1. The Eternal Return of the Same
Dhe basic principle of the Netflix series “Stranger Things” has remained the same since the release of the first season in 2016. A circle of friends from the fictional small town of Hawkins fights against a devilish creature that exists in a parallel dimension and tries to absorb or destroy the town’s inhabitants. However, the eerie alternate world takes on a different shape with each season: what was the Demogorgon – a kind of carnivorous plant on two legs – in the first season became a whole pack of hellhounds in the second season and a “mind flayer” in the third. , which works more like a zombie.
In the fourth season, the demon is again a comparatively classic monster called Vecna, which also comes from a Dungeons & Dragons game again. The authors could not have demonstrated their lack of imagination more clearly. It’s always old wine in new bottles. And it’s better not to ask about the logical connection between the different types of monsters. They are somehow all denizens of the “other side” who strangely don’t get in each other’s way: there’s room in hell for everyone.
2. Desperate for super powers
So the fight against the various monster types is a little different every time, but also similar enough to put the heroes in the limelight. First and foremost, Eleven, who is gifted with supernatural powers herself. The problem: she has discovered, used and lost her powers so often that she apparently no longer knows whether she is a superhero or a normal teenager. In season four, she becomes a violent victim of bullying at her new school. But because her powers are no longer effective, she simply has to smack her main enemy in the head with a roller skate – that’s not heroic at all, but criminal.
Luckily she doesn’t have to go to jail because influential people want to use her in the final battle against evil. So she has to train her superpowers with complicated psychological tricks for a very, very long time. You’ve seen it all in a similar way before. The magic of the show is gone, and no amount of trauma therapy can bring it back.
3. Why the heck California?
Which leads to the question of why the small town of Hawkins has put a California spin-off at all at such a great expense? At the very least, one would have wished that the Golden Gate Bridge would be reduced to rubble or that LA would show its “other side” (with a little more violence than this world already had in the 1980s). But no, you see high school kids in flashy clothes at the roller skate disco again.
You can’t shake the suspicion that the two Duffer brothers, who provided the ideas, simply didn’t know what to do with all their characters: because the circle of friends has grown from season to season; it’s getting pretty confusing, who had something with whom or who was once whose best friend. In the 4th season, the very funny hippie Argyle (played by Eduardo Franco) who smokes weed all the time is added as a real main prize.
Stranger Things – Staffel 4
In the fourth season of the hit series “Stranger Things” the friends are not together for the first time. Elfi has now moved to another city. But a creature plots revenge on the small Indiana town. Season start is May 27th.
4. The World’s Worst Subplots
Actually the subplots. So while a troupe around the Californian emigrants curves through different states with a pizza bus, the main hero horde remaining in Hawkins must first compete against the latest monster variant without supernatural support. There’s also a very lengthy storyline set in, well, Siberia, where former police chief Hopper is being held captive by the Soviets. Somehow the Demogorgon ended up here too, but the Gulag henchmen are at least as diabolical. The “other side” also exists in our world, one could conclude from this. But is that supposed to be a political message?
5. The Cold War is back
Until now, the cliched depictions of the Soviet Union, the “evil empire” (Ronald Reagan) could be regarded as another 1980s quote. After the geopolitical “turning point” (Olaf Scholz), this retro irony seems out of place and frivolous. Russians craving good American peanut butter and dreaming of blue jeans? Due to the corona, you had to wait a long time for the fourth season, unfortunately you have the impression: not long enough for the script to be able to be adapted to the current world situation. The whole story about Russia should have simply been deleted, it just seems weird and embarrassing today.
6. Violence is not a solution
Because the producers themselves have probably noticed that they are repeating themselves, they flee to the front: In this case, that means horror and blatant scenes of violence. The fourth season is by far the most brutal. It starts with the roller skate knockout and doesn’t end with the horribly mauled victims of Vecna. Numerous flashbacks invoke repressed trauma of all kinds, including that of Eleven, who is known to snap the necks of pesky adversaries with just a look. There are action film passages with a lot of banging, torture practices (on both the Soviet and American sides) are shown very realistically several times. The trashy, quotable quality can only rarely be made out. Or maybe the quoted scenes are just harder stuff.
7. Aging as a problem of series
Stranger Things’ biggest flaw is the aging of the actors. Especially the five friends from the first season are now several sizes too big for their roles. Season one was set in 1983 when Dustin, Mike, Will, Lucas were 12, Eleven was 13 (although most of the cast were a bit older, but it wasn’t very noticeable.) Season four is set in 1986, so the friends must be 15. But the actors are now young adults, Caleb McLaughlin (Lucas) is 20 today or Finn Wolfhard (Mike) 19. Their conflicts – about first love, boyhood friendship, wanting to belong in the cool clique – now seem completely silly.
With reservations, this also applies to Eleven, whose childishness and naivety you just can’t believe anymore. The characters who have aged the best are those who were introduced when they were already kissing and fumbling, such as Nancy Wheeler or her ex-boyfriend Steve, who has meanwhile mutated into a hopeless, tragi-comic womanizer. The lesbian friend Robin, who becomes one of the most important and funniest characters in the fourth season, is sensational. She is played by Maya Hawke, daughter of Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke.
8. Farewell to high school horror
“Stranger Things” has long since left the genre of the high school horror series, but doesn’t want to admit it. The main characters have long since grown up, with grown-up problems. The hard horror and the drugs are only symptoms of this inevitable change. So the fourth season itself seems as strangely fixated on the past as its characters, who all suffer from childhood trauma.
For commercial reasons, it was probably impossible to radically say goodbye to the recipe for success. If you had wanted to continue it convincingly, you would have had to introduce new, age-appropriate, pubescent characters. Characters and conflicts, dialogues and imagery often do not go together. Stranger Things has fallen victim to its fame. The world may once again be saved from absolute evil, this series is hopelessly lost. A fifth and final season has already been announced.
Stranger Things Season 4 premieres on Netflix May 27.