Yesterday (as I write this) I finished watching season four of Stranger Things and against all the odds the makers have really hit the ball out of the park yet again. Hearing how long the nine episodes were this time around I felt a bit daunted, especially towards the end when they get even longer (season finale Chapter Nine: The Piggyback is a whopping two hours twenty two minutes!). I needn't have worried however, firstly because it is a joy getting to spend so much time with the cast of the show, secondly that there are enough different subplots going on that things never got dull, and thirdly that the time zoomed past in an almost unnatural, possibly supernatural way. Obviously, spoilers for previous seasons to follow.
It is 1986 and things have changed somewhat for our teenage protagonists. Now in high school, Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo) and Mike (Finn Wolfhard) are members of a Dungeons & Dragons club led by school outsider Eddie (Joseph Quinn), while Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin) has distanced himself from his friends in an effort to become one of the popular kids. Elsewhere Max (Sadie Sink - Fear Street Part Two: 1978) is suffering PTSD from the experience of watching her brother die and has become a withdrawn loner, Nancy (Natalia Dyer) has become a key member of the school newspaper, and Steve (Joe Keery) now works at a video rental store with best friend Robin (Maya Hawke). Over in California El, (Millie Bobby Brown - Godzilla: King of the Monsters) struggling to deal with the loss of her psychic powers finds herself the target of bullies, Will (Noah Schnapp - Hubie Halloween) has his own internal struggles with the person he is becoming, and Jonathan (Charlie Heaton) has become a stoner after meeting eccentric Argyle (Eduardo Franco). Joyce (Winona Ryder) is still trying to deal with the apparent death a year previously of Jim (David Harbour).
In Hawkins a new evil arises, an intelligent monster from the Upside Down that gets dubbed 'Vecna' and who targets troubled teenagers by haunting their dreams, eventually brutally killing them. In California, El is presented with an opportunity to regain her powers by revisiting her past, and Joyce sets off on a mission to Russia with conspiracy theorist Murray (Brett Gelman) after learning that Hopper may be being kept in a top secret prison there.
That was quite a lengthy synopsis, so apologies for that! As it shows though, there are a lot of characters, with even more introduced. Some of the new characters are amazing, some not so much. Favourite of the new characters was the heavy metal obsessed outsider Eddie, he quickly became my second favourite out of the whole cast, a wonderful character who is given a perfect character arc over the course of the season. It leads up to a fantastic set piece for him in the final episode. Rather than annoying he was just so likeable with the kind personality he had. Then you had Jamie Campbell Bower (The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1 and Part 2) who plays a young orderly in the El flashback scenes, it may have seemed like he was just a minor character but the actor really did a hell of a lot with what appeared to be a limited role.
Argyle on the other hand didn't fare so well. In fact, the whole subplot of Jonathan, Argyle, Will and Mike for the entire season was a damp squib. It essentially boiled down to them going on an agonisingly long road trip for the entire season which did no favours for any of the characters, especially to a newcomer. The lowlight moment of season four was when they rock up to the house of Dustin's girlfriend and all the 'wacky' comedy that occurs there. That was maybe the biggest complaint of this season, the dissonance between the comedic storylines and the super serious ones. The road trip stuck out as bad because elsewhere, with Joyce and Murray's adventure beginning very comedic it soon balanced itself out. On the opposite scale you had the Jim story at the Russian prison, this was very dark, with Jim constantly being beaten and tortured, but thankfully mellowed out with the introduction of supernatural elements. The story overall was fantastic, managing to retroactively bring deeper meanings to all three previous seasons thanks to some mind melting twists (my best friend guessed the twists, for me I nearly fell off my chair with shock when they appeared). What initially appears to be various storylines separate from each other end up coming together in ways most unexpected.
Not all episodes here are equal, but none are bad. There are certainly strong leaders, especially with Chapter One: The Hellfire Club which was an impressive statement of intent for the season, effortlessly juggling multiple storylines without feeling like it was skimping on details. If I were purely just to review that episode it would have gotten a rare ten out of ten, some amazing editing within this, and a feel that perfectly encapsulates my rose tinted memories of the eighties. Things perk back up again towards the end, from the finish of Chapter Six: The Dive, though Chapter Seven: The Massacre at Hawkins Lab, Chapter Eight: Papa and the finale I was even more hooked on the story than I had already been. Talking of the story, Vecna was the best antagonist yet, it really helped that he is more of a humanoid than the faceless monsters of previous seasons, it also helped with wince inducing special effects that occur on his victims, there was a Freddy Kruger style feel to his kills that really resonated and made for a scary villain.
The production values were extremely high here, with many different sets and locations and many different types of action and horror, the look of the Upside Down is better than ever. El gets to one up her iconic moment from the first season in a high energy, special effects laden scene that literally had me standing up out of my chair and giggling manically at the screen. Then of course the music choices, a Kate Bush song featuring heavily as a plot point, and a Metallica song that was very well integrated.
I have read complaints that the characters spent too much of the season separated from each other, yet it is their actions that they do on their own that really shows the unity the characters share as a whole. The cast being split up was an issue I had with the third season but this time around I thought it worked far better. With more of a cliffhanger than usual at the culmination of this it seems for sure that for Stranger Things' final season characters will be more together. There's nothing else to say really, this was a phenomenal season that failed to disappoint.
SCORE:
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