******** STRANGER THINGS SPOILERS AHEAD*************
I know, cryptic much? I was talking about the state of things and the end of Stranger Things, pretty dark hey? Well horror fans tend to feel a certain comfort treading on the dark side, it's not that we like it more, it's just that since we know we're going to have to go there eventually anyways we may as well make ourselves comfortable.
All that aside I finished watching the last episode of Stranger Things, I thought I would cry, I mean heck I cry every time I watch Season 4 and El finds out Hopper is alive as he walks into her room at the cabin and I HATE Hopper. Season 1-3 every single time El or Mike cried, I cried. El cries, I cry that's how it goes, or that's how it went but things have changed. I was lucky to have hopped onto the show when Season1-3 had already come out, so I could enjoyably marathon 3 full seasons without waiting, I mean I did do some waiting in between like, sleeping, working, socializing and whatnot, I'm not a sociopath, but there was a fun curiousity to that and I enjoyed that as my first Stranger Things experience, I have the Tarot Deck to prove it.
I grew up on A Nightmare on Elm Street, V, Dark Angel, Buffy, Angel, Monster Squad, Star Wars etc etc etc all things I could see heavily influenced Stranger Things much to my delight but the second half of Season 5 (the last 4 episodes) lost the human connection that meant so much, save for the plot involving Max and Kali,nothing really moved me in the back half of Season 4 because it felt for some reason like the heart had been sucked out. I can't help but wonder how much the showrunners (and some of the actors) zionist leanings may have pulled me out of the plot. I really couldn't tell you who has loved pop culture more consistently over the pre-internet years to now than me. Movies and music and TV Shows have carried me through some of the darkest, loneliest, most hopeless times of my life, that's why it was so wonderful to see an amalgamation of what I loved so much in Stranger Things, Nancy Wheeler was clearly based on the greatest horror heroine of all time IMO Nancy Thompson, Eleven was clearly a composite of ET and Max from Dark Angel and Eleven's siblings and their experiences and even the briliant Matthew Modine as Papa were clearly based on the X5s and the cynical Donald Lydecker. The four boys were Goonie and Stand By Me-esque and the great and timeless Winona Ryder, well let's be honest, embodied the spirit of WInona Ryder in the 80's which was far more beautiful and badass than that extraordinarily humble woman will ever know apparently.
All this to say, Stranger Things Seasons 1-4 were like a dreamy amalgamation from my amygdala which is why it hurt even more to think of the nefarious intentions of the showrunners and producers and to understand that even though they felt, narratively, that saving the world was important that in reality there are only certain people in certain places in the world that they feel that applies to. I also really fucking missed Argyle, dude. That kid was fucking dope.
It just seemed in Season 4 that their genocidal tendancies took over and the heart of the story got washed away. It just felt angrier and bigger in a capitalist budget-y kind of way not bigger in the sense of story. For example, The Matrix Revolutions, a trilogy ender, is bigger in budget but it's also big in story, (and in Neoplatonism apparently) and while the budget is large the characters throughout the series still get these small beautiful moments, like the moments with Sati and Neo or Sati and the Oracle or the incredible conversation between Neo and Councillor Hamann on the bridge and the realization by Morpheus that Neo was fighting for the city of Zion.
In my opinion the back half of Stranger Things missed all that made the show so special, the incredible, funny, heart-warming moments of Scoops Troops in Season 3, the touching moments between Mike and Eleven from Season 1-4 when he would prove again and again that he had her back and that she was never far from his thoughts, the deep friendship of Steve and Dustin which was foolishly sawed and hacked at so much for the first half of the season that it barely registered when they quickly made up in less than one episode, 4 episodes of sniping and bizarre apathy towards one another and the payoff was cheap. It seems the only standout moments that really resonated for me in Season 5 were in the first half with Will and Robin (who I was so glad finally got to connect) Will finally accepting himself and owning his connection to Vecna and of course the long awaited return of Max. Episodes 1-4 delivered but aside from Max's triumphant return and Holly's incredible leadership as Mike, the storyteller, foretold it really felt like the back half of Season 5 felt empty. I swear I got more closure from the 2hr credit scene in Breaking Dawn Part II than the back half of Season 5 of Stranger Things and I wonder if my inability to empathize with the characters at the end stemmed from knowing how little so many of the cast and producers and showrunners would empathize with someone who looks like me or someone who looks like a little girl who just wants to play with her doll in a rain drenched, beleaguered refugee camp in Gaza. Maybe, maybe not but I can't rule out that it matters.