Stranger Things is a mysterious series on Netflix where the world depends on a group of kids and adults to uncover supernatural mysteries and government conspiracies. They venture into the Upside Down, a world of monsters like the Demogorgon and the Mind Flayer. The story revolves around the psychic girl Eleven and her friends.
Over the past five seasons, this series has enjoyed massive popularity, and views are through the roof because of the latest season, reaching over 1.2 billion total views across its five seasons. Season 5 added to the already massive numbers, making it a top English-language Netflix series ever.
Season 5 has gotten several good reviews overall, but many thought that the end of the series wasn’t really on good. Stranger Things: Season 5 has been one of the most polarizing seasons the show has ever produced. To catch you up on the action, “the gang hunts Vecna after Hawkins is overrun with Upside Down rifts, facing quarantine and military pursuit while Eleven and Kali unite to confront the Mind Flayer and Vecna in a final, dimension-spanning battle involving secret experiments, a powerful ‘Mind Flayer Tree,’ and the ultimate sacrifice to close the gates and save humanity from total darkness,” concluding with emotional goodbyes and closure. Some viewers found this emotional closure and comfort in this final chapter. Others were frustrated by the pacing, the writing choices, and the sense that the show had grown too big for its own good.
Many people think that the series ended horribly, like Hudson Heyob. He thinks the overall story plot was “Ok, but the ending sucked.” He thinks that in the story “They could have done more with Eleven,” and with “Episode and series-wise a few more [episodes] would have worked and would have made it better.”
Now, even though Season 5 wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea, especially the ending, there are some people out there who did like it or at least didn’t mind it, like Jada Wong. She thinks that the “Show in general is exciting, and in Season 5 the plot was good. Overall, the episodes made the whole season more real and more suspenseful compared to the other seasons which were boring.” She, along with a lot of other fans, weren’t really pleased with the ending, and she thinks that it was “Sad and felt like a cliff hanger because it didn’t make sense.” Other than that, she thinks “The story wrapped up pretty well, the story was well told,” and that it was time to wrap it up because “the kids were getting old.”
The reviews are looking positive, showing that many people were satisfied with how the Duffer brothers wrapped up their show. If people think that 5 seasons isn’t enough Stranger Things, the creators of the show released a making-of documentary on Netflix that dropped on January 12th. This mainly covers “behind the scenes footage from the writers’ room, emotional final table reads, and the last days of filming in Hawkins, the production scale which mainly focuses on the hundreds of craftspeople building the massive sets for Season 5, the writer’s room, insights on the shows, the stressful writing process for the finale, with some writers admitting confusion over the absence of Demogorgons in the Abyss, the cast and crew which mainly features the Duffer Brothers, Millie Bobby Brown, Sadie Sink, Finn Wolfhard, and others reflecting on the show’s end, and the Duffer Brothers’ Inspiration. The creators actually aimed to bring back the in-depth, behind-the-scenes storytelling, and they loved from The Lord of the Rings.”
The reviews for the documentary are also around the same as for Season 5 which are mixed, praising its honest, behind-the-scenes look at the challenging production and emotional farewell to the cast but also fueling existing fan frustration over Season 5’s rushed feel, but fans appreciate the raw, unfiltered view of the cast growing up. However, some feel the documentary confirms Season 5’s flaws, with debates continuing about the finale’s quality.
Overall, the documentary has mixed reviews mainly on how it was bad and how it’s too long and boring, and Colten Mitchell would agree. He thinks that “ it sucked, it was terrible, it was horrible,” and just “everything” in general was bad, and what would have made it better was if it had “more of the Duffer brothers’ story instead of behind the scenes.”
In general, Stranger Things is the most popular show on Netflix with its seasons consistently ranking among Netflix’s most-watched English-language shows ever, even with its backlash on Season 5 and the documentary. So however strange it is, this decade spanning tv show is an amazing thing.
