Stranger Things’ final season is here – and it’s much darker than you imagined

3 months ago 18

Stranger Things (season five, episodes 1-4) ★★★★

After more than 9½ years, we are finally in the home stretch of Stranger Things, a show that was as zeitgeisty in its prime as anything so self-consciously not-of-its-time can be.

It was, and is, the epitome of what LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy called “borrowed nostalgia for the unremembered ’80s”. Steeped in references to video nasties, synth music, John Hughes movies and, above all, the dark imagination of Stephen King, it remains a masterful interplay of light and dark, funny and tense, playful and deeply serious.

Gaten Matarazzo as Dustin Henderson, Finn Wolfhard as Mike Wheeler, Caleb McLaughlin as Lucas Sinclair, and Noah Schnapp as Will Byers.

Yes, there’s a massive suspension of disbelief required to get past the fact our teenage heroes are now played by adults – at least one of whom is now a parent – but look past the disconcerting five o’clock shadow on the face of Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin), and block your ears to the undeniably adult voice and world-weary demeanour of Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo), and it’s still a hell of a ride.

I’ve seen the first four episodes, which drop this week (the next three arrive on Boxing Day, the movie-length finale on New Year’s Day), and the horror has been dialled up a notch, even compared with season four’s darker tone. We don’t just get a Demogorgon now, we get a horde of them. And when they attack, those talons don’t just rip at flesh, they pierce it.

The Upside Down isn’t just a dark realm beneath Hawkins any more; it’s right there in the centre of town, with a portal that can be opened almost at will by the occupying military forces, with a mere blast of flame. They can even drive their trucks around in there.

Winona Ryder as Joyce Byers in season five of Stranger Things.

The military, now under the leadership of Dr Kay (Terminator’s Linda Hamilton, another overt nod to the 1980s), is obsessed with finding Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown, who has been in hiding for the 18 months [narrative time]) that have elapsed since the end of season four.

She’s been in training in the woods with Hop (David Harbour), finessing her powers so successfully she’s now able to leap a not-very-tall building in a single bound. She hasn’t yet mastered invisibility, though, so she has to move around by night and via a network of subterranean tunnels.

Eleven and the gang are still on the trail of Vecna. Steve (Joe Keery) wonders if he might be actually dead, but Nancy (Natalia Dyer) can’t shake the vision she had of her family in peril. So the search goes on.

Getting wind of a military trip to the Upside Down, Hop hops on the back of a truck. Before long, he’s stuck in there (who could have seen that coming). So after an attack on the Dyer house that sees Holly (Nell Fisher), the younger sister of Nancy and Mike (Finn Wolfhard), abducted by a Demogorgon, El heads in there, too. Later, the gang drive a car through a fissure and join them. Wisdom may be in short supply here, but bravery is not.

Now that crossing over into the Upside Down seems as tricky as taking an elevator robs it of some of its power, in narrative terms. But thematically, what’s going on there – and the inevitable return of Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower) – is far darker than anything we’ve seen before.

From that opening flashback scene of young Will being orally raped by one of Vecna’s tentacles, to the villain’s explanation of why he takes children, there’s no escaping that the show has morphed into an allegory about child exploitation and sexual abuse.

It’s the logical fulfilment of its Stephen King-inspired destiny, perhaps, but it’s made Stranger Things a much darker thing than anyone could have predicted when it all began.

The first four episodes of Stranger Things (season five) stream on Netflix on November 27.

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