Stranger Things

Stranger Things remains great at the most important and rare skill it possesses: the ability to appeal to audiences across the age spectrum.

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.

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.

The scary monsters and the action thrills are there but so are the more important components – bags of charm, humour, characters you want to hang out with and quieter moments.

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.

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.

With each of the four episodes running on from the previous one, we have a five-hour action-comedy-horror movie, where each part of the story is luxuriously stretched.

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.

But if the actors are too old to be doing this, Stranger Things itself feels fairly energetic and youthful even after all this time.

Their original kids’ circumstances haven’t changed all that much, but their outlooks have, making for unpredictable twists in their powers, strengths and alliances.

As our time in Hawkins reaches its climax, Stranger Things gets grander and gorier. Both our heroes and their deadliest foes still have thrilling new tricks up their sleeves.

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.

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.

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.

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.

It’s genuine and human and real, and millions of people are going to watch it and that’s quite cool. It’s moments like that which make it easy to forgive those plotting issues.

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.

Part One of Stranger Things 5 is pretty much a thrill ride start to finish, with all of Hawkins under quarantine and military occupation following the earth-shaking events that concluded Season 4 all those years ago.

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.

Anyone who retains some fondness for these kids will find that it hews closely to that which came before, all while raising the stakes on its way to an inevitable once-and-for-all showdown between good and evil.

“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).

It’s more of the same with Stranger Things, but at least our faves now know what they’re up against and will prepare for the impending war accordingly.

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.

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.

Netflix’s love letter to Eighties pop culture plays it safe in the finale’s first volume.

While some of the decisions and storytelling methods might be divisive, there's still time for Stranger Things to stick the landing.

The longer Season 5 goes, the less charming it becomes, and the two big closing twists don’t exactly inspire hope for the back-half: One is over-telegraphed and the other shocking… but only because it’s so ill-conceived.

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.

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.

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.