Stranger Things Season 4 (Netflix Show, so spoilers for everything released!)

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Binged the fist half hard this weekend.

So I was hard on Season 3. My biggest two complaints were that character development didn't match the story and the tone shifted far too wildly. All in all, it felt to me like what made Stranger Things work was coming apart at the seams.

Seems someone on the production team listened. The first half of S4 was one helluva ride back to what makes ST work. Everyone has something to do actually worth doing, even if the story is spread kinda thin among the many, many characters.

Big standouts so far: Steve and Robin are a complete treat from the very start, Max finally gets something worthwhile to do that centers on herself, David Harbour seems to have a Russian prison fetish, the solves feel more earned (still some grasping at straws), and the character drama now legitimately works with the story beats overall instead of conflicting with them. The tone feels far more consistent throughout. It turns dark in the first episode and mostly stays there with lighter moments instead of the "two tone" issue of S3.

And the villain! I still don't know if it's a human corrupted by the Upside Down or a creature native to it, but this season's villain is all Krueger and it works!

 

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Yeah, I missed the seventh episode somehow when I binged it. Caught back up.

Glad they introduced an outright human menace from the Upside Down. The Mind Flayer needs to take a back seat.

My biggest questions are now about the Upside Down. I'm getting a little confused. If El sent One through a portal in 1979, why was the upside down mirrored from Hawkins of the 1983 resonance cascade incursion date?

 

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I was convinced The Hair Harrington (aka Hopper: The Next Generation) was going to die at the end of this episode, sacrificing himself so the others could escape the upside down. But it went in a different direction. I’ll be gutted if The Hair bites it, I don’t know if I could take that.

Hell, I was terrified of him getting offed basically all S3.

We're enjoying it but I'll admit I'm not impressed with the arc (or really, the lack thereof) for Mike.

Mike and Will have both seriously suffered since S3. Will was still central in S2 but now barely does anything besides, as one reviewer puts it, unfairly lets the Internet run with the possibility of him being in love with Mike without actually having the maturity to address it. And Mike now seemingly exists only as Eleven's love interest and not much more.

I do wonder what kicked off Vecna to start killing in Hawkings now. The obvious Pitch Meeting response would be "So the show can happen", but since he's been hanging out since 1979 you'd think he'd have been killing others between then and now. I guess it could be its taken this long for him to figure out things and set-up shop so that he could reach out to the normal world and influence things. Or as one of them mentioned this is the Mind Flayer taking things up a notch and bringing in someone more skilled. Though doesn't seem like he's done a lot when compared to the other incursions.

I actually think there's plenty of possibilities here, a lot of which have to do with Vecna either transforming or developing the power to mentally cross over. Remember that Eleven had to be in the Hawkins deprivation tank to contact the original Demagorgon.

He also kind of has the stereotypical bad guy trait of liking to play with his opponents instead of just outright killing them.

I think that was actually explained where he needed to toy with them to build the psychic connection through dimensions. Notice how he snags Nancy into a trance immediately since she's in the Upside Down already. He's using the buried trauma of Barb but he can go straight in because he's not needing to project.

 

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I don't mind that Mike and Will have taken a bit of a back seat. I like the time given to Max, who got short-shrift in s2 and s3, and to Lucas, who has a decent arc in the first half of this season (still waiting for the showdown with the basketball team).

But I’m still mad at Mike and Will for their weirdly passive and judgmental response to the extreme bullying of El at the roller rink. So they deserve their time in the corner wearing a cone of shame.

Don't get me wrong, I'm so very glad that Max not only gets an arc of her own but that it finally addresses her tumultuous family life. She was essentially just there to get exposited at in S2. Lucas, similarly, felt a bit lost in S2. My issue isn't that the characters themselves are taking a backseat in terms of importance overall but rather that they don't seemingly do much useful onscreen at all when they are present (such as the weaksauce response to El getting bullied). Throughout S3, Mike existed damn near entirely to be emotional conflict for El and Will only seems to exist for emotional conflict with Mike. Neither of those conflicts were properly resolved in S3 so they're back and providing the only real material for Mike and Will.

I'd like to see less of Murry Bauman. It is annoying to see Joyce get, essentially, shoved aside in her quest story arc for Murry's shenanigans. I find him too broad and too loud. I'd've preferred it if he stayed a bit part in a basement somewhere.

Murray's been a mixed bag for me. On the one hand, Joyce and Hopper desperately need peer adults to inject some levity in their lives of trauma. None of the Hawkins adults like the other parents or teachers can possibly process the evil machinations of government or horrors of the Upside Down. Someone like Murray gives them someone they can actually share with. OTOH, Murray started getting used as a crutch in S3 to be the expert on all shady government things, US or USSR. He's used as an even bigger crutch in S4 because of the batshit insanity behind having this drawn-out Russian sequence.

I think the story could have been much tighter by having Hopper as an exchange between the US/USSR trying to address this Upside Down business in the first episode or two and then have him under the Army's thumb as the carrot to try and assert control over Project Nina. It would've played much better to Murray's strengths, too, by letting him stay on US soil.

That's not to say I'm not enjoying the Russian sequence. It's still entertaining as hell to watch. But it's eating a lot of time for three characters that would be much better served by engaging them with the rest of the cast quicker.

 

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Isn’t one a little too young looking in 1979? I need to look at the timeline

I have way less problems with One's age than I do Eddie's and the other Hellfire non-Upside Down party members.

 

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Isn’t one a little too young looking in 1979? I need to look at the timeline

I have way less problems with One's age than I do Eddie's and the other Hellfire non-Upside Down party members.

Well Eddie is, based on talk with the other Hellfire members, the stereotypical kid held back in school multiple years. I think they mentioned it's been 2 or 3 times that he's said that it was his year to graduate so quite likely he's actually closer in show age to his real age then that of a typical senior. I mean he is also living in his own mobile home so not quite like most high school students. The others in the group might be in a similar boat where they have become perpetual high school students.

I was more joking about the Hellfire actors/casting choices compared to the character ages.

Specifically to Vecna, I was pretty sure his kid scenes are set in the 50s so he looks like the ambiguous "Hollywood 25-40" in 1979.

 

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Sadie Sink and Gaten Matarazzo both deserve awards for performances this season.

 

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Season 5 will have to follow directly from 4, given the storytelling thus far. This is the first time that people outside of the Party and government will have to deal with the direct ramifications of the Upside Down.

I was surprised they went back on Max and crippled her. I hope that doesn't limit Sadie Sink's performance next season, because she really knocked it out of the park.

Vecna being the true power behind the Upside Down is both somewhat disappointing but also somewhat intriguing. The Upside Down would not have cared about our world without Vecna.

Here's to hoping the ignorant asshole in charge of the Army response to Eleven gets gruesomely eaten by a dema-dog or the like, both for his incompetence and his malice.

As for who dies going forward, pretty sure Jonathan's a dead man given the trouble they had with the actor in the last few years. I was honestly surprised he survived this season.

I was hoping Will would finally come out completely this season. I am quite disappointed the way the show's drug it out given how he acted this season. The show really can't have it's cake and eat it too... especially after Robin.

But sadly, I feel like Hopper's gonna go out with a bang next season too. I hope not. But I wouldn't put it past this show.

 

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Somehow they've got to relocate Joyce and crew back to Hawkins.

Did you see the last episode? All the key characters minus Owens and the colonel are back in Hawkins and Hawkins just started going Upside Down with a massive set of gates torn through it. Narratively speaking, the story would be far more confusing if S5 starts with anyone "trying to get back".

 

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Anyone not on-board for Season 5 can be written out by having their character evacuate with part or all of their family.

 

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I was 100% more sold on this use of diagetic music than the Never Ending Story theme last season. The music here served an actual purpose to further the plot (even if it was super cheesy) as opposed to holding the plot hostage until the music got awkwardly shoehorned into the scene. Added bonus that the music fits the theme of what's going on so much better.

 

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I was thinking that the fourth death would be Henry, which is why he was mocking El about how she had lost but didn't know it yet. But that didn't pan out.

Yeah, a lot of stuff doesn't work when the writers made the questionable decision to have Vecna control the Mind Flayer instead of the other way around.

 

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I was thinking that the fourth death would be Henry, which is why he was mocking El about how she had lost but didn't know it yet. But that didn't pan out.

Yeah, a lot of stuff doesn't work when the writers made the questionable decision to have Vecna control the Mind Flayer instead of the other way around.

Oh yeah, I was going to ask about that. So he DID create the Mind Flayer. It wasn't a summoning. It felt like it could go either way there, but the discussion afterward about it being the same entity does seem to make that clear.

He didn't so much create it as gave it shape and direction. It was a shapeless cloud organism prior to Vecna's arrival. It reached out to Vecna and was shaped by his arachnophilia.

So we still don't really know why the Upside Down turned into a mirror image of Hawkins, but it did happen when Will was snatched, correct? It didn't look like Henry changed it during his explorations. I'm assuming that means something, and I'm also guessing that this means Will has a unique connection to the Upside Down that will play a role in the last season. Although it's not like it matched his memory of Hawkins, since he wouldn't have had any clue about Nancy's diary.

I think this might be a bit of a plot issue depending on where they go with it. Eddie's trailer seemed identical to the real world counterpart in 1986. You're telling me the entire room didn't change in three years? But then there's also a question of what was on the other side of the Starcourt gate the Soviets opened up when they did. Hawkins of 1983 didn't have a huge secret underground Russian base.

There's still the question of how Hopper ended up in Siberia, but everyone seemed to let that slide.

 

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It paid off in the end for me, but not my wife. It just could have used much more editing. And way better actors. The acting was terribad. I must be more forgiving of little kid acting, because it didn't stand out so badly for me in past seasons.

Huh. I have honestly enjoyed the performances of all the actors, but the OMG HUEG cast size left the writing uneven for anyone not El, Joyce, Hopper, or Steve after S1. The kids suffered most since they were the largest chunk of the cast.

 

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Pardon this intrusion from a non-viewer, but I'd like to ask about a filming location. I don't watch the show and it would be a bit of a slog to search through it for what might only be a brief scene, but can someone tell me where the Whiting Bros. service station appears? It's a 1950s-style service station painted in red, yellow, and white. I assume it's somewhere in S4, unless they have already filmed for S5. I visited the real-life location last fall - it's famous in the Route 66 circles I run in, as the only remaining Whiting Bros. station of what was once a large chain in the southwest. In fact we contributed to a fundraiser several years ago to restore his signs. I would just be interested to see it as it appears on the show. When we were there, we had a nice chat with the owner who told us that it was closed for several days for filming, and it was one of the only vacations he'd ever taken. (He's in his 80s!)

It's a lot less of a slog than you think.

I'll bet the location you're talking about is somewhere in Georgia.

 

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Pardon this intrusion from a non-viewer, but I'd like to ask about a filming location. I don't watch the show and it would be a bit of a slog to search through it for what might only be a brief scene, but can someone tell me where the Whiting Bros. service station appears? It's a 1950s-style service station painted in red, yellow, and white. I assume it's somewhere in S4, unless they have already filmed for S5. I visited the real-life location last fall - it's famous in the Route 66 circles I run in, as the only remaining Whiting Bros. station of what was once a large chain in the southwest. In fact we contributed to a fundraiser several years ago to restore his signs. I would just be interested to see it as it appears on the show. When we were there, we had a nice chat with the owner who told us that it was closed for several days for filming, and it was one of the only vacations he'd ever taken. (He's in his 80s!)

It's a lot less of a slog than you think.

I'll bet the location you're talking about is somewhere in Georgia.

I think ProphetM's asking about where the station appears in the show-- the station in question is in Moriary, NM, and he says he's already visited it in real life (and confirmed that it was used for filming).

The station in question appears in episode 9 of season 4, starting at about 10:12 immediately after the opening credits. The scene lasts about three minutes and IIRC the location doesn't appear again in the episode. There's no Whiting Bros. signage visible in the show and the building's been redressed a bit, but the building and its surroundings are still recognizable (in the one wide establishing shot they show at the beginning of the scene).

Oh eff. Yeah, sorry, I totally misread that.

 

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adding to the pile of people who seemingly can't die.

Yeah, that's a credibility problem. At least the letter jacket went to the cloud.

This isn't just a writing issue, though. Which one of the main cast will volunteer to depart the show for the sake of the story?

I think the big reason for Hopper still being alive is for El to have her true father figure connection when she got back. El and Joyce never demonstrate quite the same on-screen chemistry of adoptive family. Hell, S3 never really clarified why the Byers and El needed to leave for California.


IMHO, Murray should be gone from the adult cast, Jonathon from the YA cast, and it should probably be Mike from the kids. Murray is a great character but is only used to fit exactly everything Hopper and Joyce can't do themselves. Jonathon had nothing in S3 and was merely the connection point for Argyle in S4 (plus the actor let his habits get him into criminal trouble). Mike...well, at this point he is purely a nexus around which El and Will act around. He seemingly has little character and purpose of his own anymore.

 

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Despite seeing most of the flaws they didn't bother me. The one big thing I didn't like was that Vecna/One's motivations kind of suck. He's just straight up evil. Why? I don't know, something about he didn't like the order people imposed on... Something? I mean, at best (depending on how you look at it) it seems like a slightly offensive take on a kid being an antisocial kid who is on the spectrum and at worst he's just kind of a lazily written villain that you can kind of get away with because there's greater onus on validating villains than heroes or something

I'd have to rewatch it again to truly refresh my mind about One, but I could kind of see his motivation being similar to Homelander. He might not have started that way, but his childhood wasn't great but when combined with his powers basically removed any restraint he might have had. And later he's the one with the power so why should he be subservient to Brenner or the others. Then you add on the resentment that would build up after having his powers stripped by Brenner and then all the abuse heaped on him during that time it could certainly make someone decide that ending the world (or remaking it in their image) was the right thing to do.

Hard disagree on sharing motivation w/Homelander. Vecna despised his parents through and through. He murdered one and wanted to kill the other. Homelander craves a family he never had growing up.

Edit- Vecna desires to destroy all humans, not just humans less powerful than himself. He only tolerates El because he thinks she might help him. But he slaughters everyone he can in 1979, except maybe he spared Brenner for some reason of torture later.