Hi y’all. Happy Sunday. We are living in grievous times, but I thought this week we could discuss one of the last merry bastions of conversation holding this nation together: Stranger Things. I’m not gonna play and act like I haven’t been watching, nor will I claim to not be invested. But what I am gonna do is break down how this show has jumped the shark and simultaneously left itself dead in the water in the span of two episodes. If you’re new to the ST verse (or not), adequately prepare yourself for spoilers for all of Season Four and march ahead with me.
I understand that there is probably a great amount of pressure and responsibility to continue a show like this. There is no doubt that this product has established itself in the cultural canon of the last decade, and been extremely successful in doing so. I acknowledge the appeal, and see the bricks laid to draw the path of a sophisticated horror smorgasbord for fanatics and novices alike. I also, of course, see where this path went crooked and crumbled and then was leveled out by a neat concrete cushion of Netflix money and fan support. When creators of a television show claim such masterful auteur intentions and promise a dramatic course of events like you’ve never seen before like the Duffers do, at least some of that check is asking to be cashed. But as the vortex of attention and acclaim always demand, the creator isn’t solely loyal to the creation but also to the consumers who have swarmed it.
Fan service and the adverse phenomenon of writers who alter plots to “outsmart” their own audiences are certainly combining to kill television, and I find Stranger Things to be just one recent example of this. Let’s take the last two episodes of this new season to begin with: a huge fight, a promised massacre and high stakes for a villain reveal. By the end of Episode Eight, nothing had truly been gained or lost in 80 minutes of exposition. By the end of the finale, the Big Bad that the entire lore of the series depends upon had been entirely reduced to the actions and control of one villain - Vecna, whom we met eight episodes prior. A fakeout death (that can’t even be considered a true fakeout because there’s so much ambiguity on where it could possibly go from here) left fans feeling unfulfilled. The eleventh hour insertion of White Boy of the Month Joseph Quinn into a sentimental sacrifice that ultimately only had an emotional impact on 2 characters was an embarrassingly transparent attempt at replicating the weight that Steve’s character represents. But heaven forbid Joe Keery see those pearly gates because we can trust that his stans would take to the the streets with a quickness.
To cherrypick in regards to Steve specifically, the fact that it is common knowledge that he is being kept alive by sheer will and fan power is proof that you can’t bend to the will of every crowd demand, or it will yield significant impacts on the story itself. If Steve had died as God intended years ago, how would the fabric of the characters’ relationships be different? Would the show be forced to finally make its female characters real beings and stop creating goofy lovable male side characters to kill off in self contained narratives that serve no purpose by the end of the season? Would we maybe be able to live in a universe where the heavy handed administration of romantic plot lines to every minor in a 50 mile vicinity of the set ceased? Would Black characters maybe exist beyond comedic relief and get to like, speak?
By the end of Season Four, I couldn’t help but feel bored and deflated. Even cheap shots at allusions to Halloween couldn’t sate my desire for something of CONSEQUENCE to happen. I sense that the water cooler grip of this show will finally slip away once and for all, since perhaps we are becoming a changed world that has evolved beyond the need for Red Scare plots and 80s nostalgia. Even if not, all talk with no stakes does not an emotionally impactful finale make. We can only gather and pray that Will becomes a main character in this show again and hope his intuition (and impending villain arc) will save us all.