Summary of previous episodes.
As a non-fan of the Stranger Things series – which at the time found the first season watchable, the second and third decidedly less edible – I enjoyed the first volume of this season 4. Especially since those episodes were a single, huge, cheeky but declared homage to the Nightmare saga , complete with Robert Englund and the word “nightmare” repeated on the tape ( it was said here ). I then approached these last two, interminable episodes of the season with great curiosity and also a certain level of expectations. And in the end, it went. Nothing sensational, for my taste, but nothing really terrible either: it’s just that not everything works at its best.Spoilers follow, watch out .
HOW THE TOTO-DEAD WENT
Here, let’s start from here. From the many voices in the corridor of the eve, a fire on which the Duffer twins had started to blow deeply in the first person (speaking of “one or more tragic deaths”), because today if you don’t say “Oh, boy, go that this is going to be an important episode, eh, attention ”, it seems that the public is not able to notice it for themselves. Either hype or death, in these cases both. And in short, he was certain that someone would die, and poor Eddie Munson, a great new entry this season, was the main suspect. His passing was not even quoted, and when he experiences his heroic moment we all said Ok, bye, Eddie, it was good. Go teach the angels what you like, with those haunted eyes, but above all whatis the aim of this role-playing game led by an unscrupulous master .
The real leap of faith, without even the cart with the straw underneath, would also have been to make people dieMax, probably one of the best characters of all season, if you ask me, but also if you ask Kate Bush’s accountant. Or Steve, to capitalize on the drama immediately after the possible rapprochement with Nancy. But Max and Steve are now part of the nucleus, already veteran members of the cumpa: they will also need them for the grand finale, and therefore nothing, diluting. We talk about it again with Season 5, the one that gives me so much will come out no earlier than the end of 2023 / summer 2024, when Lucas, Dustin and Mike will all be 22 or older, and Nancy will be on the threshold of thirty. Which brings us to a first problem, which can be summed up in the fact that these damned kids have a bad habit of growing up.
BUT HOW STILL 1986?
I thought and hoped that the end of this season 4 of Stranger Things would make a time gap possible. A jump of a few years for the plot, in order to make his former kids more credible for a moment in Season 5, the final one, and to avoid the increasingly evident Andrea of Beverly Hills 90210 effect.. But Hawkins sinks like Golconda’s soul, and the final cliffhangerone will bring everyone back – in at least a year and a half, more likely between two – in 1986. After all, this city was so damned, so much the most unlucky and deadly of all over Indiana, that making a cross on it (from down, in fact, but it is the same) was the best solution. A beautiful apocalyptic cataclysm, fire and flames, as an appetizer of the final clash between the forces of good (the Goonies from RPG) and those of evil, which have always been, we discovered, stuff of Vecna. Guy.
AGATHAVECNA ALL ALONG
In the sense that even if the impallinati of the series have already gone hunting for pendulum clock strikes in the first seasons (result: it seems there are, but not exactly the same as those of Vecna), that the Duffer Bros. had this shot in mind of the scene since the first season seems highly unlikely to me. He’s a nice big retcon, who more or less goes in his place, and tries to make sense of all the mess in the Upside Down, starting as always from the laboratory of that silhouette of Dr. Martin Brenner. The return to (his) origins of Eleven, intertwined with the transformation of Henry Creel / Number 1 into Vecna, was the twist of the phone, but still enjoyable of the first block of episodes, and in these two final episodes he should have push again on the subplot linked to Eleven. Problem:
The division of the large cast into a series of RPG parties, each with its own mission but part of a single campaign, was useful on paper to make everyone do something, keep the various characters moving, not pile them all in Hawkins. . Too bad the trip to Russia is as solid as a mochi – with not one, but two comical shoulders – and, with all love for Jim Hopper, ultimately devoid of any real use. “Let’s defeat the particles to help the kids” is the new “I comment on my son’s posts on FB to make him look good”.
COWABUNGA
It goes slightly better on Jonathan’s team – despite he’s charismatic as a pot of geraniums, with that beaten dog expression – because their comedic shoulder is a freaked pizza chef, and why Will finally has a role other than just crying. , but rather it is the protagonist of a rather touching scene. The adventures seasoned with nosebleeds of Eleven / Eleven / Jane instead pull her for very long, continuing to rotate for, well, hours around the same flashbacks and the same concepts. I swear, when we got to the clash with the shielded soldiers and very slow in coming back I could not really take it anymore, and when the girl reunited with her rescuers with the Ninja Turtle van I breathed a sigh of relief so decided it made me tremble the TV screen.
The best part, not only of these two episodes but of the whole Stranger Things season 4 , therefore remains for me the one that follows the gang of Steve, Robin, Nancy and the others. For their mission impossible in the land of bats, complete with an extra fist fight with armed bullies: they are the heroes of any slasher of the last fifty years, who at some point however take the initiative, and instead of falling like flies, they pass to counterattack. Arm yourself fully – good morning, America – with a camper van stolen from two poor fellows and the white Captain Kirk mask, which could be handy again on Halloween. If they all get there alive, sure.
OF WHICH PROFESSOR RICCARDELLI OWNED A VERY RARE PERSONAL COPY
We have already said in abundance of the real reasons for the division into two blocks of this season: beyond the official ones, Netflix is experimenting with the formulas used by other platforms, to prevent its flagship series from arriving in bulk and slipping away. from social media in two days of furious binge watching. What is not clear, however, is not so much because in the second block, this volume 2 of season 4 of Stranger Things, there are only two episodes, but why these have not become at least three. What is the point of making two final episodes that in total last almost four hours, when the ninth could very well be broken in two to bring the total of the episodes to ten? There was also a perfect point in my view to do it, the moment when Eleven challenges Vecna.
The only explanation that comes to mind, for a single episode long two and a half hours, is that he wanted to give, as well as a little too much space to Eleven, the dignity of a film almost to this season finale. Except, if that’s the case, that’s not how it works: a film isn’t a TV series (and vice versa), for just those 3,000 different reasons. And considering this episode 9 to itself we wouldn’t do him much favor either, given that entire threads of his narrative warp have a tacky color and are a bit frayed.
Instead, taking everything as a whole as it is right to do, and that is to sum up a single season made up of seven convincing episodes and a decent ending, although perhaps unnecessarily too long, I confirm the impression of volume 1. It was on the whole a fun season, definitely with more strengths than defects. And maybe that won’t prompt me to order a doormat with the Stranger Things logo on the Internet , okay, but it was time well spent, come on. These days, and with all the elongated smoothies with too much water lying around, you said nothing.