Stranger Things is engaging TV. It is affecting TV. It is emotive TV. And nine years, four seasons and 34 episodes later, we know that Stranger Things is no longer simply TV. What more can be said about this Netflix phenomenon that first came into our lives in the summer of 2016, bringing in a potent mix of science-fiction, horror and mystery packaged in a coming-of-age drama that evoked unbridled ’80s nostalgia, that hasn’t been said before? As the seasons have rolled, the adventures of a rag-tag team of teens taking on forces mythical and supernatural has only grown bigger in scope, scale and storytelling. It has spurred a booming universe of merchandising, live experiences, a Broadway show, a fandom that has made it a pop-culture landmark, resurrected interest in things as diverse as Dungeons & Dragons and Eggos, brought Kate Bush back to the top of the charts and rocket-launched the careers of the majority of its young actors. The launch of every season of Stranger Things has been an event, eliciting the kind of tingling-in-the-neck sensation — we know that could be a stretch, but hey, this is Stranger Things — that Will experiences every time he feels Vecna (or as we know by now, is Vecna).
It is Will Byers — the boy who was taken on November 6, 1983, changing the lives of the Hawkins folks forever — who once again takes centre stage in Season 5, the first four episodes of which dropped on Thursday morning (in India) and, owing to huge demand, caused a Netflix outage for many users around the world.
Season 5 hits the ground running, quite literally. Rewinding to November 12, 1983, six days after Will (Noah Schnapp) was lured into the Upside Down, it shows a frightened Will, pursued by a Demogorgon, coming face to face with Vecna, who rasps: “You and I... we are going to do such beautiful things together, William.” It is a chilling and ominous reiteration of their connection, with Vecna claiming that Will was the first “vessel” and is crucial to his plan to “refashion the world”.
That scene cuts to the fall of 1987. It is 18 months after the events of Season 4, which concluded with archvillain Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower) rupturing the metaphysical border between the Rightside Up and the Upside Down, splitting Hawkins into two in the process. The “bleed” has resulted in the Upside Down being more accessible than it ever has been, with the military-mercenary group called ‘Wolf Pack’ — led by Dr Kay, played by Linda Hamilton, whose salt-’n’-pepper mop could give Matthew Modine’s Dr Brenner a run for his dye dollars — crawling all over it. Doing a crawl of a different kind in the Upside Down — 37 is the number we are told — is Jim Hopper (David Harbour) who is on the lookout to obliterate Vecna for good. With Eleven’s (Millie Bobby Brown) powers back, Hopper (with Winona Ryder’s Joyce popping in) is training her, boot-camp style, to take on the might of Vecna and his army.
Popping up within minutes of each other are our familiar players, all of who have a shared secret purpose — operating under the radar of their fellow citizens and the military while trying to figure out what has become of Vecna, who has essentially gone into cold storage since Max (Sadie Sink) lapsed into coma. Under the powerful transmission tower of the WSQK “The Squawk” radio station, Nancy (Natalia Dyer), Steve (Joe Keery), Jonathan (Charlie Heaton), and Robin (Maya Hawke) work to use the site’s equipment and remote location to plan covert Vecna-scouting missions for Hopper into the Upside Down. At the same time, Mike (Finn Wolfhard), Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin), Will (Noah Schnapp), and Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo) continue to go to school, but assist as lookouts and field support during operations. Having Vecna in a chokehold has become even more personal for Dustin, who rebelliously walks around in a ‘Hellfire Club’ T-shirt, determined to avenge Eddie Munson’s death.
Even as it recapitulates and recalibrates, Season 5, very early on, lays out the stakes and reveals the threats. There is both familiar and unknown territory that the final season — whose next outing on December 25 will include three episodes, followed by the grand finale on New Year’s Eve — seeks to cover, and for a large part of its first four episodes, it does so with a compelling mix of action and emotion.
What stands out this season is the Duffer Brothers returning to the core of Stranger Things. The series, that started out with its eye on a group of seemingly ordinary school-going kids doing extraordinary things, goes back to making a kid the focus of this season. That is Holly Wheeler (Nell Fisher) whose disappearance — no spoiler this, considering that S05E02 is titled ‘The Vanishing of Holly Wheeler’ — kicks off a jaw-dropping action set piece at the end of Episode 1. Holly being taken by Vecna opens the door (of the Creel House, and even otherwise) for the return of a much-loved key character. Even though she is in an alternate dimension (“A memory that exists in a world of a thousand memories, but it is a prison,” she ruefully smiles), the character is definitely “running up that hill again”.
Besides Holly, there is a busload of kids in the thick of things in Hawkins now, with ‘dipshit Derek’, aka Derek Turnbow (Jake Connelly), emerging as a new character of import. He provides some of the comic relief that Dustin (“I am on a curiosity voyage and I need my paddles to travel” will never stop being legendary) once did.
Known for their ability to weave in hat tips, inspirations and Easter Eggs, The Duffer Brothers use A Wrinkle in Time — the 1962 bestselling science fantasy novel by Madeleine L’Engle about siblings Meg and Charles Wallace Murry, and their friend Calvin O’Keefe, who travel through space and time to rescue Meg’s father from a dark force — as the pivot around which a large part of the action in this season revolves.
Action and emotion jostle for space — sometimes colliding and often colluding — this season. While the tender exchanges between Robin and Will, as they talk about identity and society, strike a heartfelt chord, the final 20 minutes of Vol 1 showcase the kind of high-stakes drama and action that reminds us why Stranger Things is what it has come to be. The first four episodes, as most would agree, are far from perfect, but what they set up the rest of this final outing for, is something we are definitely looking forward to... and what Stranger Things has always meant to us — a masterful interplay of light and dark, funny and tense, playful and serious.
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Stranger Things 5?
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