothing wrong with any of this per se, but it adds to the impression that the Duffers & Co. are writing what they know rather than trying to break new ground. Then again, part of Stranger Things’ DNA is that it isn’t inventing so much as reinventing.
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Jul 1, 2019
Season 3 Review:
Mainly what you’ll be doing when you’ve finished your binge is trying to catch your breath (the finale is epic with a capital E, P, I and C), drying your eyes (it’ll also give you feels that you never even knew were feels) and wondering whether you’ll remain on the edge of your seat all the way until Season 4.
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Jun 30, 2019
Season 3 Review:
Most of season two’s flaws and frustrations have been ironed out in satisfying and interesting ways in season three. ... This time around, however, a new set of problems arises — and weirdly enough, a lot of them don’t concern the story itself, but the show’s aesthetic and technical choices.
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Oct 30, 2017
Season 2 Review:
All in all, Stranger Things season 2 is ultimately more of the same, but still a very worthy sequel, which is good news for those of us (like me) who only hoped for the Duffer Brothers to manage to carry through the success of the original run with an affecting, and believable, continuation of the story.
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TV Guide MagazineOct 26, 2017
Season 2 Review:
Stranger Things 2 is a blast. [30 Oct 2017 - 12 Nov 2017, p.12]
Oct 26, 2017Oct 26, 2017
Season 2 Review:
I’m not sure Stranger Things creatively needed a second season, and for several episodes it seems like Stranger Things 2 isn’t convinced of it either. But it’s a still a good time, it’s nicely paced at nine episodes and it blends the suspense of ’80s horror with the heart of an ’80s teen romance.
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Oct 26, 2017
Season 2 Review:
The new season of Stranger Things isn’t as good as the first. The Empire Strikes Back and The Two Towers notwithstanding, sequels hardly ever are. Though, as with so many sequels, what happened before happens again only more so, it is somehow more than the sum of its disparate parts.
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Oct 26, 2017
Season 2 Review:
Season 2’s first three episodes top the suspense, weirdness and fun of last year thanks to sharper writing, more dynamic storytelling, a honed sense of humor (some of it self-referential) and a young cast that has developed its acting skills alongside their adult teeth.
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Oct 24, 2017
Season 2 Review:
The result is a second season that replicates and, indeed, enhances the show's central charms -- its group of pubescent nerds, and nostalgic sense of time and place -- while still feeling less compelling with its teenage contingent. All told, it's an impressive follow-up, if one perhaps burdened by expectations raised by the over-the-moon reaction, to couch it in the fantasy of the era, to the debut.
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