Stranger Things 4 needed to dream bigger

This is the penultimate 90 minute episode. Stranger Things’ fourth season, its heroes — mostly teenagers now, after six years of real-world aging since the series premiere — get ready to battle demons. They use hammers to pierce trash can lids. A shotgun barrel is cut off and they make spears using knives and rods. It’s not their first time; previous seasons built to similar showdowns. It is, however, the most terrifying. It is unlike the climactic fights of previous eras. Stranger ThingsThe war was waged with tools that children used, such as fireworks and CB radios. This time, the kids have taken to the streets with their deadly weapons. With one season remaining, series creators Matt and Ross Duffer take moments like this to underline how the show’s cast has grown up — but it also shows how limited their imagination for them has been.

This is what the most challenging thing about supersized bombastics. Stranger Things 4Is this who the series really is? Please see the following: anymore. The show continues to cycle through ’80s film tropes, its plot unbothered by the notion that its young cast might not be a good fit for the next reference the Duffer brothers want to make. Just like season 3 found room for a Terminator-esque assassin, season 4 carves out a season-long side plot involving Jim Hopper surviving and escaping a Russian gulag, effectively making a second ’80s B-movie in parallel with the ’80s horror pastiche in the main plot.

Tonally, season 4’s story — about an otherworldly, humanoid creature called Vecna stalking teenagers in their nightmares before grotesquely murdering them in the real world, like Freddy Krueger — is all over the place. While the first season (and perhaps the second) could conceivably be pitched for viewers roughly the same age as its tween cast of Dungeons & Dragons lovers, Stranger ThingsNow, the movie is firmly in R-rated blockbuster territory. The gruesome monsters as well as violent shootouts get a lot more scenes than other (often great!) films. These are the moments when kids can just be children. It’s the best time of your life. Stranger Things 4 stops to be the show that is, for example, deeply invested in Max’s (Sadie Sink) lonely struggle, it’s great. But too often, it feels just like that — a pause for a big character moment so the series can get back to gulags and demons.

Netflix Photo

Netflix Photo

That isn’t to say there is no appeal; even without the statistics Netflix proudly trumpets about its success or the marketing heft the series receives from the streamer (something it affords virtually no other series), Stranger ThingsModern streaming series are unrivaled in scale and spectacle. The effects of Vecna, a rubber-suited monster of menace and the Upside-Down are both elevated this season. It is a nightmare-world that invades more of our world. It is a time when Stranger Things relishes in its own bigness, it rules — watching newcomer Eddie (Joseph Quinn) shred to “Master of Puppets” as demon bats swarm around him? That’s the good stuff. But it’s also disjointed stuff, as Eddie gets the majority of his big emotional moments in the same finale where he dies, spending most of the season hiding from people who want him dead.

Stranger Things’ hour-plus episodes are no obstacle to viewers who have reportedly made it among the most-devoured shows on Netflix. But if there is an answer to “Who is Stranger Things for?” the clearest one is “the Duffer brothers.”

Most of the series can be described and understood simply as a list or obsessions. The episodes are lovingly reconstructed without much reflection. Characters are tone-deaf, written to follow the social mores reflected in films of the ’80s: bumbling dads, boys who are clueless about girls, and the occasional racial stereotype for good measure via sassy dialogue from Erica (Priah Ferguson, a wonderful presence that deserves a story of her own).

It grants Stranger Things a purity that is appealing, if one isn’t put off by it. It’s exciting to see artists being given free rein to pursue their artistic interests. Very few people have this opportunity. The Duffers are unable to make more of Mike, Lucas and Dustin’s creations, other than to place them in their expensive scrapbook. It is sad. This is what the characters are essentially about: memories, more than people. It’s a collection that their creators recall characters looking like and not real people who exist in the stories they tell. This, Stranger Things is less an ’80s homage than it is a work of 2020s wistfulness, a tract about the good ol’ days when Men were gulag-escaping menChildren could fight in wars because nobody else believes them.

Watching Nancy (Natalia Dyer) stare down the barrel of her newly sawed-off shotgun or Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo) wielding his spiked shield are images far more indelible than any Vecna or Mind-Flayer because they’re frames that convey meaning — even if their message isn’t particularly flattering or intentional. It’s all about the Stranger ThingsThe world in which the adults have disappeared and children are forced to plan for war is a dangerous one.

Image by Netflix

Image by Netflix

The 1980s’ popular culture saw the latchkey child as a sign of generational isolation. The Reagan-era boom years didn’t mean much to Gen X kids whose parents both left them home alone to participate in the workforce in order to strive for their place in an ascendent (white) middle class. These kids would go on to create films about the time. They would see lonely children discover aliens and share a beer with them, leaving behind their home that their parents naively believed they would remain.

Children in Stranger ThingsThey are often left alone for similar reasons and find support in one another even though their family is rarely available. The monsters that they fight together? That feels more like the present, an artifact from an era where there is little future to imagine for the next generation that isn’t some pending disaster, some great violence.