Strange Things are Afoot in the Mind Palace

The final episodes of Stranger Things have come out, but I’m just now getting around to watching and reviewing them. That is, of course, because NetflixOriginally started as a disc-by-mail service, Netflix has grown to be one of the largest media companies in the world (and one of the most valued internet companies as well). With a constant slate of new internet streaming-based programming that updates all the time, Netflix has redefined what it means to watch TV and films (as well as how to do it). made the decision to release these over the holidays which, sure, is a great time to make sure there are plenty of people at home to watch the episodes. At the same time, though, it lines up right when I tend to take a holiday break, so that’s a bad time to write and review episodes. In fact, plenty of outlets didn’t get around to reviewing the episodes when they came out, instead getting to them once the holidays were over and offices started opening back up.

The conspiracy minded part of me thinks that was part of Netflix’s plan. Release these episodes at a time when it would be awkward for reviewers to actually review them and avoid bad buzz in case the episodes were terrible. Not that I’m saying this last stretch of episodes is awful – we’re not looking at a season eight Game of Thrones situation here – but it probably helped Netflix if they could avoid any bad buzz so that people just watched and saw opinions after. The streamer is already reporting that these episodes broke plenty of streaming records, so whatever the motivation, the strategy likely suited them just fine.

Still, we had two final episode dumps: a set of three right around Christmas time and then one final, extra long episode at New Years. We’ll look at the Christmas episodes here in what we can more or less think of as a less spoilery review for the season, and then the series finale review will come after and will be chock full of spoilers as I dig into everything and try to think if this whole series came to a satisfactory end. But for now, let’s discuss how this middle stretch worked out and if it’s lead to a successful season of the show for fans:

When last we saw the heroes they had just confronted Vecna while the big bad had been working to steal a bunch of kids from Hawkins, Indiana, so he could do something with them. The heroes weren’t sure what Venca’s plan was, they just knew they had to stop him from stealing the kiddos. They failed, and Vecna’s demigorgons were able to make off with all the kids Vecna had his eyes on. But at the very least Will was able to tap into powers he didn’t even realize he had and could stop the demigorgons from killing his friends. It was a small victory, but felt like a significant one.

Unsure of what to do next, the heroes on the Hawkins side regroup and try to plan next steps. Meanwhile some of the kids – Dustin, Steve, Nancy, and Johnathan – have been stuck in the Upside Down for a little while. Instead of looking for a way back, though, they start exploring the Upside Down version of the old lab where Eleven’s powers were first awakened. There they discover something shocking: a ball of exotic matter floating above the building. This leads Dustin, ever the genius, to realize that everything they thought they knew about the Upside Down is wrong. It’s not a pocket universe full of horrors reflecting our world; it’s a bridge between our world and a completely alien planet. And it’s a planet that all those stolen kids were dragged to. How can they rescue the kids if they’re on another planet? Well, they might just need Max’s help, if they can find a way to drag her out of Vecna’s dream world…

Watching the second chunk of episodes during this season I was left thinking one key thing: is anything actually going to happen in this show. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of flashy stuff, some very elaborate moments, but they all come as a way to add in action beats and not because they actually force the plot forwards or get the characters into places they need to be to learn and grow and accomplish the end goal of the season (whatever that is). Pieces more around, people talk a lot, but it feels like, both in the first half as well as this second half of the season, all it really amounts to is talking with a lot of busy stuff happening in the background.

The key things that happen in this chunk of the season are: Will learns about his powers, which aren’t really like what Eleven has and it’s more like he’s connected into Vecna’s hive mind; Dustin and crew learn that the Upside Down is a bridge to another planet; Max works to escape Vecna’s mind with Holly, the little sister, in tow; and Eleven and her crew try to escape the military. In almost every one of these cases these are long, drawn out affairs (we have three, one hour-ish episodes to tackle all this) that effectively get dealt with in a single conversation. The action that goes on doesn’t actually change anything that happens, it’s all just noise and window dressing.

Take, for example, Dustin’s realization that the orb of floating noise is exotic matter. He learns this not because he’s a master of quantum physics (although despite him being a high school student the show certainly does make him far more knowledgeable than he has any right to be) but because he found a book of notes left by a scientist and (somehow) understood why the scientist wrote. He then explains it to everyone else, and that includes his supposition (without a lot of data to back it up) that there’s another planet on the other side of the Upside Down that they have to get to. It’s a lot of explaining, theory crafting, and making stuff up, all so the actual writers of the series can tell us what’s coming next, and it’s all dialogue. Endless, technical, dialogue.

But, to distract us from that, the dialogue from Dustin is intercut with the aftermath of Nancy trying to shoot and explode the ball of exotic matter, which then leads to Nancy and Johnathan getting trapped in a room that slowly melts into goo around them. It’s very cool looking, but it doesn’t really amount to anything. Nancy and Johnathan do finally have a heart-to-heart and realize they aren’t right for each other during this, and Dustin and Steve make up and become best friends again because Steve almost (but not really) dies, but all of that could have happened for any reason, at any time in the series, and is irrelevant to what’s going on. Hell, the building melting is irrelevant to what’s going on since none of the characters die, it doesn’t have any further effect on anything, and is just there to look cool. And this is every big sequence of the series.

A show needs to use its big moments to actually do something. If a building melts, for example, it has to be for a reason and has to have consequences. Stranger Things, in this fifth season, is a show without consequences. People talk and ramble at each other endlessly, often about things we just saw or things they’re about to do, explaining it all so that we can keep up (because Netflix doesn’t actually expect us to watch the show, only passingly look up from our phones when a cool thing is happening) over and over until the runtime of an episode is over. In any given episode maybe only one or two things of consequence actually happen. And even then, it’s not always consequential.

Case in point here is Will coming out as gay. This is something the show has been building to for a couple of years as Will slowly realized he was into his friend Mike (who, it should be noted, is not gay at all). The show has this be a big plotline for Will, with him talking to Robin after he discovers she’s gay, all so she can play wise mentor and guide him on how he should tell people and make the decision for himself. In the right context this is good stuff, letting a character find themselves so they can then do something with it. The issue here is that Will being gay has nothing to do with the plotline of Stranger Things. At all.

This isn’t me hating the fact that he’s gay. This is me wondering why, in a series that has so few episodes, this is all they could figure to do with Will. Let’s say the show was longer, more like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where Vecna’s plot this season was treated like a big bad storyline. “He’s up to something and we have to figure out what it is!” Over the course of 20-ish episodes, week-to-week, the characters would sometimes fight Vecna, sometimes deal with other problems that would trickle out from the Upside Down, and there would be plenty of time for characters to slowly grow, evolve, and change. Will coming out would be like Willow coming out, something organic that happens in a B-plot and could become foundational to her character. In the case of Willow, her discovering that she liked girls came alongside her falling for Tara, her coven buddy. It organically tied one part of her story to the other, sexuality and magic, so that it became an essential part of her.

Compare this to Will. He is gay, and we all know he’s gay. He comes out because he fears (without any real reason we can see) that if he doesn’t tell everyone he’s gay then his fear about what they’ll think of him will limit his Vecna-aligned powers. In effect it’s a made up problem for these three episodes that is brought up just so that Will can come out as gay and everyone can have a kumbaya moment about it. But if you removed Will being gay from the equation, that doesn’t really change anything else about his storyline. He has to get past his fear, whatever it is (or even not at all because that’s even a made up problem) so he can tap into Vecna’s powers. If he were straight it wouldn’t change anything about it at all. You can’t remove Willow’s lesbian inclinations from her character without drastically changing her storyline, but you can make Will straight and it does nothing to the story.

This is everything about this season of the show, especially these three episodes that make up the back half of the season leading into the series finale: nothing that actually happens here is important. The real story of these episodes could be condensed down into thirty-to-forty-five minutes of material, instead of three hours, and it functionally wouldn’t change anything. Characters would run around less, and we’d have a few fewer “wow” moments, but all of that is just filler. There’s so little meat on the bones of this season that it’s hard to even remember what happens in these episodes because, well, largely nothing does.

I don’t want to hate on Stranger Things. I like the setting, I like the characters, and I largely like the actors here (even if I don’t really feel like anyone is really putting in their best work in the show anymore). This is a show, though, that clearly ran out of any big ideas a while ago and has been coasting because Netflix simply couldn’t let it go. These next-to-last episodes really show that as they’re all set-dressing and table-setting without any meat to them at all. This should be the big build up to the climax for the series but, watching these episodes, I was utterly bored. Nothing happens and nothing anyone does really matters, so what’s the point of it at all?

But hey, we have the big, two-hour-long series finale to get through and maybe, just maybe, we’ll have big revelations and major consequences that finally change everything. I’m just not holding my breath.