SteelyKid and I watched the finale of season 4 of Stranger Things the other night, a process that was only slightly hampered by the fact that SteelyKid had only watched the first season and one episode of season 4 before this. It says something about the show that this was not a complete impediment to watching, though whether that’s a good thing or not is open to interpretation. (SK is now just about done with working through season 2; the video-watching habits of teenagers are beyond comprehension…)
On the whole, I thought they did a decent job of wrapping things up, though they had set themselves quite the task with three-and-a-bit very different plotlines happening in three different places around the world. I was, however, mildly annoyed that it ends on a bit of a cliffhanger, because I’m not entirely sure that this season was really necessary, let alone adding a fifth.
As I said when I wrote about the first half of a season, this was really teetering on the edge of being A Bit Much. I’m not entirely sure it didn’t tip over that edge; if it failed to, it was mostly because some subplots were trimmed out in an inelegant manner before the big climax.
It’s hard to say anything more about the season without a bunch of spoilers, so here’s some space for those who are skittish about that sort of thing:
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Various thoughts about the season, in no particular order:
— I think that, in the end, two of the many plots they had going on just never entirely worked: the military guy who was hunting Eleven, and the basketball team hunting Eddie and the rest of the gang. Both of these sort of fizzle at the last minute: the military unit is just completely out of the picture after the showdown at the Nina lab, and while the angry hoops captain whose name I can’t be bothered to look up does distract Lucas at a key moment, he’s subsequently just blinked into nonexistence. They probably could’ve just not been in the show at all, for all the good they did.
— The non-resolution of those plots also leaves a bunch of loose ends that really make no sense if you think about them at all. Like, after the lab escape the military guy just… gives up? He doesn’t have a radio he can use to call in anyone else to hunt down the kids in their highly conspicuous pizza van? They seem to spend hours driving around and talking on pay phones, but don’t seem even a little bit worried about anybody coming after them.
And back in Hawkins, they set up the idea that there were significant numbers of townspeople looking for the Hellfire crew, but in the end, it’s just the one guy who comes after Lucas. And once he’s blinked out, it’s just… over? They play news clips saying that the cops are looking for Eddie still, but Dustin and Lucas and Erika are just free to wander around? Nobody official is questioning them? No vengeful townsfolk are harboring a grudge over the vanishing of the angry blond dude?
The government angle in particular doesn’t make any sense, because it also seems like a different faction of the government has helped Hopper and Joyce to make it back to Hawkins, so did they… win a power struggle? Was the guy hunting Eleven just going rogue all along? It’s all just very weird.
— On a smaller scale, Eddie was very annoying, and while I’m glad he died well, I’m also kind of glad he died. I’m very glad the angry blond jock was atomized, because that plot just never really worked. I hope Yuri is also gone, because he kind of sucked, too. I’m more than a little afraid we’ll get more of him, though, because his conversation with Antonov suggests he has a mysterious backstory, which, ugh.
— On a more positive note, Sadie Sink and Caleb McLaughlin do really nice work as Max and Lucas; their doomed romance is very sweet. Noah Schnapp does his very best to overcome the latest in a series of truly terrible haircuts, and also the absolutely leaden dialogue he’s given to work with.
— From the final shot, I would guess that the final season will deviate a bit from the formula, and have the supernatural battle more out in the open? That could be good, in that their attempts to have the kids skulking around secretively are often kind of terrible. But then again, bringing in more explicit official involvement is likely to raise more questions about the whole government side of this that I’m not sure any of the folks making the show have the answers to.
Anyway, in the end, it was as it’s been from the start: a fairly disposable show that’s ultimately more about the vibe than about making any kind of conventional sense. which, you know, is fine; it certainly worked to pass the time when I needed to ride the exercise bike, and provided a decent excuse to hang out with SteelyKid a bit.
And now, we’re on to the next thing. Which is probably the third season of The Umbrella Academy, unless SteelyKid wants to (re)watch the rest of Stranger Things first. For exercise-biking purposes, Only Murders in the Building is back, so that should cover me for some too-hot/too-rainy days, and then I might try the Josh Brolin show on Prime.
That’s this week in surprisingly timely pop culture commentary. I’m usually much farther behind the rest of the world than this; if you’d like to receive email where I muse about shows that everybody else was talking about three months ago, here’s a button:
If you’d like to passionately defend Eddie or Yuri, make a case that the military or vigilante plots actually worked, or point me to some fan resource where somebody works out an elaborate justification for how all the government stuff fits together, the comments will be open: