more budget, feeling of déjà vu

The long wait has come to an end and Netflix has already released the first volume of episodes from the last season of Stranger Things. Of course, to be able to watch all four episodes at once you need to reserve more than four and a half hours free, as they are very long:

The Mission, The Disappearance of Holly Wheeler, The Turnbow Trap and the wizard are the titles of these first episodes that, after a brief introduction with what Vecna ​​did to Will in 1983, make us jump to 1987.

Former allies and opponents

Hawkins is taken over by the military, who keep the population in strict quarantine and have marked Eleven as a priority search target. However, she, along with Hopper and Joyce, continues training in hiding while the rest of her companions monitor periodically scheduled raids into the Upside Down to search for Vecna.

They created a way to “track” those who delve into this alternative world from the real world and Will seems to be more connected to it than ever.

Furthermore, the same conflicts that were pending come to the surface: Max remains in a coma, with Lucas trying to recover her through music; Dustin continues to stand up to school bullies; Jonathan and Steve continue to compete for Nancy’s attention; Hopper and Eleven have their confrontations and Will struggles to become independent of everything that holds him back: his mother’s authority and his bond with Vecna.

The first and most important thing to note is that brothers Matt and Ross Duffer have strived to ensure that the action practically doesn’t stop from the moment the fifth season of Stranger Things. It’s much more fun than the previous ones because it doesn’t stop and you can appreciate the production expense with a notable expansion of scale. I mean, that The investment looks like much longer, well post-produced and very effective sequels.

When it comes to the characters’ evolution, everything seems much more stagnant and the feeling of déjà vu dominates at every moment because the conflicts are the same. There are almost no additions to the cast, with the honorable exception of Linda Hamilton (also present in Resident Alien) in the role of Dr.

It lacks the freshness of the beginning of the series when everything seemed organic and the air of the eighties was genuine. Otherwise, there is also less humor than expected. The fact that the protagonists have aged is not a trivial matter because maturity has also made them less effective as comic relief.

The echoes are also different in Stranger Things 5with allusions to The Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland or A Gap in Time. There is a certain degree of sophistication in the menu of allusions to pop culture that do not just include the great songs of Diana Ross or Kate Bush, but also take place in mythical comics, films or television programs.

Is this a bad start to the season? No way, but it confirms that the series is crying out to come to an end once and for all, as it is exhausted and has little new to offer. At least for what it puts on our plate. It’s easy to consume, it compensates the fan audience for waiting because it gives them what they expect, but the development of the story is somewhat poor and the explanations are quite discursive. Many of the revelations are put into the characters’ mouths to deliver them to the audience and there are more than two plot threads taken with tweezers in addition.

If anything made this series addictive it was the naturalness of its characters, the winks of the eighties and the charm of what could be done with flickering lights and a nostalgic soundtrack and its electronic halo. Much later, the only new thing is that all elements are amplified exponentially.

While we wait for the remaining four episodes, we can only hope that the stakes will increase so that the plot, as well as its characters, take off and make the outcome shine as the final touch that the series needs.