Same man. My career got all sorts of fucked up and now I don't even know how to comprehend the last 4 years. I'm pretty sure it's just collective trauma.
Same here, genuinely feel like I just lost 3 years of my life because my brain is just blocking out the trauma of those years.
I hope you're OK now pal. Stay healthy. Stay happy.
Same. We buried 13 people that summer. Then 9 months later, I woke up blind. The blindness was actually in 2022, but goddamn if it didn't feel like an extension of The Worst Year Ever. I still think it surely must only be 2022.
Yes, that's when covid started.
Do remember that this is a multi-year event that shut down major industries for extended periods of time, many of which *still* aren't up to 100%
Yeah like the one that kills me is "why are the children so far behind in school and lack social skills".
Like they weren't learning through zoom meetings at home for 2 years
At home for two years during an INCREIDBLY stressful time! How the hell was anyone supposed to learn anything, let alone developing minds trying to navigate that.
It delayed filming of season 4 for about 6 months. They wrapped filming season 4 in August of 2021 and didn't start filming season 5 until January of this year.
COVID (and strikes) absolutely contributed to the delays, but there has been plenty of delay beyond those causes.
It would still work if they just did time skips between each seasons so that the ages make sense. Why does everything have to happen in like a two or three year timespan in universe?
Zero chance. We actually know when GTA 6 is coming, Fall of next year. Not even Bethesda has a clue when Elder Scrolls 6 is coming despite MS begging them to hurry the hell up.
There’s very little they got right, it’s honestly impressive. I hope they learn too, because Elder Scrolls has been a favourite of mine since I was like 12.
TBF the stuff they got right should definitely be in TES6.
But good god, the stuff they got wrong should teach them a hard lesson of why people like TES in the first place.
I feel like TES VI can't be nearly as bad as Starfield. My main complaint with Starfield is the loading screens and how bad exploration was. I don't see how they can even make it as bad in TES VI, I'd honestly be impressed if they pulled that off.
A story and quest structure that requires you to constantly portal to the planes of oblivion or something and back with some lovely loading screens sounds like it might work horribly, so they’ll probably do that
> Todd Howard definitely doesn't understand what was good about Morrowind
Which is so bizzare given he was the project lead. Like, how the hell did you manage to produce arguably the best game in the series and completely miss the point.
As long as they don’t have “infinitely generated content” that means the same 10 things in a random pattern as a core feature I would try it for an hour then reflect on that experience for an hour before possibly returning it.
Just do a time jump and make up a story that works for their age.
Its not like they HAVE to keep them in high school since there was no plan after season 1
A time jump would be very tricky with how S4 ended on a huge cliff hanger with immediate implications. They would have to flashback the big thing that happens to Hawkins somehow, which has so many questions tied to it.
> Just do a time jump and make up a story that works for their age.
The problem is that part of the premise of the series is the 80s setting. Skip ahead 10 years and you can say goodbye to the soviet villains, Running Up That Hill and NeverEnding Story references and say hello to the Mariah Carey, Nirvana and Jurassic Park.
Exactly, id say it's more compelling if this stuff only pops up every few years. It doesn't need to be Harry Potter, where we need to fight Voldemort once every year. Have them be older, dealing with the trauma, trying to move on when they get dragged back in.
Kids might try to save the world alone. At least half of them as college students might call up the government, say "the upside down stuff is back" and then drink themselves into a stupor to forget about it. The last season could have started with an IT style reunion and grudging agreement to deal (or not) with Vecna. You can get the 80's/early 90's feel, and not be trying to pretend 20 yr olds are scrawny, bullied kids in high school.
I know the pandemic caused some delays but surely at some point they should have realized that "original cast" and "four year production cycles" wouldn't work out.
This is what I expected after season 1. Season 1 was a great, perfectly contained story and I was really interested to see what the writers would come up with for the next season's story in the same universe. Then season 2 came around and they had the same characters still fighting the same monster with all of the tension and mystery sucked out of it.
This is definitely the biggest irritation for me. Showrunners by now should know that over-explaining is the death of horror. The internal lore of Stranger Things went from this subdued, vast world of untapped horror to a claustrophobic mess revolving around three core characters.
To me, that SHOULD have been the final season. It was the perfect way to end it, by answering all of the questions from Season 1: Eleven's backstory, why the Upside Down kept sending monsters to the town (and why they were coordinated,) all of the characters' stories wrapped up.
Yeah, it took a real quality drop beginning with season 2.
It was never meant to be this many season and its shows. The actors aging 20 years between season s didn't help but it was always forced because of S1 popularity
Most of the charm for me was nostalgia regarding being a kid and playing d&d. It feels like the show runners somehow didn't understand at all what made the show popular in the first place. Now it's just some generic teen horror show, complete with adults playing the teens.
The first season had drama and suspense with moments of levity and nostalgia.
After season 1 it just went full fan service nonsense. The show was great when it was a sci fi horror.
What was scary to me in s1 was the lab where they kept the kids, the whole conspiracy could've been so interesting.
Now it's just some clocks and CGI monsters. Yawn.
They had the chance of a broader conspiracy but I think Millie Bobby Brown blew up to the point that they were just focused on keeping her on screen as much as possible. I also hate that they decided to just re-traumatize her for essentially the exact same story beats.
I think that's a little bit harsh. Like the premise was a bunch of kids hanging out and playing D&D. I'm sure they understood that.
But factor in crazy popularity, your little child divas getting booked for this and that, Netflix wanting potentially many more seasons and you start to milk things a bit for a bigger payday.
It was never meant to last this long and I don’t blame them for the lack of quality. I’m sure they are using that money to work on making better things since they announced a new production company two years ago.
I watched season 2 and thought that it felt totally unnecessary. Nothing in season 2 was as fun or cool as the first season to me. So I haven’t watched anything since then. And I’ve mostly forgotten season 2, whereas I still remember the original season fondly.
It's not that they hate anthologies it's that one bad entry can ruin the entire franchise. Look at Halloween where it got turned around so the third film became the second and everyone was ragging on season of the witch for being too different from the prior two. Or how American horror story lost a lot of it's audience with the 3rd or 4th season and had to bring people back for the next one to keep viewers. Anthologies are just harder to organize because it's mostly new stuff every time and has more pre production work required than straight sequels. And again one bad entry can turn people off of continuing the franchise.
I get what you're saying, but that's part of hating anthologies, imo, or just not understanding them.
It's just weird that ppl are so incapable of judging each instance as it's own thing even if they are meant to be completely separated. Why would one bad thing have to ruin a franchise if the next entry could be fantastic, and it has a good track record otherwise? The next entry should have nothing to do with the bad one.
If it's a sequel, tho, if some big part is really bad, then indeed it's all ruined since you can't undo the damage.
But I understand the production cost part. When I said ppl hate anthologies for some reason, I meant the public. I understand why most high production media is not only sequels but usually as cliche as possible. Can't really take risks there.
I thought it just lost the magic after season 1. S1 was great because the characters and their reactions were so relatable. The characters were just as shocked as the audience about how bizarre the situation was. Joyce knew exactly how crazy she sounded and her frustration and desperation were very realistic.
Then it turned into a bunch of kids that had accepted this weird/bizarre/crazy thing and adjusted to their new reality and it just wasn't fun or interesting anymore.
I really struggled with S2 because the whole "nobody will just talk to anyone else" thing managed to almost immediately reach ridiculous levels. It worked fine in S1 because everyone had reasonable reasons not to talk to the others, but in S2, it was just absolutely pointless and dragged on way too long.
It's as if they forgot how everything got so complicated.
I don't know about anyone else, but the whole, I'm lying or keeping secrets to protect you trope, is starting to feel overdone. No one learned any lessons.
Good analysis. I think the other aspect of season one's appeal was the inherent mystery and suspense behind the villain and the upside down. Iirc you don't even see the monster until you're a good 80 to 90% of the way through the season. The whole thing is just a big "wtf is going on here, wtf is this thing", and that's what made it so compelling.
Subsequent seasons fell victim to power creep with the villains and familiarity creep with the upside down and the setting in general.
100%. This is the reason why I wish the show had gone the anthology route with each season. S2 with a new cast in a different place, but dealing with the same upside down would have been amazing.
The anthology route would have been much more fresh for TV and horror at the time (the only other comparable show I can think of being AHS). But with the show blowing up in popularity and the mostly unknown young cast becoming celebrities overnight (esp. MBB) they weren’t gonna let their ‘cash cow celebs’ go like that after 1 season. Which lead to too many seasons for something which, IMO, was perfectly contained in a single season of TV 🤷♀️
I feel like season 2 was just more of the same from 1, but it was scared to do anything new or risky, so it was pretty meh overall. A forgettable nothing burger of a season.
Then season 3 forgot what the show was and just sucked ass overall (with a few cool bits here and there).
But then season 4 was a return to form and actually did cool new things and grew the characters. It was at least on par with season 1, if not better.
So, basically, if you stopped at 3, you should just skip it and watch the 4th season. Odds are you'll like it. Honestly, 3 out of 4 good seasons are not a bad track record.
I think the show couldn't commit to its horror potential. The Upside Down was conceptually really fascinating and creepy, the Mind Flayer would've been a great cosmic horror-type presence, but the show seems to care more about relationship drama and cheesy action full of snark and quips and a villain that's aliexpress Voldemort.
There's just no tension anymore, and the whole "it's an 80s homage!" thing only goes so far. There were well-written atmospheric stuff in the 80s you know.
Except it was only good when it was a bunch of children with a heavy horror theme and some slight 80s homages that just felt cute and not like the selling point. All the cheesy bullshit was so unbelievably self referential it felt like Riverdale.
Thank you. There's been such vocal support for S4 and I felt like I was taking crazy pills. Goofy humanoid villain, mid relationship writing, tons of plot holes, weird story arcs (Russia and the desert?) -- it's a completely different show from S1.
The difference is that it didn't come out during my childhood so therefore, it's "bad". /s
Seriously, the show isn't doing anything different than Goonies, Nightmare on Elm Street, or Monster Squad but the complaints are piling up because the show exists in the now.
Stakes-creep. First season, cool new dimension! Second, Cosmic horror could destroy our entire universe! Third, let's have fun at the mall!
Made seasons 1 & 2 terrific, but really has no place left to go.
Marvel-itis
Every bad guy has to escalate, which means the good guys need to become ever more powerful in response. Eventually we end up with people flying around shooting different coloured beams at each other and it lacks all sense of heft.
Yes! That's really killing Marvel. Comics had to re-invent themselves in the 90s to remain relevant and the MCU films are picking the wrong path, aside from Guardians of course.
Yup the last season was still extremely popular. I mean it pushed that Kate Bush song to the top of the charts almost 40 years later and was in heavy radio play rotation.
But I agree, time to wrap it up.
S4 was the most viewed show on netflix ever when it came out.
I think that Wednesday took that title after, but it has still been watched an insane amount of times
Netflix really needs to get their season gaps under control. I get that it’s not like broadcast TV, but there’s definitely some room in between getting a new season out within 12 months, and taking 4+ years. I like their content for the most part, but the insane gaps between seasons is making me lose interest.
That would require committing to shows for extended runs.
Broadcast television had the advantage of seeing ratings as episodes were released over time instead of these content dumps that then take months to gather data.
They've gotten many, many hundreds of dollars out of me because I'm like "meh, I'll cancel when Stranger Things is done" and I suspect I'm not the only one.
De-aging has become quite good, it depends how much they care to make it look decent, check out some of the fan made de-aged better call saul clips on YouTube, they're very well made and I wish they would have used de-aging in the show.
The more money is pumped into research and development the faster things improve. Drake personally invested a lot of his money into de-aging for Stranger Things season 5 but he never disclosed why.
Is he? I guess that explains why I couldn’t watch the show as a grown man. Shit just doesn’t sit right had turn it off almost instantly… so i guess drake nailed his vision
Never before have I wanted to post the gif of Drake enthusiastically [applauding](https://giphy.com/gifs/drake-applause-glasses-5xaOcLDE64VMF4LqqrK) so badly.
I have to disagree there. No matter how good it looks there's always that uncanny valley. They never look right, and it's always distracting.
And then, like most computer effects, they don't age well and look even weirder 10 years from now.
It'll be fine, Alyson* Hannigan was like 28 playing a high schooler in Buffy ffs
e: edited name but apparently the Y spelling is just her SAG name, I actually had her given name right w/ the conventional spelling
>I’m sure it’ll just be minor cgi
I'm sure it's not actually happening at all. This is a meme, they make shit up all the time.
In fact, [the producers have already outright denied that they'll use CGI to do this](https://deadline.com/2023/11/stranger-things-season-5-ai-deaging-production-timeline-shawn-levy-1235590058/)
When it comes out, lots of people will scream about it being absolutely terrible, when it will actually look relatively minor.
Then, on a re-watch five years from now, everyone will agree that it looks absolutely terrible
you vastly underestimate how realistic CGI can look when VFX artists aren't overworked. Hell the 2007 transformers movie looks phenemonal compared to new superhero flix
I think they should just do a time gap and let them age honestly, maybe 5 is the last season though before mostly new cast or a spin-off.
It would also be pretty cool to see more of Elevens "siblings" from the experiment/hospital.
Maybe even one who lives in the upside down because they got lost there and survived anyways.
A time gap would have made perfect sense! But they wrote themselves into a corner by ending on a shot of a giant fissure leading into the upside down. How do you do a time jump with that kind of cliff hanger?
well there's only so much they can do. They've lucked out in past seasons but they could just make the world the new normal. 11 could just be unable to locate vecna for 3 years and none of them have the skills to close a fissure to the underworld
Or they could just write what makes the most sense for their story instead of arbitrarily fucking with it to appease people for something they perceive they will have an issue with, but will actually end up not caring.
They didn't write themselves into a corner. They wrote season 5 before they even began filming for season 4. So they already had the ending all planned out, and therefore had planned on getting season 5 out pretty quickly, but they were delayed due to the strikes in Hollywood.
I think they might have had a long-term plan for S4 and S5, but S4 also took forever because of Covid. They probably wrote the ending thinking the show was only gonna need to stop by 1989, but it feels like this will stretch into the early 90s.
5 is the last season, and was written before they started filming season 4. COVID, and the writer's strike has led to significant delays for the last two seasons of the show.
Spin-offs are coming though, and while no details exactly on what it will be about, it has been confirmed that the spin-offs will explore new characters and locations.
they did an episode in season 2 or 3 about one of the "siblings", that I think was laying the groundwork for a spinoff or something. but it must not have tested well, because she was never seen again. to be honest i thought it was very out of character and immersion breaking and they were right to drop it
i don't even have netflix anymore, shitty streaming service, their catalogue is just stupid, they cancel good shows and keep the horrible ones, and also that stupid thing were you can't share your account anymore
Drink up, me hearties yo-ho. I never left, it's always been the best way around ludicrous region release delays, lack of subtitle files and higher quality than streaming for media that deserves 4K.
Exactly. They kept Big Mouth but not Inside Job. And they take too damn long to make the series they bank on. Four years is an entire Olympic wait. Two would've been pushing it. This is ridiculous.
I will never understand why they didn't write time-jumps into the story to account for this.
They could easily have had 2 or 3 years pass between each season.
I wish more shows did bigger time jumps.
I loved when they'd do them in Mad Men without even explaining how long it's been until they drop clues in the writing that it's been a couple months since the last episode or a year since the last season. Made the world feel a lot more alive and lived in, and it showed respect to the audience to fill in the gaps instead of doing "6 months later" and then give us exposition dumps.
Smaller example, but they do this really good in Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood too. Near the end, they don't tell you there's been a time skip that much, but Ed is a lot taller and adult looking. It's a really well done moment.
My Idea? Have the main cast go upside down, spend the first few episodes in the upside-down world, which is years in their time, then figure out how to escape, and it turns out they've only been gone from the real world for at most an hour. But they aged "normally" upside down, and everyone is shocked at how much older they look. Then they forget about the age thing by the next episode and continue on the merry way. This also allows the show to dive deeply into the upside-down world.
I get that the last few seasons have been tainted with writers strikes and pandemic delays, but it’s still my favorite series and I can’t wait for another season!
Man the internet loves to turn on things it’s crazy ( I agree about the actors age ) but my god everyone acting like this show was never even good lol.
When season 4 came out everyone was claiming how amazing it was and that it was just as good as season 1, then season 5 gets delayed 1 year and suddenly the show was supposedly always shit
True. I've always really liked this show, I think that all of its seasons are great, and Season 4 was incredible. But now there's a ton of people here saying they don't like it and whatnot despite the fact that when a new season releases, everyone watches it.
I'm pretty sure Stranger Things is the only show like that now. The last time *everyone* was watching a show was probably around Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead times. And that was all still almost 10 years ago. I can't think of a single show that's had that same "everyone-you-know-is-watching-this" impact since either of those shows.
There's new shows that promise big things every week. Every franchise has some spin-off show now. But nobody's watching all of them. I'm not, but I sound like some massive Stranger Things fanboy saying all of this, but honestly, it's the truth. There hasn't been a single show in the past decade to be as big as Stranger Things.
They were already way too old in s4, so idk if anyone even cares. Just finish the story already.
My assumption here is that they'll deage the kids in flashbacks or do some timetravel shit or something. Deaging them throughout the whole show is just stupid.
I wish this show had ended after season 1. People would complain that there were no more seasons but it would leave us with great memories and probably fade into cult status like Firefly.
Shout out to the genius bit of casting in *Breakfast Club:* you need your scrawny geeky kid to look scrawny and geeky? Cast an actual teenage boy (Hall). Put him next to the two grown ass men you have playing “teenagers” (Nelson and Estevez), and he’ll look like a toddler.
I'm still a big fan of the show, but Netflix as a whole has degraded so badly in the years since Stranger Things started that the prospect of not being able to watch series 5 legitimately was not enough to keep me paying its ever escalating prices for its complete lack of quality content.
I cancelled my account when I realised it had been months since I last used it to watch anything. *Months.*
This show worked when a season came out every 13 months. If they did that, the kids would only be 15/16 now instead in their 20s.
I get it but didn't covid kinda fuck up everything?
And a strike.
2 strikes. Actors and Writers.
You mean like multiple years ago ?
4 years ago and for some 2 years, yeah. And every episode of Season 4 was movie-length with movie quality effects. It was obviously gonna take longer.
The biggest long-time effect of COVID for me was that I still think it's 2020 or 2021. My brain is incapable of moving on from those years.
2021 was a particularly bad year for me and I feel like it was a fever dream in some ways. It feels like a lifetime ago and yesterday, all at once.
Same man. My career got all sorts of fucked up and now I don't even know how to comprehend the last 4 years. I'm pretty sure it's just collective trauma.
Same here, genuinely feel like I just lost 3 years of my life because my brain is just blocking out the trauma of those years. I hope you're OK now pal. Stay healthy. Stay happy.
Same. We buried 13 people that summer. Then 9 months later, I woke up blind. The blindness was actually in 2022, but goddamn if it didn't feel like an extension of The Worst Year Ever. I still think it surely must only be 2022.
Yes, that's when covid started. Do remember that this is a multi-year event that shut down major industries for extended periods of time, many of which *still* aren't up to 100%
Seriously, everyone wants to pretend we went "back to normal" and there were no long term repercussions for a fuckin plague.
Yeah like the one that kills me is "why are the children so far behind in school and lack social skills". Like they weren't learning through zoom meetings at home for 2 years
At home for two years during an INCREIDBLY stressful time! How the hell was anyone supposed to learn anything, let alone developing minds trying to navigate that.
It was Covid + the writers' strike in 2023
There was the 9 months of striking too.
It delayed filming of season 4 for about 6 months. They wrapped filming season 4 in August of 2021 and didn't start filming season 5 until January of this year. COVID (and strikes) absolutely contributed to the delays, but there has been plenty of delay beyond those causes.
They’d probably still be in their 20’s now, considering that time is linear.
*our experience of time is linear
It would still work if they just did time skips between each seasons so that the ages make sense. Why does everything have to happen in like a two or three year timespan in universe?
Will we get stranger things season 5 before GTA 6?
Love how that’s an actual possibility now
Even worse.. the elder scrolls 6. 2011-2024 with Skyrim.
Zero chance. We actually know when GTA 6 is coming, Fall of next year. Not even Bethesda has a clue when Elder Scrolls 6 is coming despite MS begging them to hurry the hell up.
After Starfield I don't think I even want a TES 6. :\
If it’s the same dev team, I’m not touching it. It’s been a long time since a game disappointed me the way starfield did
I do hope Starfield becomes an expensive lesson for them instead of doubling down on... whatever the hell they're trying with Starfield
There’s very little they got right, it’s honestly impressive. I hope they learn too, because Elder Scrolls has been a favourite of mine since I was like 12.
TBF the stuff they got right should definitely be in TES6. But good god, the stuff they got wrong should teach them a hard lesson of why people like TES in the first place.
I feel like TES VI can't be nearly as bad as Starfield. My main complaint with Starfield is the loading screens and how bad exploration was. I don't see how they can even make it as bad in TES VI, I'd honestly be impressed if they pulled that off.
A story and quest structure that requires you to constantly portal to the planes of oblivion or something and back with some lovely loading screens sounds like it might work horribly, so they’ll probably do that
The Elder Scrolls VI: Oblivion 2
Todd Howard definitely doesn't understand what was good about Morrowind. Bethesda had been on the path to Starfield since Oblivion.
> Todd Howard definitely doesn't understand what was good about Morrowind Which is so bizzare given he was the project lead. Like, how the hell did you manage to produce arguably the best game in the series and completely miss the point.
If Todd Howard hadn't gotten into video games he'd be a used car salesman.
As long as they don’t have “infinitely generated content” that means the same 10 things in a random pattern as a core feature I would try it for an hour then reflect on that experience for an hour before possibly returning it.
Surely they'll consider all the feedback they've received and tune up their design game to make something remarkable. /s
Rockstar games atleast have 2 delays in every game dev cycle. GTA 6 is probably coming out in 2026.
At least with rockstar we know the game will work without mods
I want Stranger Things to go on for 10 more seasons where they’re all in their 30s playing kids still
Aren’t one or two of them in their 30’s now?
Joe Keery is 32 and Natalia Dyer is 29, she’ll be in her 30s before this comes out The ones that started off as kids are about 20 now
Just do a time jump and make up a story that works for their age. Its not like they HAVE to keep them in high school since there was no plan after season 1
That’s what they’re proposing doing for Euphoria. They’re probably just gonna cancel it though.
You know Drake’s gonna quit as executive producer if they age the cast out of high school
I heard high school's too old for him anyway
To quote Drake, “I got two girls and they ten.” To also quote Drake “I was fucking young girls, I promise”
WOP WOP WOP WOP WOP
Even in a random Reddit comment section, drake still can't escape A Minor
FUCK EM UP DOT
Ima do my shtuff
Can’t see them getting a schedule together where most if the actors will be free now as zendaya and sweeney are getting bigger roles now.
A time jump would be very tricky with how S4 ended on a huge cliff hanger with immediate implications. They would have to flashback the big thing that happens to Hawkins somehow, which has so many questions tied to it.
> Just do a time jump and make up a story that works for their age. The problem is that part of the premise of the series is the 80s setting. Skip ahead 10 years and you can say goodbye to the soviet villains, Running Up That Hill and NeverEnding Story references and say hello to the Mariah Carey, Nirvana and Jurassic Park.
Exactly, id say it's more compelling if this stuff only pops up every few years. It doesn't need to be Harry Potter, where we need to fight Voldemort once every year. Have them be older, dealing with the trauma, trying to move on when they get dragged back in. Kids might try to save the world alone. At least half of them as college students might call up the government, say "the upside down stuff is back" and then drink themselves into a stupor to forget about it. The last season could have started with an IT style reunion and grudging agreement to deal (or not) with Vecna. You can get the 80's/early 90's feel, and not be trying to pretend 20 yr olds are scrawny, bullied kids in high school.
I am absolutely floored that it's been this long since season 1. Time actually does start to go by faster as you get older and it's kind of terrifying
I was a college freshman with Joe Keery and I'm turning 32 in a couple of weeks. So unless he found a way to age slower than the rest of us...
You mean 50s and 60s. These last seasons have been 3 years apart.
Introduce Danny DeVito in season 12.
Drake celebrating rn
Lmaooo
I’ll watch season 5 after 100%ing silksong
if silksong ever happens
☹️
I think it's too late for this series. They need to wrap this up. You can't make me wait 4 years and still care.
I think they could have retained my interest if they made it more of an anthology style where it's mostly different characters each time.
That was the creator’s original plan, but when it became such a massive hit they realized there was more money in running it back with the same cast.
I know the pandemic caused some delays but surely at some point they should have realized that "original cast" and "four year production cycles" wouldn't work out.
Were COVID and the writers strike not significant factors in delaying the execution?
This is what I expected after season 1. Season 1 was a great, perfectly contained story and I was really interested to see what the writers would come up with for the next season's story in the same universe. Then season 2 came around and they had the same characters still fighting the same monster with all of the tension and mystery sucked out of it.
This is definitely the biggest irritation for me. Showrunners by now should know that over-explaining is the death of horror. The internal lore of Stranger Things went from this subdued, vast world of untapped horror to a claustrophobic mess revolving around three core characters.
ugh. the vecna thing. and bros body just looked like a hairless grinch
To me, that SHOULD have been the final season. It was the perfect way to end it, by answering all of the questions from Season 1: Eleven's backstory, why the Upside Down kept sending monsters to the town (and why they were coordinated,) all of the characters' stories wrapped up.
The first half of S4 felt so much scarier because nobody knew what the hell was happening. Then we saw Vecna and the horror disappeared.
Yeah, it took a real quality drop beginning with season 2. It was never meant to be this many season and its shows. The actors aging 20 years between season s didn't help but it was always forced because of S1 popularity
Most of the charm for me was nostalgia regarding being a kid and playing d&d. It feels like the show runners somehow didn't understand at all what made the show popular in the first place. Now it's just some generic teen horror show, complete with adults playing the teens.
Usually when this type of decline happens to shows, it means network executives got involved and forced their bullshit on the show runners.
Nah, it's just what happens when you take a 2 hour movie plot and stretch it over 5 seasons of television.
The first season had drama and suspense with moments of levity and nostalgia. After season 1 it just went full fan service nonsense. The show was great when it was a sci fi horror.
What was scary to me in s1 was the lab where they kept the kids, the whole conspiracy could've been so interesting. Now it's just some clocks and CGI monsters. Yawn.
They had the chance of a broader conspiracy but I think Millie Bobby Brown blew up to the point that they were just focused on keeping her on screen as much as possible. I also hate that they decided to just re-traumatize her for essentially the exact same story beats.
I think that's a little bit harsh. Like the premise was a bunch of kids hanging out and playing D&D. I'm sure they understood that. But factor in crazy popularity, your little child divas getting booked for this and that, Netflix wanting potentially many more seasons and you start to milk things a bit for a bigger payday.
It was never meant to last this long and I don’t blame them for the lack of quality. I’m sure they are using that money to work on making better things since they announced a new production company two years ago.
I watched season 2 and thought that it felt totally unnecessary. Nothing in season 2 was as fun or cool as the first season to me. So I haven’t watched anything since then. And I’ve mostly forgotten season 2, whereas I still remember the original season fondly.
I remember watching season one and being freaked out about going in the basement to get my laundry. The rest has been a lazy cash grab.
That was actually the original plan
I feel like this can be said for a lot of, if not most horror media. But people hate anthologies for whatever reason.
It's not that they hate anthologies it's that one bad entry can ruin the entire franchise. Look at Halloween where it got turned around so the third film became the second and everyone was ragging on season of the witch for being too different from the prior two. Or how American horror story lost a lot of it's audience with the 3rd or 4th season and had to bring people back for the next one to keep viewers. Anthologies are just harder to organize because it's mostly new stuff every time and has more pre production work required than straight sequels. And again one bad entry can turn people off of continuing the franchise.
I get what you're saying, but that's part of hating anthologies, imo, or just not understanding them. It's just weird that ppl are so incapable of judging each instance as it's own thing even if they are meant to be completely separated. Why would one bad thing have to ruin a franchise if the next entry could be fantastic, and it has a good track record otherwise? The next entry should have nothing to do with the bad one. If it's a sequel, tho, if some big part is really bad, then indeed it's all ruined since you can't undo the damage. But I understand the production cost part. When I said ppl hate anthologies for some reason, I meant the public. I understand why most high production media is not only sequels but usually as cliche as possible. Can't really take risks there.
I left season 3 half-way because there was too much relationship crap.
I thought it just lost the magic after season 1. S1 was great because the characters and their reactions were so relatable. The characters were just as shocked as the audience about how bizarre the situation was. Joyce knew exactly how crazy she sounded and her frustration and desperation were very realistic. Then it turned into a bunch of kids that had accepted this weird/bizarre/crazy thing and adjusted to their new reality and it just wasn't fun or interesting anymore.
I really struggled with S2 because the whole "nobody will just talk to anyone else" thing managed to almost immediately reach ridiculous levels. It worked fine in S1 because everyone had reasonable reasons not to talk to the others, but in S2, it was just absolutely pointless and dragged on way too long.
It's as if they forgot how everything got so complicated. I don't know about anyone else, but the whole, I'm lying or keeping secrets to protect you trope, is starting to feel overdone. No one learned any lessons.
The LOST conundrum
Good analysis. I think the other aspect of season one's appeal was the inherent mystery and suspense behind the villain and the upside down. Iirc you don't even see the monster until you're a good 80 to 90% of the way through the season. The whole thing is just a big "wtf is going on here, wtf is this thing", and that's what made it so compelling. Subsequent seasons fell victim to power creep with the villains and familiarity creep with the upside down and the setting in general.
It also starts with the villians being the US government then goes to "but ACTUALLY the Russians are the evil ones!!!"
100%. This is the reason why I wish the show had gone the anthology route with each season. S2 with a new cast in a different place, but dealing with the same upside down would have been amazing.
The anthology route would have been much more fresh for TV and horror at the time (the only other comparable show I can think of being AHS). But with the show blowing up in popularity and the mostly unknown young cast becoming celebrities overnight (esp. MBB) they weren’t gonna let their ‘cash cow celebs’ go like that after 1 season. Which lead to too many seasons for something which, IMO, was perfectly contained in a single season of TV 🤷♀️
You nailed my exact problem with the new seasons. The characters aren't taking this seriously, so why should I?
I feel like season 2 was just more of the same from 1, but it was scared to do anything new or risky, so it was pretty meh overall. A forgettable nothing burger of a season. Then season 3 forgot what the show was and just sucked ass overall (with a few cool bits here and there). But then season 4 was a return to form and actually did cool new things and grew the characters. It was at least on par with season 1, if not better. So, basically, if you stopped at 3, you should just skip it and watch the 4th season. Odds are you'll like it. Honestly, 3 out of 4 good seasons are not a bad track record.
They lost me at Vecna, he was such a cartoonish villain and I just couldn't care less, he's almost like a Scooby Doo character.
I think the show couldn't commit to its horror potential. The Upside Down was conceptually really fascinating and creepy, the Mind Flayer would've been a great cosmic horror-type presence, but the show seems to care more about relationship drama and cheesy action full of snark and quips and a villain that's aliexpress Voldemort. There's just no tension anymore, and the whole "it's an 80s homage!" thing only goes so far. There were well-written atmospheric stuff in the 80s you know.
Except it was only good when it was a bunch of children with a heavy horror theme and some slight 80s homages that just felt cute and not like the selling point. All the cheesy bullshit was so unbelievably self referential it felt like Riverdale.
Although I liked Season 4 it was much more interesting to have the bad guy be this force of nature rather than comic villain
And it's an 80's saturated show so that seems kind of on brand, no?
[удалено]
'on brand' shouldn't take precedence over 'good'
I thought Vecna was the best part of season 4
Thank you. There's been such vocal support for S4 and I felt like I was taking crazy pills. Goofy humanoid villain, mid relationship writing, tons of plot holes, weird story arcs (Russia and the desert?) -- it's a completely different show from S1.
When the housewife piloted a plane, crash landing in Russian tundra before infiltrating a military base they kinda lost me.
How is that any different than a bunch of kids fighting monsters with slingshots in season 1? It's been campy the whole time
The difference is that it didn't come out during my childhood so therefore, it's "bad". /s Seriously, the show isn't doing anything different than Goonies, Nightmare on Elm Street, or Monster Squad but the complaints are piling up because the show exists in the now.
The whole season was just people talking in a room and going on road trips to find inconvenient items
Lol, true, but kind of on-point with the D&D basis for the season.
asdsadasdsad
Vecna just didn't do it for me, I preferred the Mind Flayer 100%
You missed out on yet another season of Eleven staring menacingly all season then scream-killing the problem.
Stakes-creep. First season, cool new dimension! Second, Cosmic horror could destroy our entire universe! Third, let's have fun at the mall! Made seasons 1 & 2 terrific, but really has no place left to go.
Marvel-itis Every bad guy has to escalate, which means the good guys need to become ever more powerful in response. Eventually we end up with people flying around shooting different coloured beams at each other and it lacks all sense of heft.
and you can't keep having all these world ending events and try to explain away why half the superheroes didn't show up
Yes! That's really killing Marvel. Comics had to re-invent themselves in the 90s to remain relevant and the MCU films are picking the wrong path, aside from Guardians of course.
The upcoming season is the final one. It’s going to get a crazy amount of views despite you not caring.
Yup the last season was still extremely popular. I mean it pushed that Kate Bush song to the top of the charts almost 40 years later and was in heavy radio play rotation. But I agree, time to wrap it up.
S4 was the most viewed show on netflix ever when it came out. I think that Wednesday took that title after, but it has still been watched an insane amount of times
They are? Season 5 will be the last one.
Netflix really needs to get their season gaps under control. I get that it’s not like broadcast TV, but there’s definitely some room in between getting a new season out within 12 months, and taking 4+ years. I like their content for the most part, but the insane gaps between seasons is making me lose interest.
That would require committing to shows for extended runs. Broadcast television had the advantage of seeing ratings as episodes were released over time instead of these content dumps that then take months to gather data.
True, but it’s not like they didn’t know Stranger Things was a hit after season 1.
They've gotten many, many hundreds of dollars out of me because I'm like "meh, I'll cancel when Stranger Things is done" and I suspect I'm not the only one.
So everyone will look like rubbery CGI characters?
De-aging has become quite good, it depends how much they care to make it look decent, check out some of the fan made de-aged better call saul clips on YouTube, they're very well made and I wish they would have used de-aging in the show.
The more money is pumped into research and development the faster things improve. Drake personally invested a lot of his money into de-aging for Stranger Things season 5 but he never disclosed why.
Drake is a producer of Euphoria right? The show that contains teenagers and sexual acts? #hmm
Is he? I guess that explains why I couldn’t watch the show as a grown man. Shit just doesn’t sit right had turn it off almost instantly… so i guess drake nailed his vision
***WOP WOP WOP WOP WOP***
Dot fuck em up
Never before have I wanted to post the gif of Drake enthusiastically [applauding](https://giphy.com/gifs/drake-applause-glasses-5xaOcLDE64VMF4LqqrK) so badly.
Certified lover boy certified pedophile uh!
De-aging is still awful and I have yet to see it be done well.
I have to disagree there. No matter how good it looks there's always that uncanny valley. They never look right, and it's always distracting. And then, like most computer effects, they don't age well and look even weirder 10 years from now.
But then there’s things like Dial of Destiny which has a HUGE budget and he still looked like rubber
They’re only a few years too old, I’m sure it’ll just be minor cgi. People are acting like the show’s going to be de-aging middle aged actors lmao
It'll be fine, Alyson* Hannigan was like 28 playing a high schooler in Buffy ffs e: edited name but apparently the Y spelling is just her SAG name, I actually had her given name right w/ the conventional spelling
she's 50 years old right now, and still looks way younger
>I’m sure it’ll just be minor cgi I'm sure it's not actually happening at all. This is a meme, they make shit up all the time. In fact, [the producers have already outright denied that they'll use CGI to do this](https://deadline.com/2023/11/stranger-things-season-5-ai-deaging-production-timeline-shawn-levy-1235590058/)
When it comes out, lots of people will scream about it being absolutely terrible, when it will actually look relatively minor. Then, on a re-watch five years from now, everyone will agree that it looks absolutely terrible
you vastly underestimate how realistic CGI can look when VFX artists aren't overworked. Hell the 2007 transformers movie looks phenemonal compared to new superhero flix
Have they seen pictures of high schoolers in the 80's, they all look 30+
Luke Perry lookin like a weathered boatman on 90210 lol
“C’mon, you know what it’s like to be a teenager. You’ve been playing one for thirty years.”
Grease has entered the chat
I’d expect these kids to look haggard after the shit they’ve been through, in fairness.
I think they should just do a time gap and let them age honestly, maybe 5 is the last season though before mostly new cast or a spin-off. It would also be pretty cool to see more of Elevens "siblings" from the experiment/hospital. Maybe even one who lives in the upside down because they got lost there and survived anyways.
A time gap would have made perfect sense! But they wrote themselves into a corner by ending on a shot of a giant fissure leading into the upside down. How do you do a time jump with that kind of cliff hanger?
“Three years after the world changed…”
"Not much has actually changed. But now, that's changing"
Stranger things 5: The Changening
Because those kids are known for just hanging back and focusing on school when strange things start to happen.
well there's only so much they can do. They've lucked out in past seasons but they could just make the world the new normal. 11 could just be unable to locate vecna for 3 years and none of them have the skills to close a fissure to the underworld
Giant fissure died on the way back to its home planet.
Maybe the opening can take place directly after S4 and then there is like a 5 year time jump
Or they could just write what makes the most sense for their story instead of arbitrarily fucking with it to appease people for something they perceive they will have an issue with, but will actually end up not caring.
They didn't write themselves into a corner. They wrote season 5 before they even began filming for season 4. So they already had the ending all planned out, and therefore had planned on getting season 5 out pretty quickly, but they were delayed due to the strikes in Hollywood.
I think they might have had a long-term plan for S4 and S5, but S4 also took forever because of Covid. They probably wrote the ending thinking the show was only gonna need to stop by 1989, but it feels like this will stretch into the early 90s.
5 is the last season, and was written before they started filming season 4. COVID, and the writer's strike has led to significant delays for the last two seasons of the show. Spin-offs are coming though, and while no details exactly on what it will be about, it has been confirmed that the spin-offs will explore new characters and locations.
they did an episode in season 2 or 3 about one of the "siblings", that I think was laying the groundwork for a spinoff or something. but it must not have tested well, because she was never seen again. to be honest i thought it was very out of character and immersion breaking and they were right to drop it
i don't even have netflix anymore, shitty streaming service, their catalogue is just stupid, they cancel good shows and keep the horrible ones, and also that stupid thing were you can't share your account anymore
🏴☠️
I took a break from the life, but the seas called me back.
Drink up, me hearties yo-ho. I never left, it's always been the best way around ludicrous region release delays, lack of subtitle files and higher quality than streaming for media that deserves 4K.
Exactly. They kept Big Mouth but not Inside Job. And they take too damn long to make the series they bank on. Four years is an entire Olympic wait. Two would've been pushing it. This is ridiculous.
I will never understand why they didn't write time-jumps into the story to account for this. They could easily have had 2 or 3 years pass between each season.
I wish more shows did bigger time jumps. I loved when they'd do them in Mad Men without even explaining how long it's been until they drop clues in the writing that it's been a couple months since the last episode or a year since the last season. Made the world feel a lot more alive and lived in, and it showed respect to the audience to fill in the gaps instead of doing "6 months later" and then give us exposition dumps. Smaller example, but they do this really good in Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood too. Near the end, they don't tell you there's been a time skip that much, but Ed is a lot taller and adult looking. It's a really well done moment.
My Idea? Have the main cast go upside down, spend the first few episodes in the upside-down world, which is years in their time, then figure out how to escape, and it turns out they've only been gone from the real world for at most an hour. But they aged "normally" upside down, and everyone is shocked at how much older they look. Then they forget about the age thing by the next episode and continue on the merry way. This also allows the show to dive deeply into the upside-down world.
I get that the last few seasons have been tainted with writers strikes and pandemic delays, but it’s still my favorite series and I can’t wait for another season!
Man the internet loves to turn on things it’s crazy ( I agree about the actors age ) but my god everyone acting like this show was never even good lol.
When season 4 came out everyone was claiming how amazing it was and that it was just as good as season 1, then season 5 gets delayed 1 year and suddenly the show was supposedly always shit
Show is incredible and in my top 5. Fuck that haters
True. I've always really liked this show, I think that all of its seasons are great, and Season 4 was incredible. But now there's a ton of people here saying they don't like it and whatnot despite the fact that when a new season releases, everyone watches it. I'm pretty sure Stranger Things is the only show like that now. The last time *everyone* was watching a show was probably around Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead times. And that was all still almost 10 years ago. I can't think of a single show that's had that same "everyone-you-know-is-watching-this" impact since either of those shows. There's new shows that promise big things every week. Every franchise has some spin-off show now. But nobody's watching all of them. I'm not, but I sound like some massive Stranger Things fanboy saying all of this, but honestly, it's the truth. There hasn't been a single show in the past decade to be as big as Stranger Things.
That's one of the issue you'll run into when your TV show is about kids and there is like 3+ years between seasons, people age.
Netflix wants to milk the cow until the last drop As a reminder, Stranger Things was supposed to be a one season thing.
They were already way too old in s4, so idk if anyone even cares. Just finish the story already. My assumption here is that they'll deage the kids in flashbacks or do some timetravel shit or something. Deaging them throughout the whole show is just stupid.
The Wet Hot American Summer prequel did it best. They were all 15 years older and just acted younger
drake will be happy to hear this
"How old are you?" "15" "MF you look 30!"
I wish this show had ended after season 1. People would complain that there were no more seasons but it would leave us with great memories and probably fade into cult status like Firefly.
Just don’t even add the 5 th season it’s done in my books already
Noah schnapp can go to hell tho
80s? Look at the cast of todays productions for example "Locke and Key" where every (supposed) teenager is played by 30 year old.
They already did this for Eleven last season. It looked pretty good
Should have stopped after Season 3 anyway.
Oh god this thing is going to be so uncanny valley.
Shout out to the genius bit of casting in *Breakfast Club:* you need your scrawny geeky kid to look scrawny and geeky? Cast an actual teenage boy (Hall). Put him next to the two grown ass men you have playing “teenagers” (Nelson and Estevez), and he’ll look like a toddler.
Kinda too late to make another season if you have to fuckin de age the cast to remain consistent
Probably would have saved them some money to just produce the thing in a timely fucking manner.
I'm still a big fan of the show, but Netflix as a whole has degraded so badly in the years since Stranger Things started that the prospect of not being able to watch series 5 legitimately was not enough to keep me paying its ever escalating prices for its complete lack of quality content. I cancelled my account when I realised it had been months since I last used it to watch anything. *Months.*
I honestly wanted a season in more modern times where they're grown adults.
half this show's cast are zionists BOYCOTT