Stranger Things season four was already bigger and better than anything the show had ever done before. It was clearly more expensive, with a larger cast, and a more confident sense of why all the monsters, heroes, and parasites were there. The result of double billing, withheld for a month from Netflix to allow advertising creation, is even more expansive. It's insane, luxuriously stretched out, running for almost four hours and doing everything fans could have hoped for plus several tablespoons. But if too much hasn't been shown yet, you're wondering where the weirdest things can go.
Where were we? In Hawkins, Indiana, in 1986, waiting for a gang of plucky teenagers to mount a final assault on the neighborhood, the demon roams a dank dimension beneath the city. Psychic superhero Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) has unlocked memories of a childhood spent in a child-safe facility with strange powers, revealing that she opened the interdimensional portal while facing a killer, making him the neighborhood's vengeful. Meanwhile, a group of sympathetic adults are trapped in a dirty Soviet Union prison, battling a creature left over from a previous season.
A confrontation is coming, but hey, we have four hours, there is no rush. And so the last two episodes of the fourth season are surprisingly talkative, giving almost every character a tender bowl and two hands from a significant other. The wails of love lost, the arrest of young love properly approaching, and the show is barely noticeable, although the berating fans in each scene have certainly discerned it, hints that Will (Noah Schnapp) becomes somewhat more apparent during his moving speech. about learning to live being "different".
Stranger could be a self-indulgent '80s tribute to horror, cold war thrillers, hacker movies, fantasy, and movies like The Goonies or Stand by me, where a bunch of unsupervised kids try to save the day, but... its creators, the Duffer brothers, are not just shallow pastures. They understand what sustains their reference points, and in particular they get how the "hood apocalypse" genre works. These stories say it's okay to be different, to be shy and angry, or a dungeons and dragons nerd, or secretly gay, or a heavy metal fan, because your small town might be the most important place in the world, and maybe it's not. you are different, but special.
The Duffers appreciate that this is all a coming-of-age metaphor, so they sprinkled their ending with universal life lessons about killing their personal monsters and growing up. Eventually you have to stop listening to Kate Bush on your Walkman, take them off and interact with the outside world. Sooner or later you will have to stop being the class joker and admit that there are things you think and people you love. One day, you will find the courage to look your father in the eye and say, "Dad, my values are not aligned with yours, so I am leaving your underground telekinesis lab and not coming back." ."
Once this emotional framework is taken care of, the fireworks begin that do not disappoint, without great surprises (several characters are on the verge of defeat in a fight against death before the visions of what really matters to them. give them the strength to meet at the last second) but many impeccable judgements. Decisions about which character intervenes, when and how are made seamlessly, as well as which ones to get over, who dies and why. The problem of dividing the action between Indiana, Nevada, and Kamchatka reconciles fairly smoothly. Metallica and Journey can look forward to well-earned waves on Spotify, their old hits handled with style and precision. When the flames collide and the vampire bats stop flitting about, the survivors know who they are and return to where they belong.
It might even be an ideal ending to the entire show, except when everything seemingly ends and you hit the progress bar at the bottom of the screen, there's still half an hour to go.
Anyway, Netflix has commissioned a fifth and final season. It's hinted that this will involve a global disaster rather than a conspiracy that only a few geeks know about, and with the core cast no longer necessary, some tweaking is surely in order. But Stranger Things is at its best when it's local, intimate, innocent and down-home, and it feels like we've told that story now. We have left home.
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