Stranger Things 4

Less than a month to what is hopefully the thrilling conclusion to the series.

Not quite conclusion. The BEGINNING of the end. They've already said that Season 5 will close it out.

Although I'm sure some spin-offs will follow.

I'm mainly excited for Robert Englund as the new baddie.

Season 3 feels like forever ago.

Let's hope they can finally turn The Upside Down into something more compelling than an amorphous bullshitty plot engine.

I'm on board with the characters, though.

Netflix released some episode details. First part gets 7, while the second part gets...2.

However, the 8th episode is 85 minutes, while the finale is TWO AND A HALF HOURS.

Overall, the season is five hours longer than any previous season. Which can be a good or bad thing, we'll see.

Hopefully for the better. They have a lot of characters at this point and will likely add a couple more this season, so if - and I do mean IF - they are using that time efficiently, we should be able to get nice arcs for all of them as they move all the chess pieces into place ahead of the fifth & final season. The pandemic SHOULD have afforded them extra time to get any kinks worked out of the writing.

I just hope they focussed on actual arcs, making them people and not 'how can we Jack Sparrow all of these minor, supporting characters EVEN MORE?'

Doc Happenin wrote:

I just hope they focussed on actual arcs, making them people and not 'how can we Jack Sparrow all of these minor, supporting characters EVEN MORE?'

I more or less trust the Duffers, but this is my primary concern.

It worked when they were able to transform Steve into one of the best things about the show, but I'm skeptical it can work again.

Steve's transformation in S2 was great and I also really liked what they did with Billy in S3.

But now they not only have to juggle Mike, Dustin, Lucas, Will, Eleven, Max, Erica, Nancy, Jonathan, Steve, Robin, Hopper, and Joyce....but also anyone new they have, as well as continue to find stuff for Murray, Owens, Brenner, and the parents. It's a lot! So much so that I'm almost hoping that - given how they were busted up a bit at the end of S3 - we get some episodes that focus entirely on one group. Either the writing is going to need to be tight as hell or we're gonna need to start killing some people off. Or both.

Here are the running times for the episodes, by the way...

#1-6 - 75 minutes on average
#7 - 98 minutes
#8 - 85 minutes
#9 - 150 minutes

It's literally just an entire season of movies. I suspect Season 5 will be no different, whenever it arrives.

Hopefully it'll be sooner than Season 4 now that the pandemic has abated somewhat.

I'm just excited to see where the story goes from here.

I would expect the final season in the fall of '23 or spring of '24.

Had the pandemic not happened, we would have gotten the fourth season in early '21.

I watched season three the last couple of nights and it still holds up. The show went a lot broader with the comedy, gore, the Russians infiltrating Hawkins and the way some of the characters behaved, but it didn't jump the shark. The kids still acting like kids despite being caught up saving the world works on the show as well as it did in the novel It.

The first 8 minutes of Season 4 are up.

Final trailer

I can hold out until the weekend!

Chaz Rock City wrote:

I watched season three the last couple of nights and it still holds up. The show went a lot broader with the comedy, gore, the Russians infiltrating Hawkins and the way some of the characters behaved, but it didn't jump the shark. The kids still acting like kids despite being caught up saving the world works on the show as well as it did in the novel It.

I thought Hopper mowing down a row of poor Soviet soldiers and it being played for laughs was a shark-jumping moment, but this spring I've turned around on that.

I've turned around on it too. I kinda outright love how cartoonishly maniacal the Russians are in S3 now.

As for the two new videos above, I'm gonna skip them, since we're only a couple days away from its arrival.

My only criticism of season 3 is Lucas comparing New Coke to John Carpenter's The Thing. It was trying way too hard to be clever and not even coming close.

 My plan for Friday is to listen to Queen's The Works on my commute home. Rocking out to Hammer to Fall is the closest I'll ever be to being like Steve. Speaking of Steve, here is a video of Joe Keery breaking down his best moments as the character.

Two episodes in, and this is an entertaining time. When the show aims for tension and horror, it’s perhaps the best it’s ever been. The violence is enjoyably grisly (this would be R-rated territory if released in theaters), and personifying the threat of this season as an actual character, rather than a more amorphous presence like we’ve gotten before, really goes a long way towards taking things to the next level. A bit of a debt to Freddy is owed, but I think the show is doing enough of its own thing with the various hallucinations.

Some of the humor and character dynamics have gotten more broad as the seasons have progressed, which I don’t think was necessary, and I'm not as invested in the non-Hawkins storylines, but I find it genuinely hard to not be pretty consistently won over by this show. And when it does try for emotion, it’s often fairly effective.

Eddie, the leader of the Hellfire Club, is adding great energy and presence to the ensemble, too. Also, I would watch an entire series about Steve and Robin working in a video store.

Will be spacing the rest of the season out through the holiday weekend.

I'm through the first four episodes and I'm enjoying it. I think the Joyce/Russia thread is the weak link, but not enough to sink the entire show. I just wish they'd maybe tweaked the "Separate everyone into their own side quests and then reuinite everyone for the finale" formula.

But the horror elements are genuinely disturbing, and the character interactions are great as always. And it's as compulsively watchable as ever.

Through episode five, and still really enjoying it. Well, the Hawkins stuff, anyway. My significant nitpicks are that the Hopper storyline seems totally inert to me, and I don’t know that we’re getting much out of Eleven reliving her experimentation. And I don’t know how a certain character is still alive, presented without explanation. But the primary storylines surrounding the Vecna plot are terrific (maybe excluding the basketball players, but we’ll see where that ends up).

Anyway, will finish up the episodes tomorrow after getting back from TOP GUN!

Watched all seven, and while some of it seemed like a retread in the moment, in the end it still feels like the show is going somewhere, and what is more relieving, the Upside Down apparently has a point after all. There's a logic and a structure to the overall story. Lost, this isn't.

All in all, a very entertaining (partial) season. I still think way too much time was spent on Eleven at the facility (I think revealing that she didn’t do what they had made it look like she did was bit of a cop-out), but the way it was eventually tied into the Vecna plot was handled well, and even the Hopper storyline finally got kind of compelling towards the end. And I repeat that the Hawkins stuff is great.

Looking forward to the resolution in July.

I finished the season last night. It was good, but not as good as I expected. The Hawkins story line was my favorite. Working in the 80s Satantic  Panic was a good touch. Eddie is a great addition to the cast. What a shock that I'm rooting for the eccentric metal-head.

 The other two story lines weren't as engaging. Jonathan's stoner buddy isn't as funny as the writers think he is.

 One of the youtube reviews wondered if bullies really could be that mean. As someone who grew up a block away from a couple of sociopaths, I found their behavior all too believable.

 

Finally finished the current volume tonight.

Everything involving Hawkins is great. I think Eddie is a wonderful addition to the show and I love that they've consistently taken the time to give every character good arcs and moments, even some of the supporting players like deputy-turned-sheriff. Even the vigilante bullies are compelling in their own twisted way. At no point did it ever feel to me like Dustin, Lucas, Max, Steve, Robin, Nancy, Eddie, or even Erica were being wasted. Which is no small feat, since his hasn't always been the case with the show.

The California plot is way wobblier, especially at first, but I liked where it went once it kicked into high gear. Argyle is a bit much at times, but not a dealbreaker. Jonathan's moping continues to grate a bit, as does Mike continuing to be a raging asshole 24/7, but it mostly works so far. I honestly wouldn't mind in the slightest if they killed Jonathan off though. I know they won't bump off Mike, but Jonathan keeps serving less and less of a purpose as this show goes on. It's high time they broomed him. That and maybe pared poor Will up with characters who actually give a shit about him.

I'm in agreement with everyone else that the Hopper/Russia/Joyce & Murray stuff is the weakest of the lot. The actors are all giving it their best and Tom "Valar Morghulis" Wlaschiha is a nice addition, but it just comes up short. It takes way too long to get to the Demogorgon pit-fighting, given that we already knew it was headed that way based on the marketing. Also, chunks of it scream "David Harbour really wanted some serious monologues this season after how highstrung and goofy Hopper was in S3". It's not terrible, but it does drag everything else down from time to time. Also, it tortured me because I love Jif peanut butter and cannot currently have any due to the recent safety recall.

As for the Eleven arc once she leaves Cali? I honestly loved it. I thought they did a great job of playing with flashbacks without having to rely on much de-aging tech. I like the new dynamic with said how-are-they-still-alive returning character (to be fair though, this person's survival was hinted at previously) and I'm glad that they've finally given Paul Reiser more to do. I also thought they did a great job of laying out more of the backstory for the program that Eleven was in, while also building a nice explanation for exactly what Vecna is. It managed to close off quite a few threads that have been dangling since the first season and did so in very meaningful ways for me.

Speaking of Vecna, what a killer threat. I love that we finally have a highly-intelligent and calculating foe with his own agenda. One that they can actually directly converse with. It really has taken everything to the next level. While I've never had a problem with the Demogorgon or the Mind Flayer, it would have been far too repetitive to give us another animalistic threat. Sure, the Mind Flayer had the ability to vocalize its wants and desires, but it's just not quite the same as having a more nuanced baddie like Vecna there in all his practical man-in-suit glory.

All in all? It's a GREAT season so far. My favorite since the first one. I'm super curious to see how things pans out in the two (long) episodes we'll be getting in a few weeks. Hell, I'm even more curious to see what state everyone and everything is in as we head towards the fifth and final season.