The rest of my family gave up years ago on Stranger Things but I felt myself committed to seeing how the story ends. Even though at times, the Duffer Brothers‘ series got pretty confusing and chaotic over the decade of watching, I always found myself interested in how the pieces were coming together. And the focus on the characters over time kept the series grounded as a narrative, to me. (I know plenty of people have their criticisms).
This last season had its confusing plot elements midway through, for sure, as the Duffer Brothers brought back together every single significant character to the finale and tried to dig into depth on the character of Henry, so we would understand him (the final cave dream scene is quite dramatic). So, there were lots of characters to keep track of, particularly when they went off on different missions. Too many characters, in any normal story-line, but it made sense for Stranger Things to do this, so that the various threads over the last ten years could have some resolution.
I have a colleague who also kept watching over time, so she and I have had our down little Stranger Things discussions among ourselves. I didn’t feel completely alone, anyway, as a viewer. And I noticed that when Season 5 dropped over Thanksgiving, many of my sixth grade students were suddenly watching the first season and talking about the characters. Honestly, though, I am not sure that Stranger Things is appropriate for 11 year olds, particularly in the later seasons (language and violence, along with grappling with sexual identity).
But it is odd to think they were just a year old when the first season launched on Netflix.
The finale was two hours long and I appreciated that the Duffer Brothers took their time to resolve the characters stories at the very end. It all felt emotionally right to me (even with the one mystery possibility suggested by Mike at the end) and the use of the friends’ Dungeons And Dragons game at the end was a circular connector back to the very first episode in the first season, and how the whole story got started. Using old footage from earlier seasons in the finale was quite emotionally effective, I thought.
My youngest son, who lost interest years ago (“it was always the same story, told every season”), asked me if the Duffers left it open for a sequel. Maybe. I hope not. I believe Netflix has something in the works for a story adjacent to the world of Stranger Things but I am not sure what it is — maybe an animated series?
I am not interested. (Nor am I the audience for it).
But I am interested to see what the Duffer Brothers come up with in the future (elsewhere, as they are no longer connected with Netflix). I appreciated that they knew how to tell an epic story by focusing on characters. The Wikipedia site for the show has lots of interesting elements, including the first iterations of the story.
Peace (at the end),
Kevin