If I call this review spoiler-free, does that mean I have to not say anything to do with Hopper? Or am I allowed to acknowledge that he’s alive? Are we all past that cliffhanger now? Can we as a society please move on?
Yes?
Ok, good.
So, welcome to my virtually spoiler-free review of Stranger Things, season 4 part 1. I just finished the last episode about three minutes ago as I’m typing this introduction, so if an aura of general shellshock is drifting out at you through your computer screen, it’s because I am in an emotional trance and have not looked up from the TV in so long that when I did briefly allow myself a break earlier to order a pizza, it was a genuine shock to me to have to enter a non-Indiana address. I assume that while much of the world is definitely as nuts about this show as I am, I recall a good number of people were lukewarm enough about season 3 to be holding out for the first few reviews to trickle in before they decide whether or not to keep watching the show. If you’re reading this, you’re probably one of those people, and let me tell you… keep watching the damn show.
(Quick note about spoilers: I won’t be spoiling any major plot twists but some of the things I want to talk about will necessitate discussing minor details of various character and story arcs. Hence the term virtually spoiler free. I kept it squeaky-clean for the most part, but if you’re a purist when it comes to spoilers, you’re not going to like me after this.)
Content Warnings
This season dealt with some really heavy topics, and I don’t think it would be entirely fair of me to recommend it without mentioning this. There’s a lot more graphic horror in this season than I recall in the past (certainly in season 3), as well as some stuff having to do with eating disorders, drug use, mental illness in general, torture, bullying, abuse, and violence against children (the show actually included a warning at the beginning of episode 1 about this last point, which I think was an excellent choice) and in one instance, animals. I’d strongly advise viewer discretion for this season, even if you handled past seasons okay. There are already, like, hundreds of recaps and summaries on YouTube, and while this season was certainly good, I don’t know that it was good enough to traumatize yourself over. This review will be free of in-depth discussion of these things, but I wanted to put the warning up front all the same.
The Good
Story structure
Stranger Things season 4 set itself a monumentally difficult task this season in terms of its story structure. As is fairly common for stories that run past 3-4 installments, the story has ballooned in complexity and length, with the characters branching off at the end of season 3 into a couple of different groups. Each of these groups has its own distinct storyline in season 4, most of which intermingle with each other in some way.
I want to emphasize, as a writer, how incredibly hard it is to make a story like this work and make sense. I can only imagine the flow charts, block diagrams, and reams of notepaper that must have littered the writers’ room by the time they were done planning this season. There are almost twenty characters with central, focal roles in the plot (some of whom are brand new this season, necessitating extra time spent introducing and developing them) and at least fifteen more minor supporting characters who drift in and out as needed. That’s a big freakin’ cast. The sheer volume of starring characters and the number of disparate groups being followed in this season is one reason for the dramatic increase in runtime of this season’s episodes, which are all more than an hour long.
Personally, I thought this was all handled extremely well. I understand why the runtime was so long, and I will be the last person you ever hear complaining about it. More Stranger Things is always a good thing, as far as I’m concerned. If anything, I wish they’d let themselves have a little more time, as I could tell there were some things that must have gotten cut (namely a couple of characters who weren’t fully explored, but we’ll get to that later). The foreshadowing this season was expertly handled, with not a single one of the major plot twists hitting me as unbelievable or dissonant with what had previously been set up. I can’t honestly claim to have seen a single one of them coming, and yet every time there was a twist, I had the sense that I should have seen it coming. That’s the mark of truly artful plot design, and I really appreciated it.
Thematic delivery
Another major selling point of this season is its exploration of the themes of mental illness. While there exists vast graveyard of the shows, books, movies, games, and other pieces of media who have attempted to tackle this topic and failed in catastrophically harmful ways, I don’t believe Stranger Things will be one of them, and here’s why.
This season’s monster of choice targets victims who are, as the show puts it, “being haunted by something.” From what I could tell, that something is usually connected to feelings of shame, guilt, or self-loathing. Accordingly, we get to see these ideas through the eyes of a number of different characters who all experience these feelings in different ways. We don’t necessarily get full explorations of any of them, but we do get a fairly broad look at how mental illness looks for a bunch of different people, which is valuable in and of itself.
The show also avoids falling into some of the most common and most damaging tropes associated with this kind of theme, like romanticizing mental illness, or villainizing mental health professionals like counselors and therapists. In fact, in one particular character’s arc, we are explicitly shown how opening up and seeking help from the people around you can save a life. We also see this character continuing to struggle after that rescue takes place as opposed to being magically healed, which is a tragically common pitfall when looking at all the ways hapless writers of this type of theme have attempted to frame recovery arcs in the past. As someone who has struggled with mental illness myself and seen many of my friends go through similar journeys, I appreciated this a lot. Seeing the continuation and resolution of this particular arc in part 2 is one of the things I’m looking forward to the most. I’m not saying it’s perfect, but it’s certainly miles better than a lot of what’s out there, and for that, it has my love.
Technical successes: acting, special effects, cinematography, and design
One of the main reasons I’ve always recommended this show to people is that it is, in every possible sense, a work of theatrical art. So far, this season is no exception. Every one of the actors deserves some kind of massive award for their performance this season, but I want to especially acknowledge Millie Bobby Brown (Eleven), Sadie Sink (Max), David Harbour (Hopper), and newcomer Joseph Quinn (Eddie Munson) for their jaw-droppingly good performances. I’m not a filmmaker, but I can imagine how this season must have been an absolute marathon – physically and emotionally – to film, and I was consistently impressed by the incredible talent of everyone involved in the making of it. That’s quite a feat when you consider how much this show has already impressed us, raising its own bar with every season and yet consistently exceeding those increasingly lofty expectations. There’s nothing else to say about this but damn, well done, y’all. Well freakin’ done.
Another thing I want to shout out quickly is the stunning cinematography and lighting design of this season. Stranger Things has always been an aesthetic masterpiece, but in this season in particular, it really feels like every single shot has been meticulously planned, with no fleeting image too small to warrant effort. The sets, as usual, are intricately decorated in precise, stunning detail, and the lighting – too often the completely unsung hero of good cinematography – was clearly in the hands of a real pro. The editing was crazy good – there are multiple montages in this season that absolutely blew me away. Every shot is impactful, resonant, and stunningly gorgeous. From start to finish, this is a beautiful season of a beautiful show.
And when it’s not beautiful, it’s absolutely horrifying in the best possible way thanks to the herculean abilities of the special effects team. And I want to include sound design in that. Thanks, folks, I now have the sound of multiple bones breaking permanently ingrained in my psyche. Personally, however, my favorite feat of CGI magic in this season so far has been the series of flashbacks wherein a character’s face is shopped onto a younger actor’s body to age them down by about 5 years. It’s unbelievably convincing, and I hope it indicates the beginning of a new era of using this technique for improved visual storytelling.
Also, those squid-bat things? I like ’em. They’re neat.
The Jury’s Out
I know I usually call this section “The Bad,” but hear me out. I don’t think it’s entirely fair to deem anything in this season as objectively bad, because this was not the whole season. I actually had to keep reminding myself of that as I was writing this review. It’s tempting to look at this block of episodes as one cohesive unit since they were released all at the same time, but they’re really not. The next chunk of episodes, due to release on July 1st, isn’t going to begin an entirely new story, as this chunk did – it’s going to complete the one we’re in the middle of. Just as it would be unfair to close a book halfway through and decide that something about the story didn’t make sense, I don’t think it would be fair or responsible of me as a reviewer to make negative judgements halfway through this season.
Now, that being said, are we allowed to dislike things before we finish a book or show? Yeah, sure thing! So consider this a list of things that made me say a tentative little, “Meh,” but which I’m unwilling to commit to my dislike of until I’ve seen and full processed the rest of this season.
Will, Mike, Jonathan, and Argyle’s storyline
Despite actually tying off at a pretty reasonable point, this plot arc felt oddly incomplete to me at the point where it was left at the end of part 1. In fact, I spent several hours after finishing the season grappling with the question of how they could have just abandoned this plotline without resolving it before realizing that actually, they did resolve it, they just closed it in a strange way. Because rather than close on a dramatic moment of climax and excitement, or a poignant emotional resolution, like the other subplots do, this one closes on a moment of comedic relief.
As audiences, we’re trained to see these moments as breaks in the action, not as resolutions, and it dampens the impact of the triumphant success that immediately preceded it. It feels like they were going for a moment akin to the Avengers going out for schwarma, but it doesn’t really hit like that. It left me primed for more action, and when that didn’t happen, the tiny, delusional gnomes running the inner circuitry of my mind filed this one away under “unfinished,” which is why it took me half of a pizza and two thirds of a hot shower to realize it actually wasn’t.
Gigantic hole? No. Minor annoyance that impacted my enjoyment of the show? Most definitely.
Really, I felt like this whole group of characters kind of got left out in the rain, which is disappointing. In particular, Argyle (played by Eduardo Franco) was a new and tantalizing character we didn’t really come to understand at all. Instead of a thorough exploration of a friendless teenager who self-medicates for severe anxiety using weed, we got, “Haha, funny boy smokes pot, haha.” Is he funny? Yeah, he’s hilarious. Would I cut any of those funny moments? Absolutely not. The thing is, he could have been cut from the story completely and had his role relegated to other characters with little to no impact on the actual plot, which makes me sad to see from a character whose potential contributions to the themes of this season could have been so incredibly significant.
Eddie also got done dirty
I loved Eddie’s introduction in this season. He was such an incredibly intriguing character, and the unquestionable star of episode 1 – a walking, talking wall of raging internal conflict, tantalizing hints of backstory, and symptoms of more than a few mental health issues (personally I was reading narcissism), introduced in a season that not only focuses on concepts related to mental illness, trauma, and the ghosts of our pasts, but practically beats you over the head with them.
So why, oh why, did he get relegated to the role of useless comic relief character after episode 1?
I’m serious – this was a crime. A travesty. Eddie was so fascinating, and he was gearing up to be one of my favorite characters of the season. Yet he has virtually no development beyond a cursory, “Well, he saw something real bad happen and it turns out he’s innocent, and all the instability and love-bombing of his in-group and aggression contrasted against the compassion he shows toward Chrissy… was just a red herring and we aren’t going to say anything about it. Haha, isn’t he a funny guy, though?” To add insult to injury, when he does have meaningful scenes in later episodes, it’s usually in service of someone else’s character development.
Who did this? Whose fault is this? Who do we blame? Because I’m mad about it. If he was really just there to be a red herring, why couldn’t we have used an existing character to fill that role? Why introduce him – not to mention dedicate most of an entire hour-plus-long episode to developing him and weaving an intricate tapestry of personhood around him – just to strip it all away and make him the ball and chain the characters drag through the rest of the story? Guys! Come on! You can do better than this!
It feels like the writers were trying to speedrun a repeat of Steve’s character arc, from asshole bad-boy to darling of the fandom. But simply doing what worked before but faster and worse is a lazy way to write, and it made me sad to see the writers giving up so quickly on a creation so loaded with potential (particularly with so much screen time ahead of them to develop him properly). The number one thing I’d like to see from part 2 is a good use for Eddie. Like Argyle, I want to see him fill a role in the plot that only he can fill. I want to see his full and unfiltered personality come back, and for the show to fully explore who he is, where he came from, and his place in the web of characters. I don’t care if he’s mean or egotistical or narcissistic or abusive or unstable. Good characters don’t have to be good people. They just have to be interesting, and Eddie certainly was that.
The final verdict
I give part one of this season 3.5/5 squid bats. It makes me sad to give it so low of a rating considering how much I genuinely enjoyed watching it, but the horrifying misuse of the new characters (not to mention the accompanying waste of Joseph Quinn and Eduardo Franco’s clearly boundless acting ability) renders this rating, in my opinion, fully justified. I would have gladly withstood an increase in the already tremendously long runtime for the sake of additional character development here, and I fully expect to see this in part 2, given the skill I know these writers have.
But again, that’s just my opinion. I’d love to hear yours, especially if it’s different. Let me know what you think of this season so far, and what you’d like to see from the show on July 1st. And if you haven’t watched (or haven’t finished) this season yet, don’t let my annoyance deter you – it really is fantastic in so, so many ways.
Happy watching!