Spoilers Stranger Things - Season 4

Someone in Indiana really loves Eddie Munson:

 

Re-watching a little of the show the other day, and it just really hit me how underappreciate it seems to be that both Eddie and his uncle are played vastly against stereotype. Especially the Uncle.
here you have a drug dealing metal head living in a trailer park with his uncle, who has a decidedly rural accent and demeanour that would usually scream "backwards closedminded conservative" type with a drinking problem and a pick-up truck being his defining characteristics. You see that kind of paring on a lesser show and you can pretty much write how that dynamic would usually play out: fraught, if not actually abusive.
Instead, even though I don't think we ever see the two in a single scene together, you get a very clear impression that Eddie's Uncle deeply cares for and respects the kid. He knows he's struggling in places, and he seems to be doing his best, and doesn't give two shits about what anyone else thinks of either him or his nephew.
While Eddie as it turns out is a sensitive, shy kid who rather than lashing out or inflicting his misery onto others, instead crafts a safe space to actively take care of other kids who may also fall through the cracks and be lost. Contrast that with the "popular athlete and model student" character who's first and only reaction to trauma is to form a lynch mob and punish someone to make himself feel better.
I don't know, I guess I just thought all of that was worthy of praise.

I also bring this up because parents and guardians are a recurring theme on this show, good ones, bad ones, terrible one, and indifferent ones (looking at you Mike & Nancy's Dad who's name I still can't remember after half a decade!)

Still? That rather presupposes there was any there to begin with, no? I'm reasonably sure the intent with Henry is that he's a born psychopath. Calculating, sadistic, and murderous from childhood. No indication of trauma or abuse from what we saw. Started experimenting with wild animals and local pets. All seems fairly text book.
Indeed, it seems to me that the whole point of Henry is that he's the anti-Eleven. Her polar opposite. His heart is as black as hers' is pure, which when you really look at it has been El's real super power all along. Lots of characters on this show can kill people with their brain, what seems to make El different from all the others is innate sense of right and wrong, along with a selfless streak a mile wide.

Not guilty. Though I may have been staring unblinking into the mirror for more consecutive hours than usual of late . . .

 

This is a really great observation. I work with people like this every day, and most people dealing with economic hardship in their lives are basically just trying to do what's best for their family and get by. The whole story of Eddie and his uncle right down to the uncle believing Dustin's story in the last episode was incredibly well done.

 

That's an excellent analysis, one that I had only thought about on the surface level. I certainly noticed how Eddie's uncle was more openly sensitive regarding Eddie and how he was being treated by the public in contrary to how he knew Eddie. That especially stands out when Duncan breaks the news to him.

I only remember his name because I always yell at him whenever he's being so...Ted. "Damnit, Ted! Knock it off!"

I agree with you for the most part but it was something that came in the discussion with the Duffer Brothers, so I assume that's something they intend to explore in the final season. I think there is enough wiggle room there to discover some nuance, particularly regarding his upbringing.

 

I suppose the handling of Eddie and his uncle counterbalances the over-the-top jock character.

 

Mike and Nancy's Dad cracks me up every time I see him. The guy is just so disconnected and oblivious, and... boring, he's like a personality black hole. This is a guy just 'going through the motions' of existence. It's hard to imagine a babe like Cara Buono going for a guy like that, and her home life outside of her kids must be a living hell, until Billy comes along and gives her (and the other bored housewives) the tingles.

 

From the context, I think they're just talking about how season 5 will get more into his history, both at the lab and in the Upside-down. I didn't get the sense that there's going to be any serious humanising of him.

Seemed fairly true to life to me. The superficially successful ones are always the most entitled and unstable. His whole thing was entirely ego and insecurity driven. Also, this is the same show that had a single mother from Indiana smuggling herself into a KGB black site with a peatnut butter smuggler and a fringe conspiracy PI. So; perspective!

Somewhere, someone is writing a pitch for a spin-off that's basically just a teen drama featuring all the adults from Stranger Things when they were in school. In my head canon, Ted was the school sports star who blew his knee out or something and then just accepted quiet mediocrity.

 

No. Just no.

 

I keep hoping that Ted is going to have some sort of breakout, badass, heroic moment. But those hopes are fading rapidly. To give him that would be to betray his destiny of Ultimate Mediocrity.

 

He--and other parents might end up in that stiff-and-not-breathing position in the final season, since none of the main players' parents are leaving Hawkins just as the Vecna / Upside Down threat was (at the close of season 4) beginning to no longer be a secret from the general population. Unlike the situation with Hopper (where everyone knew he was not killed off), if one of the other parents died in the coming fight, it would--at least--give some weight to the idea that all things are coming to an end / major transition for the "kids".

 

Oh I know. But it would be naïve to think that conversation, or one very much like it isn't going on somewhere at Netflix.

 

A reasonable prediction...but no one will care if Ted dies.

If it's any parent, it'll be Joyce. Maybe Karen but she's had so little to do in the last couple of seasons that it would lack the impact it should have. Unless she sacrifices herself for the sake of Mike and/or Nancy.

 

Ted is very specifically there to be the classic "clueless 80s movie dad," featured in everything from "Risky Business" to "Ferris Bueller."

 

Jason could be a lot worse. Much of his terrible behavior proceeds from legitimate feelings of concern/affection towards Chrissy, a real life national hysteria about things like D&D and ignorance of the town's supernatural menace.

 

Randomly decided to rewatch the first season over the last few days and I have to say, you can really tell this is a show that was reasonably well plotted out from the jump. Everything makes sense with what we saw even as late as season 4, a few things even land a little differently knowing what's coming. It all holds up great and I even got a little emotional when they pulled "Will's body" out of the quarry, which is wild considering I knew full well it's a dummy and Will's still alive. That's some impressive work all round; storytelling, direction, and acting.

Also there are WAY more allusions to Will's sexuality than I remembered (starting with the very first episode, no less), which considering he's barely in the first season probably means that really was baked into his character from the start.

 

Yeah, I've read a bunch of interviews with Noah Schnapp recently about Will's sexuality and several times it came up either by the interviewer or by Noah himself that there had been references early on, even in the first episode.

I did a rewatch of the whole show leading up to season four and I picked up on a lot of stuff I had missed before, but I am now curious about how it all feels now knowing more about the back history of the Upside Down and Vecna.

I mentioned a few pages ago about the Mind Flayer's line through Billy to El about how they built all of this for her, a line that I found curious at the time but now makes so much more sense now. Like Brenner's obsession with the Upside Down in season one instead of directly chasing after El.

 

I think what landed most differently for me was the flashback scenes, especially the one where Brenner is trying to make El hurt a cat, and she can't do it. He's trying to get her back to Henry's level by making her start where he did; small animals. Also, his reaction after she'd smashed one orderly into a wall and broken the neck of the other; that's him being proud that she made the breakthrough he wanted. It lands especially hard now that we've seen the little head gesture when she snaps a neck is something she learned from One. A part of her memory came to the surface for a moment there, if only unconsciously.

Also shows the larger significance of El not being able to hurt a defenceless animal, but more than willing and able to tackle bullies with force, it re-emphasises how she's One's opposite. Where he was innately malicious despite his seemingly idyllic upbringing, she is innately compassionate despite her deeply abusive upbringing.

 

Speaking of Vecna, here's a featurette about the incredible prosthetics:


Poor Millie Bobby Brown was genuinely terrified of Jamie's full body prosthetics and performance!

 

I've been thinking maybe Steve's dream of having a bus full of kids to drive around may not be a dream at all... but a premonition. Perhaps he shuttles the (surviving) kids out of Hawkins after all the parents are killed by Vecna

 

Now that would be a very somber, unforgettable ending for the series, capping off with Steve driving a bunch of orphaned teens toward parts unknown. Still, no one should ever believe the Duffers would be so bold as to end Stranger Things in that way, instead choosing yet another light 80's movie or TV production as their influence.