Opinion: Stranger Things Five is the series’ fifth-best season

The menacing demogorgon stalks the upside-down. Art by Basil Allen.

Spoilers for Stranger Things Season Five below.

First things first: the Duffer Brothers knew we all thought Steve was gonna die. That wasn't slick.

I was one of the people who thought Steve was going to be the sacrificial lamb. Back in September, I wrote an article discussing  how the Stranger Things writers were refusing to kill any relevant characters, and it was coming at the cost of the tension and the pacing. I worried that Season Five would end up bloated. Now that it’s been released, not only was Season Five bloated, it was the weakest season by far, failing to deliver on any of the promises that the Duffer Brothers set up for it. The final episode was okay, as it managed to pull on the heartstrings like older seasons used to, but the rest of the season felt uneventful and uninspired for what was supposed to be the big finale to the series.

There are certainly some  positives to the season. Most of the actors are still doing their best, and the music is on par as it usually is, both the 80s tracks used and the original score. And it was nice to see the Mind Flayer back for its glorious six minutes before being defeated. Most of the characters got a satisfying enough ending on their own. But like many shows, and like the helicopter pilot Eleven killed in Season Four, the main plot unfortunately did not stick to the landing.

Season Four, for all its flaws, ended on an interesting promise. The Upside Down was actively leaking into Earth, setting up the expectation of a truly terrifying and perhaps even apocalyptic final season. 

In the first episode of Season Five, however, it's revealed that outside of a military quarantine, Hawkins has returned to a status quo. The kids are still dealing with bullies in high school, and Steve and Jonathan are still competing for Nancy's love. And for the first episode, it isn't even really clear what the stakes are anymore, with even the protagonists not knowing whether the Upside Down poses any real threat. Danger is made clear by the end of the episode, but in a way which further crippled the season. The kidnapping of Holly Wheeler, while hinted at since the first season, resulted in an already convoluted storyline, adding a new subplot to weigh itself down.

In my first article, I critiqued the overabundance of characters. Stranger Things Five took this problem to a whole other level. At one point, there were roughly 20 plot-relevant characters, not counting antagonists. Not only did nobody die until the finale, but random side characters and even some entirely new faces were being thrust into the limelight and given screentime. 

Between Holly, Kali, Mr. Clarke, Vickie, Karen Wheeler and the fan favorite Derek Turnbow, a lot of valuable screentime was taken away from the characters viewers had been following for the last four seasons. Even Ted Wheeler, one of the least important characters, survived a direct confrontation with a Demorgorgon.

The worldbuilding for the Upside Down was also quite messy. What was once an extremely dangerous place, with skies blotted out by flying bat-like creatures, somehow started to feel safer than the real world. The twist reveal of the Upside Down's true nature as a wormhole was genuinely interesting, but this secondary dimension did not have enough time to be fleshed out. A similar issue held back the reveal of the Mind Flayer's new form, since the monster hadn't been heard from at all for two seasons, and viewers had been led to believe that Vecna was pulling the strings the whole time. 

Overall, Stranger Things Season Five was a disappointment. Perhaps not as much of an atrocity as Season Eight of Game of Thrones, though it is getting compared to that infamous season by the most outraged of fans. 

I don’t think it’s that bad, though, if only because viewers already had three seasons with pretty satisfying endings beforehand. We didn’t need Season Five, but we got it, and got to see Karen Wheeler go hand-to-hand with a Demogorgon, and a 10-year-old make a “your mom” joke to Henry Creel in the process.

Hey, maybe there’s still hope for the spinoffs.