I thought I remembered when I first watched Stranger Things, but when I looked up the dates, I saw that things didn’t align as I thought they had. So this is the best recreation of events that I’ve come up with.
In the summer of
2016 when the first season of Stranger Things came out, I heard a bunch
of stuff about “The Upside Down” and “Eleven,” but I didn’t fully know what
they were. And at the time, I didn’t
have Netflix. But some months later, I
found a not entirely reputable website that had it and I watched that first
season there. From what I remember, I
thought it was interesting, but it didn’t really stick with me.
Then in late 2017,
or probably early 2018, a YouTuber I watch was talking about shows and
mentioned this one called Dark.
He called it a “German Stanger Things,” but some of the things he
said made me curious. By this time, I
did have a Netflix account so I watched the first season of Dark and
instantly fell in love with it. Dark
is in my Top 20 favorite shows of all time.
It’s not perfect, but I’d say that the story is more complicated than
that of Stranger Things, but it’s told better in like half the
runtime. I forget how many times I’ve
rewatched Dark, and I’d watch it again, but it’s gotten to the point I
would much rather watch it with someone who’s never seen it to explain things, without
spoiling. I think that’s the next step
in enjoying the show.
Anyway, by the
time the first season of Dark was out, the second season of Stranger
Things was out. I watched it,
without rewatching the first season, and that was a bit of a problem because I
forgot some of the characters and couldn’t remember what had happened to some
of them. I think I just had to read the
Wikipedia page to get caught up. The
second season, I still liked it, but again, it didn’t really stick with me.
In the summer of
2019, I rewatched Dark season 1 to prepare for season 2. And then, after watching season 2, I think I
went back and rewatched seasons 1 and 2 again to try to see what I missed. And around this time, I also did a rewatch of
seasons 1 and 2 of Stranger Things to get caught up for Season 3. This rewatch wasn’t as enjoyable. I think the twists and surprises of Stranger
Things really only work the first time.
And then Season 3 stretched credulity, so by the end of it I was losing
interest in the show. I think I figured
I’d continue watching it just for “I understood that reference” reasons.
In 2022, I was
half-heartedly getting ready to rewatch the first three seasons to get ready
for Season 4, when it was announced that there would be a fifth and final
season. I decided that instead of having
to rewatch everything again in a year (ha), I’d just wait. So I didn’t watch Season 4 when it came out,
but I was spoiled about Eddie.
This brings us to
late 2025. My original plan was to start
rewatching on some date so that if I watched an episode a day I’d watch Season
5 Episode 7 the day before the final episode was released. But a couple weeks before that date I was
feeling under the weather, so I started my rewatch early and I probably did like
four episodes in three days. Still, I
was only in my first time watch through of Season 4 when Season 5 Part 1
dropped. It was a week or so after Part
1 dropped that I finally caught up with everyone.
This, probably
wasn’t for the best. For Stranger
Things, at least. By finishing
Season 4 and starting directly into Season 5, I didn’t have any time to ponder
what was going on. But in the weeks
between me finishing Part 1 and Part 2 coming out, I had time to think. And there were some things I was confused
by. And thinking about it, I came up
with a somewhat bland but plausible explanation that would answer the questions
I had, as well as a bit more exciting and plausible explanation. So going into Part 2 I was really interested
to see which idea it would be, or would there be a more interesting third
option.
Then Part 2 came
out and I realized that the odd things I assumed were indications of a more
interesting story, were just plot holes.
That was the third option. And
since the final episode wasn’t six hours long, there was no way they’d be able
to fill them all. So I went into the
final episode without much confidence. And
the ending, I didn’t love it, but I didn’t care enough to hate it.
A lot of people
seem to hate Season 5 for various reasons, but I’d say I dislike it because the
writing isn’t that great. Which isn’t an
issue only for Stranger Things. But
it is so frustrating when better writing could have nipped problems before they
showed up. As an example of a minor
issue that could have been fixed with an extra paragraph or two, I was confused
during Dustin’s graduation speech. He
mentioned the principal and I couldn’t remember if we’d ever seen this
character before. Later, I looked it up
on IMDB and apparently that character only appeared in that episode. And we just had to go with the movie cliché
of the asshole principal. This could
have been fixed with one, slight fix. In
the first episode of the season, when Dustin was roughed up by the bullies at
school, the principal could have stopped it.
But instead of holding them accountable, he could have sent them on
their way and then snidely asked Dustin something like, “Why do you bring this
on yourself?” With that one simple fix, we would know the principal was an
asshole and would have cheered on Dustin during his speech, instead of scratching
our heads wondering if we ever met the guy before.
The way I write a
post like this, is think through most of the arguments I want to make and come
up with a roughish outline of things.
And then it just rattles around my head for a few weeks before I finally
sit down and type it up. So I came up
with all that stuff about the principal, but I had yet to type it up. And then I watched a YouTuber’s reaction to
Season 5, and at one point they put in a clip from Season 4 of Eddie saying
something about grabbing his diploma from the hands of Principal Whoever. I didn’t care enough to check if this
Principal is the same from finale, but I’ll assume it is. Since Eddie had an issue with the Principal, we
could assume they were an asshole. So I
guess it was established that Principal Whoever was an asshole, in one line of
dialogue about fifteen episodes before Dustin’s speech. How could I have missed such an obvious
thing?
Moving away from a
simple problem that could have been easily fixed, to the plot holes that really
killed my interest in the show: the ineptness of the military. For example, was there no one at the camp
with a radio listening for transmissions either from the mysterious Upside Down
or from other actors? I mean, even if
Murray had some special encrypting walkie talkies, you’d think the military
would notice that every time they made a supply run to their Upside Down base, there’s
a lot of unknown transmissions. Or why
did nobody notice that all these people – known associates of the person they’re
looking for – all seem to gather at the radio station when they do supply runs? Is nobody curious about that?
A bigger issue is
the first question I had about Season 5 which was why people were still in Hawkins? You’d think the military would have gathered
everyone up and put them in a tent city about ten miles away while they studied
the cracks to another world. This would
be for everyone’s safety, and so they could do medical checks to make sure they
weren’t exposed to anything. But then
you’d think they’d cite national security, give everyone some money, and move
them elsewhere. And then they’d bulldoze
the buildings and haul in a ton of howitzers to point directly at the opening,
in case anything came through. I mean,
that’s the logical thing to do.
So I was very
confused why the town of a few hundred people(?) with a school, and a
restaurant, and a radio station, was still around inside this military compound. But then, in Episode 4, Vecna takes the kids
for some plan. Thinking about this, I
assumed that Kay knew Vecna needed kids, so she kept the town and school there
so that they could watch him take the kids and somehow replicate his
power. That was my “somewhat bland but
plausible explanation” for why the plot hole of keeping everyone in the town
wasn’t really a plot hole. It could also
explain that Kay knew about the crawls, but didn’t want to tip her hand. Of course, why would you want a villain that was
halfway competent? The “bit more
exciting and plausible explanation” I had was that Kay and Vecna were working
together. Well, actually, they both
promised to help the other with some project, but both were just waiting for
the right moment to stab the other in the back.
Of course, who would want to watch a show where the good guys have to
debate about working with one competent villain to take down another competent
villain?
But in the end, the
grand answer to the issues I had was that they were just plot holes. Don’t get me wrong, every movie and show has plot
holes. For most, the holes are small and
there’s enough good stuff that you can overlook them. But for Stranger Things, these plot
holes were just too big for me to ignore, and there wasn’t enough other
interesting parts to keep my interest. Likely,
I’ll largely forget about Stranger Things, except for the occasional “I
understood that reference.” Probably, the only way I’d ever watch it again is
if I had a girlfriend who, somehow, never watched it and wanted to. But afterwards, we’d watch Dark.
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