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CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
142
Mixed:
32
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews
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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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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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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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 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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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 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 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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The Daily BeastOct 23, 2017
Season 2 Review:
While it might be frustrating to have sat through nearly 300 minutes of television only to realize not much has happened, the Duffer Brothers have constructed such a rich, vibrant universe and populated it with such entertaining characters--those kids really are a hoot--that it’s still fun to go along for the ride, slower though it is.
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Jul 14, 2016
Season 1 Review:
What I like most about Stranger Things is the way the Duffer Brothers never short-shrift the emotional content of the show in favor of thrills and CGI. ... [Ryder's] hysteria can be grating. At points, she’s almost a parody of a crazed mother, one that might fit in more on a different, more comedic show.
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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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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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The PlaylistMay 25, 2022
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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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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The IndependentNov 26, 2025
Season 5 Review:
But the Duffer Brothers have created something, in the beleaguered town of Hawkins and its luckless citizenry, that is admirably immersive. The danger now is that the desire to give it a spectacular send-off will undermine those charming, emotional moments where Stranger Things delved into one of the great cinematic subjects: finding your place in the world as you exit childhood.
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Jul 1, 2022
May 23, 2022
Season 4 Review:
The fourth season of Stranger Things is the biggest, scariest, most ambitious Stranger Things season yet. It’s also the least charming, least funny and least inventive season yet, which doesn’t mean that those elements are wholly lacking, just that the effort to concentrate on moments of human relatability often gets overwhelmed by the attempts at scale.
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Jul 3, 2019
Season 3 Review:
Besides nostalgia, plot is really all “Stranger Things” has to offer, and this time it offers far too much of it. ... The sluggish pace of this season can be daunting to binge, and there’s ample evidence that the Duffers are running out of big ideas, often relying on violence to make up for a lack of imagination. Nevertheless, nostalgia remains a powerful drug that satisfies a primal urge, and on that note, “Stranger Things” can lay claim to an ample supply.
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Jul 26, 2016
Season 1 Review:
There’s a higher bar for original stories--even homages--to clear when it comes to incorporating the lessons Hollywood has learned recently about depicting female characters who are as layered as their male counterparts. For all its charms, Stranger Things doesn’t quite meet that standard.
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ColliderJul 14, 2016
Jul 1, 2022
Season 4.5 Review:
Stranger Things has taken the idea of playing the long game to heart a bit too literally, capping its super-sized fourth season with two sprawling episodes that total nearly four hours. Whether that's a reward to fans or self-indulgence by the producers rests in the eye of the beholder, but after this, it's hard to imagine many concluding that ending things with season five qualifies as premature.
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Dec 1, 2025
Season 5 Review:
I found the first four episodes largely joyless and grim, right up until a moment that seemed to reset the show, or at least to capture some of the connection and spirit that used to make it so compelling. .... If Stranger Things can locate more of that humanity in its last few episodes, it’ll be much easier to swallow everything else it’s trying to sell us.
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Nov 26, 2025
Season 5 Review:
For now, however, these children remain frozen in time and space, unable to move past our nostalgic memories of the people they once were. It’s just as well that Vecna’s curse is coming to an end sooner rather than later. It’s time to let these adolescents do as adolescents are meant to do: grow up and move on with the rest of their lives.
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Nov 26, 2025
Season 5 Review:
The truth is that “Stranger Things” itself has not reflected its stars’ obvious maturation with an accompanying complexity. All of “Stranger Things” is an exercise in nostalgia. In Season 5, the show now seems to pine not just for the neon hues and synth-driven pop of the 1980s it conjures so evocatively, but for a simpler time in its own run that can’t be brought back, no matter how high the budget. Though if anything, “Stranger Things” has only gotten less rough-edged over time.
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May 26, 2022
Season 4 Review:
The nine hours have their moments; a midseason scene in which the combative Max (Sadie Sink) escapes the monster’s grip is particularly affecting. But there’s way too much filler — dull teenage melodrama, jokey but routine action, horror that doesn’t have the authentically creepy charge it used to.
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May 24, 2022
Season 4 Review:
The writers don't balance the series' plots well or make each of these three (eventually four, as Eleven ventures off on her own journey of self discovery) feel vital. It leaves you with the feeling that half of what you've just invested time watching was utterly pointless. But the bigger problem is the wild departure in tone.
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May 23, 2022
Season 4 Review:
Its formula is tried and true — but has also grown stale. Hardcore fans of Stranger Things will likely find nothing wrong with the new season, as is their wont. They’ll love the nods to Barb (Shannon Purser) and character reunions. They’ll obsess over potential love triangles and thrill over creepy new flourishes. I personally wish the show had reined it in a bit, focused on the core cast over the newbs, and tried something truly creative with its storytelling instead of just nostalgia baiting.
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May 23, 2022
Season 4 Review:
With all these characters to track, “Stranger Things” certainly does have its work out for it, and mostly manages to keep everything moving at a steady enough clip once it establishes the four or so subplots that end up defining the season. The problem is that pretty much every plot (except for Eleven continuing to explore her origin story) gets less compelling the further they get from Hawkins.
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Jul 8, 2019
Season 3 Review:
The cutesy signifiers are there—the geometric neon patterns on standard-issue mall wear, a running gag about New Coke—but the rest has gotten sloppy. The dialogue is awash in expressions that weren’t common 10 years ago, let alone 35. ... If there’s nothing as painful as Season 2’s “punk” episode, there’s nothing in Stranger Things’ third season as memorable either.
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Jun 30, 2019
Season 3 Review:
It is, indeed, bigger and not better. It's also bigger and not deeper. After establishing this world, we've now had two seasons that have done nothing to enhance the mythology of the Upside Down, to make me more interested in the monsters that dwell there, their goals in our world or justifiable explanations for why stupid scientist-types keep fiddling with this dimensional breach.
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TV Guide MagazineJul 8, 2016
Season 1 Review:
It's agreeable popcorn fare, though like many Netflix originals, might have had twice the impact at half the length. [11-24 Jul 2016, p.17]
May 26, 2022
Season 4 Review:
Unfortunately, the positives are overwhelmed by so many disjointed things going on at once. For the most part it doesn’t matter that these are 20-year-olds playing 14. What matters is there’s simply too much that feels like plot fodder for a show stuffed with too many characters.
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IndieWireMay 23, 2022
Season 4 Review:
Season 4 feels like it’s been designed to produce good data rather than quality entertainment. The algorithm once heralded for so much of Netflix’s success and derided for ignoring the human factor certainly feels present here, as any remaining strangeness gets usurped by formula.
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Jul 15, 2016
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