Entertainment
Stranger Things Season 5 Fails To Roll A Crit Hit
By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
The first part of Stranger Things Season 5 just hit Netflix, and it seems to be a hit. The streaming giant’s servers briefly crashed as everyone tried to start binge-watching as soon as the episodes dropped, and social media is flooded with people talking about Eleven, Vecna, and the rest of their favorite characters.
However, to borrow some of the boys’ beloved Dungeons & Dragons terminology, this season failed to roll a critical hit. There’s plenty of entertainment in these four episodes, but the show has failed to live up to the promise of Season 4 and is currently juggling enough plots in the air that many characters get sidelined.
Roll For Initiative
Season 5 begins (fair warning, there are some mild spoilers in this review!) with a time jump, where we discover that the entire town of Hawkins is under quarantine by sketchy military officers running their own creepy experiments on the Upside Down. While the small army of soldiers serves as a major obstacle, our heroes are still focused on taking down Vecna, the Big Bad revealed last season. To do so, they wait for opportunities to send Hop into the Upside Down to chase him, but this involves deep coordination with all of his allies back in Hawkins.
There are some really fun surprises in Season 5 of Stranger Things, including Terminator 2 star Linda Hamilton as an amoral scientist who will stop at nothing to retrieve Eleven and learn the secrets of the Upside Down. Additionally, Nell Fisher (who replaced the twins Anniston and Tinsley Price) did an amazing job (better, frankly, than many of her older castmates) as young Holly Wheeler, who gets a much meatier role this season. Without spoiling it, a certain mild-mannered character also gets to level up with some real powers, ending the fourth episode with a moment guaranteed to leave you cheering.
Sadly Sidelined Characters
But I was disappointed that not everybody in this crowded Stranger Things cast gets to shine as much. For example, while Hopper and Eleven get a cool arc (his rigorous training results in a fun and emotionally pleasing payoff), Dustin and Steve do nothing but bicker with one another. The initial bickering begins because Dustin has become a grumpy emo kid following the death of school pariah Eddie Munsen, but he never really gets an arc where he grows from the experience. Instead, he just stops being a fun character, an observation that also applies to Steve, whose new lot in life is to be everybody’s angry taxi driver.
Joyce receives slightly better treatment, but she feels stagnant, repeating the same overprotective mom behavior she has been exhibiting since Season 1, while spending almost no time with Hopper, effectively squandering their romantic reunion from last season. Mike and Lucas are mostly following the orders of the adults as they carry out one insane plan after another, with Mike getting to occasionally shine as the boys’ nominal leader. Young, hilarious Erica dazzles whenever she is onscreen, but like most other characters, she is given far too little to do.
Still Running Up That Hill
All of these characters’ arcs stalling out makes room for others to impress, including Max becoming a kind of streetwise vision guide to Holly as they traipse through Vecna’s mental mazes. Robin really comes to life as “Rockin’ Robin,” who sends out coded radio messages coordinating everyone’s missions (adorably called “crawls,” as in “dungeon crawls”) when she’s not giving Will advice about life and love. Speaking of Will, he finally gets more to do than cry: his psychic connection to Vecna is a two-way street, and he starts learning more ways to weaponize their mental link in ways sure to pay off in the series finale.
The result is a mixed season premiere that is more good than bad, and it’s likely to please most Stranger Things fans who have been watching this tale of monsters vs. kids on bikes from the beginning. Furthermore, the “bad” parts of the season premiere may come out in the wash: we’ve got four more episodes left (three on Christmas and the series finale on New Year’s Eve), which means there is plenty of time to give those sidelined characters the spotlight. With any luck, we’ll get something as cool as Season 4’s “Running Up That Hill” moment (a sequence so cool that Season 5 just keeps referencing it).
But it’s a bus rather than a hill that actually gives us the most appropriate metaphor for Stranger Things, Season 5: part of Eleven’s training with Hopper involves using her psychic powers to jump over an old school bus and land safely on the other side.
With these first four episodes, co-showrunners the Duffer Brothers have shown they still know how to leap over the tall fan expectations to deliver episodes full of both Cronenbergian horror and Spielbergian wonder. Only the remaining eps, though, can prove if (like Eleven herself) they can manage to stick the landing.
