Series Thoughts: Stranger Things (Season 4)

• Released: July 15, 2016
• Creator: Matt Duffer, Ross Duffer
  
• Total amount of seasons:4
• Seasons watched: 4
  
• Rating: 3.5/5

Synopsis

The mysterious happenings in Hawkings continue after the murder of several teenagers. Our main cast once more has to rise up and face a new yet old threat from the Upside-down known as Vecna.

My Thoughts

 As always, this Series Thoughts contains spoilers.

Season four of Stranger Things is definitely one of my favorites of the series so far. I do have a few criticisms, but I overall thought that the storyline was really strong and I liked what they did with it here. The stakes got pretty damn high in some occasions and it also has the best scene of the entire show so far (regarding Max in episode 4).

Everything from the characters to the plot to the mysteries to the visuals is all executed very well. I also like the soundtrack we have here and overall I just am impressed with how they manage to balance a pretty large cast pretty damn well. 

Now, for my criticisms. First of all: the main character's plot armor. The series has a large cast, but the core cast of the kids, Hopper and Joyce pretty much remains a constant other than them sometimes adding a new character. What I mean is that it's kind of starting to become obvious that the Duffer brothers tend to introduce a new side character each season, only for them to be killed off by the end (Bob, Alexei and now Eddie).

Meanwhile whenever it appears a main character dies (e.g. Eleven in season one, Hopper in season three and Max this season) they're somehow always okay or at least make it out alive. And I get it, you don't want to kill off your main cast left and right, but when you have so many side characters die it kind of takes away from the tension from the situation the main characters are in because the audience pretty much knows that they're going to make it out alive since this has been the case so far. I just wish they took a little more risk in killing of a main character once every while. Not the entire main cast, but just one or two of them because it's becoming a pattern of them introducing new characters to kill off while the protagonists are nearly always alive in the end.

My second criticism: the Russia plotline. Not my favorite. I'm glad Hopper is still alive and I like Joyce and Murray actively go looking for him, but overall I thought that their plotline was by far the weakest out of all of the ones in this season. The others had me on the edge of my seat, meanwhile this one I thought was still decent, but mostly just okay in comparison to the rest. Just wasn't as engaging to me, and the final revelation where the trio decides that they have to fight a bunch of Upside-down monsters in order to help the kids is a bit out-there. Like, it somewhat makes sense in-universe, but it also feels a bit forced and just like the Duffers wanted to give the adult main characters something to do in the finale. Ah well. It does make for a nice reunion between the families once the trio arrives back in the US.

Overall though, I consider this to be a very good season and am definitely looking forward to the next one. Will I ever re-watch and review the older seasons? Maybe, maybe not. We'll see.