This is the fourth installment of a series of reviews of the Netflix series Stranger Things. To read a review of the third season, click here.
There’s no need to dance around it, this is the weakest season so far. Let it be known that the hardest part of writing this review was making sure it didn’t get too long from talking about everything that bothered me.
Stranger Things season four takes place almost a year after the events of season three. Will, Joyce and El have left Hawkins and everyone is transitioning into new stages of life. Everything is great and the gang can finally lead normal lives until a Hawkins cheerleader starts levitating and gets bent into a human pretzel.
I’m gonna give this season a really hard time, but I do really enjoy how sudden and gruesome our introduction to the supernatural is. Not to say the previous seasons were too tame, but with how long the show has gone on, it’s good to see the Duffer brothers are getting creative with how they try to scare the audience.
As per usual I also really enjoyed El. Not only is she away from Mike for a lot of the season, she also doesn’t have her powers. So she has to navigate high school while also figuring out who she is when she isn’t an all powerful government experiment.
The characters have always relied heavily on El’s powers, especially in season three, so it was interesting to watch them actually confront obstacles instead of just waiting for El to show up and slam them into a wall.
Unfortunately that’s about all I have in terms of praise. In fact, I actually have to retroactively critique season three since certain events I couldn’t talk about are now affecting season four.
For example, the way El lost her powers had no thought put behind it. I love that it happened, but I really wish there was a reason for it that made sense in universe. But that’s pretty minor, I can get over it.
What I can’t get over is Hopper’s fake death. The fact this show had the audacity to give him an emotional monologue then immediately reveal he’s still alive stirs an irrational spite within me. And that spite was only stirred more when I found out he was in a Russian prison.
I already expressed how much I dislike the Russians as antagonists, so to say I was disappointed to see them come back would be an understatement. Especially since there’s already another perfectly good antagonist organization that ties into the plot way more naturally.
That’s another thing about this season, there’s too many things going on. The cast is split into three groups, but there are technically five story lines to follow and only two of them are even vaguely interesting.
It’s not even a symptom of the show having to include multiple genres. The two interesting story lines include everything the show is known for and they even tie back to each other albeit not seamlessly. But maybe if Joyce and Murray didn’t have to worry about getting Hopper out of Russia, there would be time to make the connection more seamless. Just a thought.
It feels like they just didn’t know what to do with Joyce this season so they just gave her a meaningless side plot with a character that shouldn’t be part of the main cast. Which just makes it all the more baffling that the show continues to introduce new characters.
It wasn’t a big problem the last few seasons, but the newbies this time just don’t meet the standards set by their predecessors. Eddie’s charming and plot relevant so he’s fine, but everyone else just feels so empty. Besides this is the second to last season, why do we need more main characters anyway?
Now as annoyed as I am about everything in this season, there’s one elephant that simply needs to be addressed. Particularly how he is not the Mind Flayer.
The main antagonist this season is Vekna, a being in the Upside Down who’s psychically killing people in Hawkins. Stranger Things was always good at naturally escalating the stakes before, but this time it kinda dropped the ball.
It’s not that Vekna doesn’t feel threatening, quite the opposite. Before we learn anything about him there’s a real anxiety that anybody could be killed at any point. Because of his anonymity he ends up feeling like more of a threat than the Mind Flayer at times.
It’s just kind of strange that the antagonist is a random guy after everyone else has been building towards the Mind Flayer. But I wouldn’t have put Vekna in the title if his only crime was being a weird new threat. The one thing that makes Vekna definitively worse than the Mind Flayer is that he can talk. Which he does. A lot.
Vekna does this really cool thing before he kills people where he shows them visions of their trauma. These scenes would feel really scary if Vekna didn’t also narrate what he was showing his victims. He also insists upon monologuing every single time he tries to kill one of the main cast and it just sucks the momentum out of the scene.
Honestly this is the only thing really holding Vekna back from being a stronger villain than the Mind Flayer. He already parallels El with his psychic powers. If he would just shut up and let his actions speak for themselves, he would be way more menacing, but as is I just can’t take him seriously.
Honestly I could go on about what a let down this season was, but I think I’ve gotten my point across. I’m just glad the show can’t possibly go lower than this. The Duffer brothers would have to do something mind boggling like making Vekna the overarching villain to drag it down any further. Wait.
