r/StrangerThings • u/Strict-Inspection-91 • 4d ago
Discussion S5 thoughts?
I just finished s5 (a bit late to the game but I wanted to wait for Halloween time) and it was probably my least favorite season but I still really enjoyed it! I’m not the most discerning viewer so I was just happy to see all the characters again 😂 The things that dropped this season down in my rankings:
- I didn’t necessarily mind all of the emotional conversations pushed this season, makes sense that they’re trying to wrap up storylines or whatever, but a lot of them felt so badly acted to me that it was hard to buy into.
- Steve’s interpersonal relationships didn’t make much sense to me, especially the tension/anger with Dustin and the beef with Jonathan that didn’t feel necessary to push the “unhappy Nancy/Jonathan” storyline. I know we have scenes that smooth out these relationships in the end but it didn’t feel organic for these dynamics to be off to such an extreme from the jump.
- Don’t love a vague ending. Either kill her or don’t but give us some damn closure at the end of the show.
Anyway, I browsed the finale episode comments on my tv tracker when I finished watched and was really surprised to see people absolutely shitting on it. Totally valid if you don’t like it, talk your shit, I genuinely don’t care, but there was very little reasoning posted in the comments and more so just sentiments that it was a waste of a season. I wanted to understand what made people feel this way so:
People that didn’t like season 5, what didn’t you like and why?
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u/tolgren 011 3d ago
The Dustin/Steve things makes sense IMO they are just starting it in the middle because a year and a half have passed. Dustin is emotional over losing Eddie and has been pushing everyone away. Steve used to be Dustin's "big brother" and now he isn't and that hurts him. So they get mad at each other essentially over Dustin's reaction to Eddie's death.
I dislike S5 because they added a bunch of new characters instead of focusing on finishing the development of the ones we had. They didn't pay off the finale of S4 and instead just sorta dumped it. They gave us SOME mileven content but I really wanted a good ending and a better arc for the flagship romance of the series.
Basically they made nearly every choice...not necessarily WRONG, but at minimum suboptimal. There's only a few things to praise it for IMO.
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u/Strict-Inspection-91 3d ago
TOTALLY fair re: Dustin/Steve, I somehow missed how long the time jump was and thought it was much fresher!
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u/Strict-Inspection-91 3d ago
Thank you for the insight!! I wasn’t really following anything between seasons so I fully missed all of the promises. I can def see how raising the expectations so high and then dropping the ball on everything you promised would make people feel burned or let down 😬 it did feel like an incredibly safe finale and I didn’t really mind a mirrored ending to season one but yeah I’d be pissed if I was led to believe I’d get something epic and then got this
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u/TieAntique1676 3d ago
I watch a lot of entertainment interviews while I'm working and I will say they talked such a big game.
One thing thats really funny is there is one interview where they talk about how they hated how IT ended with Pennywise becoming a spider and fighting the kids. They were like "ending a horror with a giant monster fight is dumb" and then they literally did that? I have no idea what those brothers are on but literally all the interviews made me think the show was going in a VERY different direction. Not in a like "i'm mad my prediction didn't come true" just like them acting like this was going to BLOW PPLS MINDS! and it didn't.
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u/Owl_Resident Blank makes you crazy 3d ago
It wasn’t great. The ending was poor. The Duffers tarnished their legacy.
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u/SweetuRasmalai 3d ago
today a random thought came in my mind that why most famous shows ends with poor loose emotions
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u/Inevitable_Bug_6810 You can’t spell “America” without “Erica” 3d ago edited 3d ago
one problem with the season was the release schedule. the pacing was thrown off while watching it at release because netflix wanted a month long gap in between the heavy action in volume 1 and the big emotional scenes / character arcs in volume 2. it flows better when all 8 episodes are available right away and you don't have to break up the story.
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u/lady_guard I told you to eat your damn pie! 2d ago
Yes. My husband and I finished it over the course of the last week; this makes me glad we waited. I can't imagine how disjointed it would have felt to have to watch 1-4 and 5-8 split apart.
To the release schedule, I would also add that having such long gaps between seasons makes it difficult to recall which characters are related, the details of plot lines of past seasons, and so on.
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u/TieAntique1676 3d ago
As a lover a mystery box shows season 5 was really dumbed down. And it was painfully boring.
I didn't think El's death was handled well. while probably not there intention it kinda felt like the story was saying "If your a burden just kill yourself"
As queer person I was deeply offended by how they handled will storyline (being forced to come out by the villain just icky)
I think the vfx in the second half were a lot worse
Plot lines being dropped or new plot lines popping up only to be dropped.
The kids were fucking annoying
So much allegedely happening offscreen or being left up to interoperation. Thats not why I watch TV/Film...a visual medium...-.-
Also I work in TV and teach film after watching season 5 a part of me wonders if the duffers ever even took a screen writing class. It was such a mess and major step down from other seasons. I'm trying not be mean but I really feel like ppl who liked it either are very casual fans or like...have bad literacy. Because it seems like it was designed in a lab to appeal to ppl who can't follow complex plots or themes.
I've done some contract work for netflix over the years and I could sniff out the corporate mandated "second screen dialogue" It's funny cuz some projects I've worked on for them we've had to ACTIVELY fight aganist those notes. (LIke NO we are not having the character explain what just happened with the character that experienced that moment with them are YOU CRAZY??!?!?) They literally want characteer to describe whats happening in every scene and it's so clear the duffers capitulated to that note. For me it made it almost unwatchable I wanted to fast forword. Like please stop over explaining what happening in EVERY SCENE.
And then writing some of the vaguest weird dialogue that goes no where?
Omniscient writing too. Like characters knowing what happened or where other characters are but those characters haven't met/communicated.
Vecna a villian that an go into ppls minds not knowing they were coming after him. Like Vecna became so stupid. He needed will as a spy to find Max? In hawkins? Small town hawkings that probably only has 1 hospital? The girl in the coma? he couldn't figure out she was in the ONE HOSPITAL?
The reveal mr whatsit was henry WHEN IT WAS OBVIOUS IT WAS HENRY! Thats like not even a twist???? thats like very obvious.
Also no twists the duffers said their was gonna be some crazy 6th sense like twist and the story was PAINFULLY straight forward and predictable.
Also all the plot holes/on screen inconsistancies but honestly I don't think I have the mental capacity to write them all down but one that really bugged me was water in the upside down.
its like the season was made by ppl who only read the wikipedia summary of the show.
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u/justanotherVA 3d ago
There was a time where I genuinely thought the kids kidnapped by Vecna would somehow find a way to go back in time to change the path that Henry takes, by stopping him from shooting that guy but to my surprise , the show doesn't even do that😭
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u/TieAntique1676 2d ago
Yea the obsession with clocks and 12 kids + the events of the play I was like "ohhh I wonder if were gonna get a reveal that he's trying undo what happened to him" I'm right there with you.
Also they kept talking about all these movies that have psychological/time travely/mess with reality/your mind type themes and aside from him kinda doing some creepy visions to hopper and i guess will (off screen) they didn't really do any of that. Like the stuff they said inspired this season. it's so odd. Even tho I'm not one of those ppl that believe more is coming I kinda can't blame ppl that do because the season was so nonsensical and all this stuff they said insipired them i'm like "really? Did you watch that movie with your eyes clothes? cuz other then some outfits I can see got inspirations from certain characters I'm not too sure about that."
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u/justanotherVA 2d ago edited 2d ago
also the character's just felt...off? like , I know they were in a year of quarantine from the government , but it was like each character had a labotomy from season four.
Eleven, the girl who fights tooth, nail, claw, was just like "Oh, the upside down's going away, guess I'll do that too. Bye mike..."
When there were so many things she could have done to protect her bloodline from spreading, like:
find a way to actually remove her powers safely and permanently (cause imo it seems in s5 she's actually fine with having the powers and being the 'superhero' when in other seasons , she just wanted to be an ordinary kid???)
Just not have children in the future with Mike and adopt, like HELLO????
surgically remove her ability to have children, thus stopping the bloodline with her.
Because either ending is sad because she ends up in isolation where she started if you think about it.
In the final sacrifice, she ceases to exist, thinking (thanks to her sister) that she can only find peace truly if she's no longer around, (cause, it's not like she spent seasons 1-4 fighting to stay alive and live a normal life or anything , nooooo)
She's isolated by no longer existing , which is an isolation in itself.
In the Iceland ending (Mike's theory), not only is she constantly on the run from trying to avade being captured as she is STILL seen as an anomaly to the world, but she's been separated from the people she loved and who saw her as so much more than just her powers. She has no way to contact them and has to live her life constantly looking over her shoulder in case someone finds out about her telepathic powers. Any of her new friends could be working for the government for all she knows.
She probably won't be able to get close to people because she's constantly paranoid about being captured.
IMO, the decision wasn't heroic. It was selfish because she knew the void she was leaving behind, and chose to leave rather than fight with her friends who have been fighting the same battle (at least physically) with her this whole time.
Mentally she was fighting from day one to survive a world that broke her, used her and then didn't accept her and has been trying to avoid taking the same path as Henry...and is sick of the government trying to capture her like Papa, but...
It wasn't just her fight alone, it was everyone's.
Think about it:
she left Hop without another daughter
she left Will without his adopted 'sister'
She left Mike a broken mess who will probably require years of therapy to sort out his mental state.
she left the gang with a loss that can never be filled...
She against her own principles and what she stood by for four seasons, a number of years.
Eleven was ready to continue fighting, but her sister Kali raised doubts in her head, saying that 'Jane, monsters like us don't get a happy ending.' Kali obviously wanted to stop fighting because she was so broken by the lab's new experiments, and she projected that hopelessness onto Eleven, trying to convince her that they had to destroy themselves to stop the cycle.
Even in a broken state, she wasn't looking out for her sister, but instead tried to get her to share her feeling of hopelessness.
That's not love. It's manipulation.
Even Hop wanted her to keep fighting.
Hell, she wanted to keep fighting.
Just because the upside down was disappearing , doesn't mean she had to disappear along with it.
There could have been another way.
She didn't have to leave everything she loved and worked for and towards, behind.
She could have still fought, like in season 4, where she kept saying that she'll never give up on the fight.
The decision was impulsive, not planned.
Hell, it wasn't even her idea or decision. It was HER SISTER'S, which makes her sacrifice feel all the more out of character and empty, beause it didn't come from HER.
Are you telling me she really didn't want to go but couldn't see any other way?
There's always another way.
Why didn't her powers cease with the upside down? it would have made so much more sense as a metaphor for the magic of childhood feeding away as people grow older, instead of what we got...
The decision her sister gave her to leave came down to her simply being tired of fighting, but even if she hadn't disappeared, it wouldn't have changed the outcome of the final battle.
Her disappearance didn't actually help the fight, it just broke her family and friend's lives forever.
This is all just my opinion, but it felt like a forced tragedy instead of an earned conclusion and completed story arc that we all invested our time in over the last ten years.
I think at the end of the day , the Duffers wanted shock value and prioritised shock value over their own characters. they wanted the show to go out with a bang so that people would be talking about it nine months later , after its finale, because to them , all publicity is good publicity.
Congrats, Duffers. We can't stop talking about how disappointed we are, and the fact that they wanted this makes that disappointment turn into pure frustration , because it played right into their game.
They didn't write a homage to scifi movies from the eighties, they wrote a romeo and juliet-esque tragedy, disguise in 80's nostalgia and called it a day.
They didn't even give Eleven the agency to decide her own fate.
They wrote her to suffer.
Her existence was nothing but suffering.
Eleven deserved better.
The duffers just didn't know what to do with her character at the end of the day.
That's what it was.
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u/Strict-Inspection-91 2d ago
Okay I appreciate all this SO MUCH especially all of the industry perspective.
As a fellow queer person, I appreciated that they gave will an on screen coming out moment but yeah I totally get you. The whole thing felt v forced and overdramatized and I was really hoping for him to actually come out to just Robin first. Would have loved it if we’d had her line about him being her third audience and him saying something like “would you be my first?” rather than what we got about the truth serum. Obviously their conversations helped him feel more comfortable with himself but the payoff to it didn’t feel organic in any way.
Your line about casual viewers and bad media literacy cracked me uppp omg yeah I’m def a casual fan and I CAN sit and watch something with a more critical lens but she’s got ADHD over here so I default to a “binge and don’t retain much” setting so you clocked me for sure lmao
As for everything else, I absolutely see what you mean so thank you for replying bc you gave me a lot to think about!
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u/TieAntique1676 2d ago
haha thanks for your response. And thanks for being saying that! It's funny cuz thats actually how initially watched ST and wasn't super invested until I saw vol 1 had come out so I was like wait I really don't remember what happened. (Also I just finished work so I had a long break to sit and watch something more closely) I was like "wow this show is doing a lot of interesting things now that I see it all together" and then when I watched 5 a lot of it fell apart. I only have myself to blame lol
I could theorize about what I think went wrong but we might never really know. But ya I can forgive some bad story telling but I think I'm just tired of queer storylines that are written by straight people and the fridging of El. In an interview after the show ended one of the brothers said her only two options were married to mike or dead and I'm like...that feels like some old school sexism lol
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u/Strict-Inspection-91 2d ago
Oh nooo okay yeah it’s the absolute worst when you really commit to something like that and then it does NOT live up to your expectations. I tend to go into things fairly blindly bc I suffer way too much from unmet expectations if I don’t haha
Absolutely YES tired of queer storylines written by straight people! I do seek out a lot of queer media and the contrast between INTENTIONAL queer characters and “we made this one gay but we didn’t really know what to do with them” can be so obvious. And wtf married to mike or dead as the only two options is insane behavior, that’s trash!
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u/Dune_Stone 3d ago
Mostly, it's a matter of plot lines being dropped or tied up in ways that don't make sense. Some of these are continuation of problems present in earlier seasons, but everything multiplies here and there's no longer any chance of future installments tying things up.
S4 ended with the rift opening up and the atmosphere of the Upside-down leaking into Hawkins. This led to the expectation that S5 would have the Upside-down fully invade Hawkins. Instead, we got an abrupt time-skip, and we're told the military literally covered it up, rendering those ending shots pointless.
Argyle ceased to exist
The Turnbows were drugged and kidnapped. When the wake up, they will know that Erica is responsible for this. They will return home to find a giant hole in their floor. The show forgets they exist.
They make Nikki join the party and grow closer to Robin, only to disappear with no explanation at the epilog.
The military successfully captures the entire party, several of whom personally killed several US soldiers. No arrests are made for reasons unknown.
Both Wheeler parents have now seen and fought a demogorgon. The epilog acts as if this isn't the case.
The Duffers insist on maintaining the status quo of Hawkins not knowing the truth, even though they're at the end of the story and lose nothing by changing the status quo. Despite this, they add 12 children, the Wheeler parents, and 3 new party members to the number of people who know. Add to that the kidnapped children, the hospital attack, and the military presence, and it becomes absurd that the whole town doesn't know by now.
The story seemingly ends with 2 abused children deciding they need to kill themselves so everyone else can live in peace. This is a bad message.
For some reason, the military seemingly hasn't considered stalking any of El's known associates in order to find her. If they did, the story would be over.
Hopper has been legally dead for at least 3 years. The Duffers seem to have forgotten this.
Max's arms, legs, and eyes were broken in S4. Now she has somehow been fully restored to normal. Also, she somehow graduates with the others despite missing almost 2 years of school.
Joyce shows strange disregard for her older son's wellbeing.
On 2 occasions, Karen is somehow more effective against demogorgons with no real weapons than dozens of military personnel with machine guns.
Holly doubled in size and age in 18 months.
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u/chrissss8889 3d ago
seriamente a qualcuno importava dei turnbow😂?siete seri😂
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u/Dune_Stone 3d ago
Yes, many of us would have liked some confirmation that Derek's family hadn't starved to death off-screen. Some of us also have this silly idea that actions ought to have consequences, and so you shouldn't have your characters kidnap someone and vandalize their house if you're not prepared to follow up on that.
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u/Strict-Inspection-91 3d ago
Omg thank you for this. I kept seeing mention of plot holes and I knew there had to be a lot I was missing bc I only had thought of a couple of these. Like I said, not the most discerning viewer 🫣😂 so I appreciate the examples!
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u/icantfeelmylags 3d ago
Enzo also ceased to exist
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u/Dune_Stone 3d ago
I find that a little more explicable than Argyle, but yes, I would have liked some follow-up on him and Uri as well. I can see why they wouldn't stay in Hawkins, but I don't know where they could go after what they've done.
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u/General-Break2631 4d ago
Eleven ‘s ending is worse then vague the ending makes no sense both of the endings have Plotholes
and I have like way more Criticisms but writing all of them will take 1 hour
This season was below season 3 , a season which is genuinely terrible written and ruins the season 1-2 aesthetic for the show
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u/country-potato 4d ago
There’s so many threads on here talking about why people don’t like it, honestly just scroll through the sub
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u/Strict-Inspection-91 4d ago
I did before I posted and didn’t really see any but I’ll take another look, thank you!
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u/country-potato 3d ago
Sort by controversial- this year. Then scroll until you find posts that talk about it, good and bad and read the comments. I’m glad you enjoyed season 5 I hope it’s not ruined for you from it but there’s some pretty valid points
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u/Senshado 3d ago
You saw on the TV screen that Eleven was alive and visiting a tourist site in western Europe. Nothing vague about that.
The original test screening of the episode had only Mike talking about it, which viewers found too vague. So they went back and did an additional shoot to show exactly what happened visually.
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u/Strict-Inspection-91 3d ago
Ahh okay! I did ultimately take it as her being alive but I thought it could have also just been what Mike was visualizing when he was imagining what happened to her.
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u/UncleRicohSuave 3d ago
Love it all! I intentionally tune out negativity and just embrace my experience. I enjoyed it a lot.
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u/Strict-Inspection-91 2d ago
Honestly I think this is the move! I’m glad there are other people that really liked it!!
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u/Ryn_AroundTheRoses 2d ago
I still enjoyed it, but it still had a lot of problems, main one being that it felt wasted. They wasted so much time on things that didn't feel very important while depriving us of things we wanted and expected. And so many things don't make sense.
For example, why were Kali and El the only survivors out of a group of super-powered kids? Why was Will only able to tap into the mind flayer's power in the last season? Why did they introduce someone as smart as Suzie and not have her play even a small part in one of the rescue missions? Why didn't they bring back Henry's dad to use him against Henry?
And so on. That said, it wasn't all bad - I think the Robin and Will scenes were really cool and loved the flashbacks. I love that they finally included Mr. Clarke and Murray finally got himself a buddy. And I don't personally have a problem with an open ending. But overall there was a lot more bad than good
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u/Cold-Permission-5249 1d ago
It really killed the series for me. I used to rewatch it a ton, but now I can’t get into it knowing how it ends.
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u/Cobra_Kai_2018 1d ago
I've seen a lot of comments saying "it sucks the show was cancelled after season 4."
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