Spoilers Stranger Things - Season 4

Thanks for typing up my thoughts, saved me the effort

I disagree on Eddie though - his death was gut wrenching, made even worse by Dustin talking to his uncle about his death. I liked Eddie's story arc. It was not about a functional purpose but a personal choice and final development for him to discover he has worth and had courage, even if being told he's worthless all of his life. He went out a hero for himself, even if logically speaking his death did very little for the overall mission.

Also, second best music number in the entire season. Him shredding Master of Puppets on the roof was just insanely cool and i banged along!

Overall i didn't like this season finale as much as the others, for me the season 2 finale is still the best and most intense. This one went way too long and during the first hour or so i actually got bored by all the personal moments designed for us to care about the characters. If by the end of season 4 you don't care about each one of them then how did you make it thus far into the show?
I don't know if it's intentional or not but the trope is that whenever a character gets an emotional moment they're destined to die - i don't know if the Duffer's played on this to keep us guessing and in suspense but it sure felt like it. There were fewer deaths than i suspected, i thought at least one of the original season 1 crew would buy it but apparently not.

They even made a bait and switch with Max by using El as a Mary Sue, i don't think i like it that much because Max will return in season 5 ( if you want her dead you kill her, not leave her in limbo).

However i liked the final minute - the Upside Down is invading "our" reality, there's no hiding this and i wonder how our small intrepid group will deal with this now that governments will become involved and it gets all public ( at least a version of it).

 

Wow, I had no idea that was him.
I really enjoyed both episodes.
Eddie was quickly becoming one of my favorite characters, so I was really hoping he'd make it. But he did get to go out with a great heroic moment.
I'd been wondering all season what exactly the relationship was between the Mind Flayer and One all season, so it was nice to get that all laid out for us. I had expected One to have been behind everything that's been going on so that wasn't a big surprise.
The fact that Brenner did everything just to find him was a surprise though.
For a while there, I really wasn't sure who was going to make when we had everyone in some kind of life or death situation. I have to admit, I actually knowing going in that someone wasn't going to make it, kind of almost made a little more thrilling, as I was trying to figure who wasn't going to make it out of the situation they were in.
So we pretty much got confirmation that Will is in love with Mike, he didn't come out and say it, but everything he did say and do made it pretty clear. I also like how they had Jonathan say he knew and was OK with it, without actually saying he knew and was OK with it.
That last scene was pretty nuts. Next season should be very very interesting.

 

Argyle invented Hawaiian Pizza. He's the true monster.

 

After the big buildup that there was going to be a big bodycount among beloved characters, the deaths were no more than I would have expected based on the first three seasons. Anyone we were emotionally attached to before this season either survived or had an unclear but reversible fate.

 

The jock's death was unsatisfying. I didn't want him to get off that easy: I'd prefer he learned how wrong he was.

 

OK, while I may have been technically correct, if anything I rather underestimated Will. He wasn't just fixated on an infatuation with Mike and how it makes him feel, he was appreciating Mike's value to the whole party. Should have seen that coming since it was the break-up of the party (and a mourning for childhood's end) that was the source for Will's anxiety last season (aka: 8 months ago.) There's clearly a part of Will that still wants to retreat into that innocent happy place (he basically says as much) though I'm not sure how much of that has to do with hiding from trauma, and how much of it is just his fear of growing up and what that means for his sexuality. Either way that kid is in for a rough decade.

And this is why I don't pay attention to marketing or fan buzz when I know I'm going to watch the thing anyway. Best to go in with fresh eyes and experience the story on it's own merits.

Getting everything between his pelvis and ribcage dissolved by an interdimensional portal to a living hellscape is "getting off easy" since when exactly? What, did he need to be set on fire too or something?

 

Unexpectedly, Eddie and Dustin ended up being the couple that I felt most moved by their connection.

I wonder if they changed course mid-ship with Max or not. It reminded me of Hopper where it felt like they were running down a path and chickened out at the last minute and reversed course.

 

I just took it as an ESB nod. Everyone got their arses kicked, the bad guys got almost everything they wanted, and Max is essentially frozen in carbonite. If that tracks then that means next season will open with the Jabba's Palace heist.

 

No, as I said in my post I wanted more of an emotional comeuppance than a random gory death.

 

We got that. It was Lucas's whole "I shouldn't have knocked" speech. That's about all the attention this character rated; he wasn't worth diverting time away from anyone else's story in an already very dense episode. Because again, that story thread wasn't about "bully who gets his comeuppance" it was about Lucas's growth as a person, not just standing up to the dipshit, but accepting himself and embracing his own agency.

 

That was very good, had to watch both ASAP as I wasn't sure when I'd get to see them otherwise, even so had to split the last episode, an hour last night and the rest this morning.

Still felt too much like a chore, way too long and still feels like there are way too many characters and, not that I wanted anyone to die but, only killing the new guy was a cheap trick, but it was still very enjoyable, especially all the elements of the big battle.

Given this was made for a streaming service I don't know why they didn't make 13 regular sized episodes rather than nine overlong ones? You'd think Netflix would have wanted that?

I don't get where the evil army went to though? The pizza van had literally a few minutes head start on the army and isn't exactly incognito, plus now Hawkins has gone to Hell I'm amazed they weren't rounding up anyone with a connection to Eleven?

Can't see Max spending season 5 in a coma.

Anyhoo it's good but hopefully they'll keep more of the party together next season and keep a lid on the movie length episodes. It won't surprise me if there are a few characters we don't see again (Murray for example)

 

That kind of story is always telegraphed for it to lack much meaning; there ws no way so much attemtion would be paid to the "loser"/"outsider"--with a direct connection to the main characters--and have him die in that "loser"/"outsider" state. That, and Steve's warning was just confirmation that Eddie would be the one to be a hero, when the situation really did not call for it.

Yes--the showrunners worked the multiple character moments with greater emotional satisfaction in season two. At this point, only a handful of characters are a draw for me.

Though I doubt the Duffers would go in the following direction, they--ever influenced by King stories--would pull a Cycle of the Werewolf and have Max now confined to a wheelchair (like Marty from the King novella). That would show that there were real consequences for the "kids" as opposed to the random supporting character of the season.

Pretty much, but with the Duffers' promise of deaths not meaning much where the main characters are concerned, some fans will expect, or perhaps demand that the Duffers grow a backbone and kill at least one of the main characters in the final season.

I'm not sure, but would the Duffers know how to write the long term effects of death of a teenager on other teens (especially if they are close as the core group is supposed to be)--or anyone?

 

My Max theory:

Eleven can't reach her, not because of the coma, but because of the reason she's in the coma. That is, there's NOTHING to reach. If her death still triggered the portal, then it stands to reason that everything Max was has still been consumed by Vecna/One/Henry. Meaning there is no mind left to inhabit the body that Eleven kept alive with her powers.

However, this sets up an obvious heist plot for next season. Because if everything Max was is now a part of Vecna, but her body still lives, then there is hope to reunite the two. I'm expecting we'll get a season of One using Max's memory/relationships to torment the party until Eleven is able to rip her back out of him and put her back where she belongs.

 

I won't call the final 4 hours underwhelming, because it was actually pretty darned good, & enjoyable, but it did fall short of the hype, so much so as to disservice the show imho. I should & mostly did know better. I'd already gotten a strong feeling this season's story was Brenner's swan song, & Eddie's fate was telegraphed pretty obviously, just in that he'd only been a season 4 character. That's kind of their M.O. (ala Billy) I'd say it played very well though, & landed as possibly the emotional high point of the episode, mainly due to how wonderful Gaten Matarazzo is on this show. He is maybe the underdog low-key heart of the whole show imho

Dangling the notion of killing off anybody from the regular cast undercuts the show's impact imho. I honestly don't think that's the show this ever was. In a nutshell, Hopper fights a Demogorgon. Lucas fights the witch hunter. Nancy/Steve et al. go in on a plan to fight Vecna, & El "arrives" for a penultimate faceoff with Henry, with Max hanging in the balance. All of this is good stuff imho, & frankly the stakes are high enough for this show, as it's been. No need to infuse false hype imho.

I do hope for something more powerful for the grand finale, but this isn't meant to be that. It's the setup for the final stretch, & having Max be the one in the line of fire is a good choice for that effort. It's so assured that she'll be won back, it's not even as cliffy of a cliffhanger as last season was imho.

Things I hope for the last season: I really hope Will returns as an integral aspect to this plot. We need full circle on him. He & Joyce were the most spellbinding aspect of the 1st season & that should be reflected. I do hope the Wheeler family stops being so damn clueless now. All the families of the core group need to be as invested as the Byers, at this point imho.

I also think this season's hype came from a very real place, that in the very end, either Steve or Jonathan might still be sacrificed (It logically makes more sense for it to be Steve... A lot of that dream motor home talk really sets that stage) I hope we DON'T introduce many new focal characters in the last season. There's enough for them to sew up as is.

All in all, it's keeping me wanting to watch, & what more can you ask?

 

Eleven smashed the helicopter straight onto their jeeps (they only brought 3 or 4 iirc) so they were probably stranded in the desert for a while. Although I still can't explain why the general wouldn't have been on the radio sending other troops out to look for a Surfer Boy Pizza van with a bunch of kids in it the second he realized what happened. It's a bit of a stretch to think they made it 2000 miles in a vehicle that conspicuous without being rediscovered again.

 

It was a pretty ugly death, nevertheless. Burned in two by the gate fissure!

 

Ell blew up their vehicles when she brought down the helicopter, so they were temporarily stranded. Then, the surfer pizza van wound up at a surfer pizza franchise, perhaps the most effective camoflauge available- I think they just got ahead of the evil army for the rest of S4, effectively. The need to hide Ell again at the end signals that the danger still exists, and the party knows it.

I hope they didn't just leave Paul Reiser's character chained up underground to slowly perish of thirst!

Max will be back- it'll probably be the focus of the earlier part of S5, would be my guess. Although Xerxes82 had a pretty good idea on that as well.

 

Army dude may be stupid, but he ain't crazy. He kept that guy around. Doc Owens will be back

 

I wish that I didn't think somebody was going to die at the end of the season. I figured if Eddie died then somebody else had to as well. I think I read that rumour here, but was there anywhere the Duffers actually said a main character would die? Overall though, it was a satisfying conclusion to the season, with a number of character threads open for the final season. I am still hoping to see Winona Rider in Beetlejuice before the series end.

Did anyone else think it funny that Eddie held up a cassette with a picture of Eddie on the cover when he said "this is real music"? As for the song choice, while Master of Puppets was a cool song to play, the album was apparently released on March 3, 1986--so Eddie learned to play it pretty damned quickly. I would have liked to have heard at least some of whatever his rendition sounded like--there is no way he is good enough to play those solos.

I had been hoping to hear some Husker Du this season, as they would have been a band that Jonathan liked and Candy Apple Grey was released in 1986--but as always, ST had a killer soundtrack this year with a lot of great music beyond just Kate Bush.

 

Anyone find that Dustin in his battle gear looked like an ewok?