Believe it or not, I planned to publish this the same weekend Part 2 of Stranger Things Season 4 released, way back in the beginning of July. But after witnessing a lot of discourse online, rewatching the entire season from the start, and rewriting this post more times than I can even count, a review didn’t feel like quite the right format. The purpose of a review, you see, is to tell someone whether or not they should watch something. It’s Stranger Things – you already know you should watch it. It’s a brilliant show with astoundingly talented actors, stunning visuals, a captivating story, great characters, and overall some of the best writing I’ve seen on TV in a long time. If you haven’t watched it yet, stop reading this and go do that. Right now. I mean it.

Unfortunately, this season had problems. And I think in a situation like this, with the whole world abuzz about a piece of media that, despite almost universal acclaim, left many with a feeling of dissatisfaction, there’s a lot more to be gained from a more in-depth analysis of those problems than a traditional review.

There will be massive spoilers here, so if you haven’t seen this season, or have yet to dive into the show at all, again, please do that first. I hope you don’t see any of the issues I’m about to point out until you come back to read this post – not only because that will make me feel very smart, but also because the amount of tooth-grinding I did this season cannot possibly be good for a person.

Now, with that out of the way, let’s begin with a problem you definitely won’t notice if you go back to watch the whole season now. But nevertheless, a problem. A big one. Because as we all know, first impressions matter.

This season should not have been split into multiple parts

No way, no how.

The thing about presenting a story in multiple installments is that the installments each need to stand on their own. It’s the principle that chapters need to have a beginning, middle, and end even though they only make up one tiny chunk of the whole book. I would argue strongly that the two parts of this season did not stand on their own, despite the climactic finish of the first, and that in light of that, the writers did a massive disservice to their own story by breaking it up in this way.

The only reason I can fathom for this bizarre and unfortunate choice is that that the showrunners were being paid off by a gang of singers on Youtube, who needed the five weeks between parts to record and edit their covers of Running Up That Hill so that they could release them all on July 1^st. Much as I have come to appreciate the work of Kate Bush and the many, many, many talented musicians who have followed in her footsteps and are now overwhelming my recommendations page, this split caused a myriad of problems.

Consider the human memory: a miraculous thing at best, and a steaming garbage fire lightly cloaked by an ugly, dollar store set of curtains at worst. When you release two parts of a story more than a month apart, you are at the mercy of said garbage fire, and would be wise to craft the second part with a worst-case scenario in mind: that the vast majority of your audience will not diligently re-watch the first part days before the release of the second, and will therefore be relying on their memory, now old and even worse than they probably think it is.

This was the position I myself happened to be in when watching Part 2, mainly due to my own laziness and short attention span. But it all worked out in the end, because now I get to show you my list of all the things in Part 2 that confused me because my brain decided we didn’t need to remember them from Part 1:

• The sword Hopper uses to fight the Demogorgon. It took me the entire fight to figure out where it came from, so I spent that scene not marveling at the cinematic beauty and artful foreshadowing of it all, but wondering if this was some leftover prop from the show on the soundstage next door that somehow wandered onto the set and the directors were like, “Screw it.” I was also laughing very hard, which I don’t think was the intended emotion for this scene.
• Who Dr. Owens was. His name is “forgettable old dude” in all my notes from my first viewing. I had to Google his name. (And I even liked this character!)
• I was surprised to learn that the kids in Hawkins knew Vecna’s name was Henry/One. I totally forgot they had that information.
• I forgot who Vecna killed besides Chrissy. After thinking very hard, I remembered one of the other victims but not the third, and convinced myself Vecna was going to kill two more people. When, seconds later, it was patiently explained to me by the characters that there was in fact one victim left, I was confused and had to pause to Google some more stuff.

Now, how much of this forgetfulness was a product of my own aforementioned short attention span and how much was due to the season being split into two parts, I will leave to you. In the meantime, with your assumed permission, I’ll continue to be mad about it.

Also, remember how in my Part 1 review I complained that Eddie’s character arc felt weird to me? We’re actually going to come back to this in just a minute, because I did identify a specific reason for this in the end, but I’d like to point out first that my prediction was right. In retrospect, most of the problems I cited with Eddie’s journey in Part 1 could have been resolved had I been afforded the opportunity to binge this show in the space of a single weekend as nature intended (or at least, not with a weird five-week gap between the setup and payout halves of the season, which would never, ever occur in a normal viewing, because who in their right mind would stop there given the choice?). In the end, his arc actually did make sense and he did turn out to have a much clearer role in the plot than I first gave him credit for (not that I approve of what that role was – again, more on that in a minute). But the split (and in particular, the location of the split) made the character development of this season feel very disjointed.

(And if you’re wondering, I’m also upset about the continued waste of Argyle’s entire character, but I already ranted about that pretty thoroughly in my review of Part 1. Suffice it to say that the problem was not resolved. I’m not mad, Duffers – I’m just disappointed.)

I think people who come to this show for the first time in future years will have a completely different experience of this season now that they’re able to watch it at a more logical pace. And that’s a good thing. This is not a problem with the story itself, but rather how it was presented.

But as for problems with the story, don’t worry! I have plenty of those too.

The tragedy of Eddie Munsen

Dear Duffer Brothers,

I would like one thing from Season 5, and one thing only: kill a character.

Go on. Go ahead. It’s healthy! You’ll feel better afterwards, I promise – one writer to another. Just try it once. Treat yourself.

And not the one you just introduced, please.

Stranger Things, you see, has a formula. At the beginning of every season, they introduce a fun new character, loaded with rich potential and thematic relevance. This person quickly becomes a fan favorite, despite beginning the season as somewhat cowardly and weak. But lucky for them, they have some kind of skill, information, or hidden strength that eventually becomes critical to the story, forcing them into the spotlight and testing their supposed cowardice until it all melts away. They get a moment of triumphant heroism somewhere near the climax, directly or indirectly saving the lives of multiple major characters, and go out in a moment of poignant emotional resonance, having made peace with their fate.

Bob Newby in Season 2 was the first victim of this pattern that I can think of. Season 3 got slightly creative by splitting this role between two characters, Billy and Alexei. After all this, it’s no surprise that it took fans approximately 0.1 seconds to realize the cycle’s latest victim was Eddie Munsen.

Normally I don’t read other people’s reviews or reactions before writing my own, but I broke my own rule this time because I had to know if I was crazy. And while I couldn’t find anyone complaining about this particular repetition, I did see a few people calling out the larger pattern of the show getting very comfortable relying on plot points that have worked in the past. Jen Chaney over at Vulture went so far as to compare Season 4 to a LEGO set – a metaphor so apt I’m frankly embarrassed not to have thought of it myself.

Here’s the thing about repetition: repeat something twice, and it’s a literary parallel, but three times? Three times, and you’re not so much running up that hill as running out of ideas. At that point, it actually hits the audience harder if you subvert their expectations by breaking your own pattern rather than continuing it.

So why would they do this? Why would they do such a silly thing? Oh, if only some snarky reviewer in some backwater of the internet would come up with a theory!

Well, as it so happens, I have one, and it’s quite simple: they were too scared to kill Steve.

Remember back in my review of Part 1 when I said it felt like they were trying to speedrun Steve’s character arc (asshole to loveable asshole to brave lovable asshole and everyone’s favorite character, with an obligatory side trip into becoming a father figure for Dustin) just faster and more awkwardly? Well, now I think I know why I had that feeling. Steve and Eddie fill such a similar role in both the plot and the web of characters that by the end of Season 4, they’re practically indistinguishable. My theory, concocted roughly halfway through the last episode, was that Steve was going to die and be fully replaced in the story by Eddie. Please don’t misunderstand me: I didn’t want Steve to die, but you can’t deny it would be cool from a writing perspective. Eddie and Steve are such different people, despite their similarities as characters, that it would have made for some really interesting Season 5 conflict as the other characters adjust to having Eddie where Steve once stood. Plus, Steve got to basically confess his feelings for Nancy, bringing some semblance of emotional resolution (at least on his end) that I could have lived with had things been left as they were at the end of that scene. Plus, there was this cool shot in the trailer of Nancy girlbossing her way around Vecna’s house with a sawed-off shotgun, which for all the world made it look like she was by herself. This effectively convinced me as I was watching the episode that both Steve and Robin were both about to die, leaving Nancy to go on a revenge-fueled rampage, which I admit I was looking forward to.

I would have been heartbroken, yes, but in a good way. The kind of heartbroken where you’re mad at the story – not at the writers. And the catharsis of Nancy’s rampage as I envisioned it would have made up for, like, 92% of that at least.

Plus – and here’s something I actually loved about this season – the ending was set up in a way that made me feel like literally any character could have died. Many shows have tried to do this in the past and failed, flaunting the characters’ plot armor rather than camouflaging it. They’ll pretend to build up tension for so long it becomes awkward, then milk the “miraculous” survival of the most important characters for the rest of the show. But when Stranger Things started in on the usual buffet of emotional confession speeches, I was convinced – genuinely convinced for the first time in my TV-watching life – that we were heading into a massacre. My predictions changed every five minutes, and every time, I was sure I was right, because the story was at a point where it could have moved forward believably in the event of any character’s death. No conflict would have been rendered impossible to resolve by a specific death. Nothing would have been left hanging – only changed.

It was awesome.

But apparently, someone on the writing team got on Twitter and saw a bunch of people ranting about how they’d “literally never watch the show again” if Steve died, failed to grasp the hyperbole therein, panicked, informed the rest of the writing room that there was no way their audience would stick with them through the death they had planned (which, obviously, is BS), and convinced them to write a Steve clone and kill him instead. I assume. Because honestly, genuinely, no matter what angle I come at this from, I can’t make this make sense in my head.

Let this be a lesson – not necessarily to kill your main characters as a rule, but rather to resist shying away from taking risks in your writing. A twist might be bold, dramatic, or even shocking, but if you can make it make sense and set it up properly (which they did!), you may regret not going through with it. And even if you don’t, your audience certainly will.

And speaking of regrets…

Resurrect responsibly

The thing is, we actually did get a very significant, very well written major character death in this season, which was taken back almost immediately using an absolutely ridiculous, completely foreshadowed resurrection.

Let’s talk about Max.

Like Steve – like any of the characters, really – I didn’t want Max to die. But it worked. Her death was carefully foreshadowed, well written, and deeply believable. Had they left it as it was, it would have been a full realization of that perfect buildup of tension and dread from earlier in the episode, and created an interesting parallel between Lucas and Jason to boot. And if they wanted to introduce resurrection abilities, why not have El try to resurrect Max and fail? That would have been a great way to spur character development, generate conflict (both internal and external), and introduce the notion of El one day being able to bring people back from the dead.

Introducing new abilities is a tricky thing. It’s crucially important when you’re dealing with magic and superpowers, but there are some rules you need to follow. Most importantly, you can’t pull a new ability out of nowhere, especially not at the exact moment the character needs it. That reads as too convenient, the point of being unbelievable – doubly so if your audience gets the sense that you’re only doing this because you feel bad about killing a main character. I like to think I know this show pretty well, but I can’t recall any of the requisite preparation being done in the case of Eleven’s resurrection powers (if you can, please comment and point me in the right direction, because if someone doesn’t comfort me with proof of my anger being too hasty soon, I may need to lie down). And if, in fact, this isn’t something new, but rather what we are meant to see as a creative extension of her existing powers, then I’m sorry, but this is just too far.

The reason resurrection abilities in particular are so risky is because of the damage resurrection does to the stakes of your conflict. If there’s a way for characters to simply return from the dead cost-free, then what exactly are we supposed to be afraid of? Of course, there was a cost in that Max is now in a coma, but do we really believe she isn’t going to recover? Really? What would be the point, from a writing perspective, of bringing Max back just for her to die in the hospital later on? I can’t think of one that wouldn’t have been just as well served by simply having her die.

And to add insult to injury, that’s where the climax ends. We get no time to process, no time to reflect or fully absorb what just happened before being thrown violently into the next scene, because immediately after all this takes place, there is a two-day time skip. (!!!!!)

This goes back to a problem I discussed in my story structure post, in the context (horrifyingly) of the live action Avatar: the Last Airbender movie – something nobody wants their story compared to, and I do apologize to the Duffers for that. I know it feels like a low blow, but bear with me – it’s just a very extreme example. If you’ll recall, that movie suffered immeasurably from a lack of unwinding, reactive scenes where the tension drops and characters are afforded the opportunity to stop, take stock of what just happened, and witness the fallout.

And if I was to write a guide on how to do an even worse job of this, my number one tip would be to throw in a two-day time skip where the reaction scene should be.

I actually had to rewind when I first watched this to make sure I hadn’t just hallucinated it. I understand that the episode was running long and something had to get cut, but this? Of all the things! What, and I cannot say this clearly enough, a huge mistake.

So to sum up, this is what we can learn from this season of Stranger Things:

1. If you’re going to write a really incredibly done main character death, don’t undo the entire thing with random, unforeshadowed resurrections.
2. If you’ve established a pattern in your writing, you do need to eventually break it or your writing will become predictable and you risk becoming blind to opportunities to make it better.
3. Kill your main characters sometimes. Seriously. Even Millie Bobby Brown agrees with me.

Let’s lower my blood pressure a little

I started this post by saying I wanted to focus on the problems with this season rather than structuring this like a normal review. But after all that doom and gloom, I really do want to take a minute to call out a few of the high points of this season – maybe even the whole show.

• There was some great symbolism and visual foreshadowing throughout this season, starting all the way back in Episode 1, when Chrissy encounters the clock in the woods. I didn’t realize this until I went back and re-watched that episode after seeing the finale, but the clock face cracks in four places in exactly the same pattern as the ground eventually does in Hawkins, with the spiders coming out of the point that aligns with the epicenter of the eventual explosion. My other favorite visually symbolic moment is right at the end, when Eleven looks out over the town of Hawkins holding what looks to me like a dead sunflower in her hand.
• Hopper’s return to Hawkins was absolutely perfect. Not only did I love the way they did the Hopper/El reunion scene, but the Hopper/Mike reunion was everything I never realized I needed but absolutely did. I also thought the costumers did a great job here of putting Hopper in the most Dad outfit to ever exist. Those are peak Dad clothes right there. A+.
• I love the scene where they steal the camper, and by extension, the general trend of everyone driving around in large, borderline inoperable, utterly impractical vehicles.
• I love Yuri, deeply relate to his irrational adoration for and anthropomorphizing of broken-down aircraft that barely function, and appreciate the fact that he got a real character arc more than I can possibly say. He might be my new favorite character, and I hope he (and Katinka the helicopter, bless her) make a return in Season 5.
• On the topic of characters I’d like to see come back in Season 5, please give me more Dmitri (“Enzo”). Specifically, I’d like to formally request scenes of him and Hopper being Dadly Dads doing Dad Things together, because there should be more Dad friendships on TV, and I think this is my favorite one I’ve ever seen. Perhaps they could stand around a grill in Hawaiian shirts discussing lawn maintenance, or golf. Duffers, I am free on the weekends if you’d like me in the writer’s room.
  • By the way, I had to google Dmitri’s name, but not because I forgot it on my own. I was, rather, hastened into forgetting it by my friend who watched the last two episodes along with me and referred to him exclusively as “Hot Russian Dad” the entire time. I won’t call you out, but you know who you are. (The same friend and I also had a detailed discussion about which classic Vine’s audio would save us from Vecna’s curse. So as you can see, she’s been very helpful to the review process. Mine, because no one asked, would be Fre Shavaca Do.)
• I’ve never actually had a favorite actor before, but Millie Bobby Brown is it now. What pushed me over the edge was her delivery on the line, “I piggybacked from a pizza dough freezer.”
• I would also like to call out the unbelievable performance of Caleb McLaughlin (Lucas), who apparently improvised the line during Max’s death scene where he called for Erica for help. I remember thinking during the episode that that line was particularly genius, because of the contrast with Lucas’s usual self-sufficient, rational nature. McLaughlin knows not only his craft, but his character uncommonly well, and it shows in this line. (Actually, a few other of the season’s best moments were reportedly improvised! If you want your heart shattered even more, read about them all here, but this was my favorite.)
• Whoever put Hopper and Joyce in matching outfits, thank you. I enjoyed that, and I agree with you: they weren’t quite old-married-couple-y enough.

You’ll notice a theme to a lot of these things (except maybe the matching outfits – or maybe especially the matching outfits), which is character relationships. Relationships are the lifeblood of fiction. It’s the unique dynamic each pair or group of characters has that keeps the wheels of any story turning, but especially Stranger Things. That’s just one reason why, despite my disappointment with this season, I’m still looking forward to Season 5. Not only am I excited about the direction of the plot and already missing the world of Hawkins, but I know I’m going there with characters who are worth the trip.

Final verdict

Part 2 gets 3.5/5 exploding party balloons filled with blood and guts from me – exactly equal to the 3.5 squid bats I gave Part 1. This produces an average rating of (and don’t freak out, but I’m about to do some heavy math) 3.5 hills up which to run. It’s not the best season, but it’s also not the worst – I did thoroughly enjoy it. After rewatching it, I also feel the need to give it a secondary rating of 4/5 army surplus stores if you watch it all in one chunk, which I hope you will. It really is better that way.

Until my next rant, happy watching.