Stranger Things keeps running up that hill—no matter how much viewers want to tear their hair out at the sound of Kate Bush—with its second volume of season five episodes, which push the Netflix saga to the precipice of the end.
Unlike with its recently released installments, however, these new episodes—now streaming—stumble somewhat in the race to its two-hour conclusion, set for Dec. 31. This latest installment movies its story forward in only minor increments, distending its action with a host of drama-halting conversations that are bursting with tears and heartfelt confessions (including the big one everyone’s been anticipating).
Sagging under the weight of its numerous narrative obligations, it’s a limp to the finish line.
In the aftermath of Will (Noah Schnapp) demonstrating his Vecna-like superpowers, Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin) exclaims, “This totally changes the game!” and Joyce theorizes that maybe tapping back into the villain’s “hive mind”—which is the source of Will’s abilities—is the way to defeat their nemesis once and for all. To do this, they decide to reanimate a Demogorgon with whom Will can connect.
As they go about this Frankensteinian plan, Erica (Priah Ferguson) and Murray (Brett Gelman) enlist teacher Mr. Clarke (Randy Havens) to build a telemetry gizmo that’ll help them track down Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo) and the others—Steve (Joe Keery), Nancy (Natalia Dyer), Jonathan (Charlie Heaton), Hopper (David Harbour), and Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown)—in the Upside Down.
Thus, a dual scheme is initiated, all as Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower), posing as Mr. Whatsit, convinces his adolescent captives that he’s saved them from invading monsters and needs them and their “special” dormant powers to draw a new world to ours so the light can defeat the encroaching darkness.
Stranger Things has long been hauling around a surplus of characters and plot, and it begins to buckle with this penultimate trio of chapters, in part because—out of a misguided belief that every single player needs a big emotional resolution to their arc—it wastes considerable energy on protracted weepy affirmations.
Of those, the most egregious is a conversation between Jonathan and Nancy right smack in the middle of a life-or-death dilemma, their admissions to one another almost as cheesy as the fact that time seems to stop so they can endlessly blather on about their up-and-down relationship. That said, at least they’re major characters; the Duffer Brothers’ desire to intermittently foreground Vickie (Amybeth McNulty), Robin’s (Maya Hawke) peripheral and inconsequential new girlfriend, is inexcusable for a show that needs to drastically trim rather than enlarge.
The same goes for Holly (Nell Fisher), Mike’s (Finn Wolfhard) suddenly super-crucial youngest sister, who’s trapped with Max (Sadie Sink) in Vecna’s mind. It’s even truer when it comes to Eight (Linnea Berthelsen), Eleven’s psychic lab-rat “sister,” whose elevation to key constituent feels like a strained rehabilitation campaign to prove that Eight’s Season 2 episode “The Lost Sister”— the series’ nadir—was actually of the utmost importance.
By prioritizing these third-rate pieces of the puzzle, the Duffers (teaming with directors Frank Darabont and Shawn Levy) give short shrift to some of their protagonists, most notably Mike and Lucas, who’ve been reduced to performing minor functional duties and delivering a few of the proceedings’ myriad scene-ending quips.
Stranger Things strives to keep everyone involved in its multipronged tale, such as Eleven, whose speech is still childishly stilted (despite Eight being verbally mature) and who’s mainly asked to periodically stick her hand out to use her supernatural talents.
If that effort is futile, it’s a less pressing issue than the series’ increasingly rapid descent down a rabbit hole of jibber-jabber about wormholes, abysses, psychic mind-melds, and “exotic matter, all of which turns the underlying mythology—and the solutions necessary for handling its intricacies— unreasonably convoluted.
Be it Max and Holly trying to escape their otherworldly prison, Will working on harnessing his newfound gifts by plugging into Vecna, or Dustin devising a means of dealing with the baddie’s fleshy-tentacle wall, the material never stops with the outlandish make-believe chitchat, in the process drowning out any lingering hints of humanity.
In an effort to settle certain concerns before the climactic blow-out, Stranger Things provides answers to long-standing questions about the nature of the Upside Down, the origin and motives of Vecna and military bigwig Dr. Kay (Linda Hamilton), and, yes, Will’s sexuality. While the last of those will shock precisely no one, the other bombshells are dispiriting, especially with regards to Dr. Kay, whose reason for coveting Eleven makes no logical sense.
The Duffers apparently assume that there’s simply so much going on, and at such a helter-skelter pace, that their younger target audience won’t bother concentrating too hard on specifics. Yet that’s hardly an excuse for elaborate and busy revelations that don’t square with what we (and the characters) already know about this fantastical situation.
Continuing references to A Wrinkle in Time are paired with shout-outs to Pink Floyd, A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: The Dream Warriors, and Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, but the show’s fan service-y elements are, at this late stage, more obligatory than inspired.
Those still deeply invested in these kids’ plights may warm to these episodes’ ceaseless waterworks; there are more weepy tête-à-têtes and healing hugs than thrilling skirmishes. However, since everyone has now been reduced to a pawn in a wildly sprawling Dungeons & Dragons game, it all comes across as programmatic, as if the Duffers, with each drawn-out poignant moment, are merely ticking checklist boxes.
Whereas Stranger Things initially thrived due to an Amblin-esque sense of childlike wonder and terror centered on its original pint-size heroes, its current gargantuan size means it can only deliver mechanical storytelling and murky CGI cacophony.
It’s certainly possible that the Duffers have an out-of-left-field surprise for their forthcoming wrap-up. This latest segment of Season 5, though, doesn’t bode well for that eagerly anticipated denouement, rife as it is with treading-water twists and cornball pathos.
“It will all be over soon,” promises Vecna. Yet in the aftermath of these 11-hour stumbles, there are more doubts than ever about whether it’ll be a satisfying end.
