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By: Alison Gillmor Posted: 2:01 AM CDT Saturday, May. 28, 2022
After a long pandemic pause, Stranger Things has returned with a fourth season that’s strange, for sure, but mostly familiar.
After a long pandemic pause, Stranger Things has returned with a fourth season that’s strange, for sure, but mostly familiar.
Three years after its third season — and six years after this fantasy-horror series made its buzzy debut — much is unchanged.
“Looks like it’s going to be up to us again,” a character sighs at one point, suggesting there’s a same-old, same-old vibe to a gang of Midwestern teens saving the world from all-devouring trans-dimensional monsters. Again.
Always a nostalgic series, Stranger Things is now nostalgic for itself.
Once again, creators Matt and Ross Duffer approach their 1980s setting with an enthusiasm that tilts toward glorious obsession. Season 4 takes place in 1986, so expect payphones, Sony Walkmans, video stores, big hair, blue eyeshadow and unironic prep style.
The Duffer Brothers tend to be better with fetishized objects than they are with social commentary, but this time out we get a little Cold War paranoia and a whole lot of Reagan-era “satanic panic,” with parents and authorities convinced that heavy metal and Dungeons & Dragons are leading America’s adolescents to commit ritual sacrifice.
The Duffers have also amped up the homage machine. There’s that familiar John-Hughes-meets-John-Carpenter feel, with ST4 combining teen comedy tropes with increasingly gory horror. For pop-culture spotters, there are specific call-outs to The Silence of the Lambs, Carrie, WarGames and Fast Times at Ridgemont High. A Nightmare on Elm Street is referenced not just in a crucial storyline but with a clever casting choice.
Three years after its third season — and six years after this fantasy-horror series made its buzzy debut — much is unchanged. (Netflix/TNS)
Where ST4’s familiarity really works is with the easygoing charm of the young(ish) cast, who we’ve been watching grow up since 2016.
Back in Indiana, Dustin (Gaten Mattarazzo), Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin), Nancy (Natalia Dyer), Steve (Joe Kerry), Robin (Maya Hawke) and Max (Sadie Sink) have been joined by Eddie (Joseph Quinn), a metalhead and minor weed dealer who looks to be Season 4’s breakout star. This bunch ends up Scooby-Doo-ing around town trying to solve a series of supernatural killings.
Meanwhile, down in California, where the Byers family has relocated and Mike (Finn Wolfhard) has come for a spring break visit, El (Millie Bobby Brown) is finding that the terror of bone-crunching Demogorgons has been replaced with the no less traumatizing threat of high school mean girls.
Finally, the show has been teasing the notion that Hopper (David Harbour) is still alive, and sure enough, he’s in a Soviet prison camp, prompting a rescue mission — and an up-and-down comedy double-act — by Joyce (Winona Ryder) and Murray (Brett Gelman), everybody’s favourite conspiracy theorist.
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Fans of Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones will recognize that ST4 has hit that awkward plotting stage where characters break up into groups and wander off in all directions. Unfortunately, by some immutable law, one of these narratives is always a dreary slog, and here the Hopper-gulag subplot is a recurring bringdown.
So, what’s new with the mostly reliable riffs of this unabashed nostalgia fest?
First off, the unsettling cold open will make you sit right up and rethink what you thought you knew about El’s powers. There are some ambitious set-pieces, some smart horror effects, and some deepening of our adolescent characters. Though the initial episodes often feel overlong and unduly repetitive, when Season 4 finally gains traction, it really connects. Episode 7, which clocks in at a whopping 98 minutes, brings us back to some of the saga’s central questions, including the possible origins of the Upside Down and the truth behind Hawkins’ seeming curse. There’s even some much-needed closure for Barb fans.
As Season 4 drops, the Duffers are nostalgic, the fans are nostalgic, and Netflix is probably nostalgic, too, dreaming wistfully about the old days, when they were the only streaming service around. Losing subscribers and bleeding money in 2022, Netflix is doing what it has always done, giving money and a whole lot of runtime to creators and seeing what sticks.
In 2016, this strategy helped Stranger Things’ first season catch the pop-culture consciousness. In 2022, even with a big budget, a bigger cast and some crazy-long episodes, that may no longer be enough.
alison.gillmor@freepress.mb.ca
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Studying at the University of Winnipeg and later Toronto’s York University, Alison Gillmor planned to become an art historian. She ended up catching the journalism bug when she started as visual arts reviewer at the Winnipeg Free Press in 1992.
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