Stranger Things

Stranger Things

Netflix

Stranger Things has existed long enough to feel nostalgic to multiple generations. For the Gen X-ers and elder millennials who came of age during the 1980s, the era that provides the setting, aesthetic, and pop culture reference points for this Netflix juggernaut, the show is a throwback to a youth that feels far away from the present. But even Gen Z-ers may watch the fifth and final season and find themselves flashing back to potent memories of childhood.

Think about it: If you were 9 when Stranger Things debuted in 2016, you’re now an official adult. You have grown up in a universe parallel to the Hawkins, Ind., one where Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown), Mike (Finn Wolfhard), Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo), Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin), and their friends have repeatedly attempted to vanquish evil forces. If by some chance the significance of that passage is lost on you, simply gaze upon the young stars of this series, who in Season 5 now look more likely to open a Roth IRA than play D&D after school. 

The rollout of the Emmy Award winner’s closing chapters throughout this holiday season — Stranger Things 5 Volume 1, aka the first four episodes, drops on Thanksgiving Eve, with three more episodes landing on Christmas Day and the finale releasing on New Year’s Eve — will no doubt evoke wistful feelings, especially since the show leans into poignancy on more than one occasion. But Volume 1, and presumably the remainder of this swan song, refuses to shy away from what this show is really about: the omnipresence of childhood trauma and the persistence required to overcome it. 

For older adults, Stranger Things evokes a time when kids frequently roamed around free from parental supervision, but also got the Guess? jeans scared off of them by the same sci-fi and horror movies that the Duffer Brothers, creators of this series, so blatantly reference. For teens and young adults, this franchise may register more as a fun house mirror version of the world in which they have actually come of age while dealing with global pandemics, the pervasive threat of school shootings, and the possibility that an ICE raid could suddenly take place at their elementary schools. The kids in America in 2025 may not have to deal with demogorgons or Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower), the entity formerly known as  Henry Creel, a once-bullied Hawkins high schooler whose telekinetic powers and psychopathy have turned him into an otherworldly beast who sounds almost as frightening as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. with a severe case of bronchitis. But they certainly understand how it feels to be regularly terrified of monsters. 

Stranger Things 5 subtly taps into those parallels. The final season begins in November of 1987, eighteen months after the end of Season 4, when Vecna opened the gates separating Hawkins from its creepy, bizarro underworld called the Upside Down. That incident caused an earthquake that released what Maya Hawke‘s Robin describes as “a tsunami of mysterious dandruff” into the atmosphere. Now the entire town is under quarantine and locked down. (Sound familiar?) There’s also a massive military presence in Hawkins, allegedly to keep everyone safe but also because U.S. officials are still trying to track down the telekinetically powerful (for good) Eleven, who has managed to successfully stay off their radar. “What other town on Earth can match our impressive military to civilian ratio?” Robin sarcastically brags while broadcasting on WSQK, The Squawk, the local radio station. Uh, I don’t know, but the 2025 versions of Washington, D.C.; Los Angeles; and Chicago come to mind.

9.0 Stranger Things 5 Like It’s both comforting and exciting to have this show back for one last round and it delivers pretty much what you’d expect Dislike Sometimes the dialogue can be corny or too expositional The less time you spend trying to poke holes in the plot the better

Netflix is extra-sensitive about spoilers, but certainly it’s not surprising to learn that this Stranger Things season covers familiar ground. The gang of interconnected friends and family once again launch elaborate missions to destroy Vecna and close the portal between the Upside Down and normal Hawkins. Eleven and Jim Hopper (David Harbour), the closest thing she has to a father, clash over the role she should play in those missions. Tech wizard Dustin and his smart-ass mentor Steve Harrington (Joe Keery) continue to banter in ways that are both juvenile and endearing. 

Yes, some key characters on this show have aged more obviously in the three years since the last season than they possibly could have in the established year-and-a-half narrative gap. But that quickly becomes irrelevant because of the vital chemistry between the members of this cast. After a long hiatus, it’s genuinely nice to see them all back together again. The Stranger Things gang is like the Sweathogs or the residents of Stars Hollow. No matter what its members do after this show, they’ll always be bonded together in our pop cultural hive mind.

Stranger Things 5 also covers familiar territory by succumbing to some of its less ideal habits. Every time the Duffers and their fellow writers attempt to explain a new detail about how Vecna operates, the series briefly sinks under the weight of too much exposition. Also someone needs to explain, immediately, how the walkie-talkies on this show have such uncannily amazing reception. Because the walkie-talkies I had as a kid barely worked between rooms in the same house, let alone across multiple dimensions.

Still: Stranger Things remains great at the most important and rare skill it possesses: the ability to appeal to audiences across the age spectrum. Those on the older side will revel in the allusions to books, movies, and music that defined the experience of being raised in the late 20th century. Back to the Future looms large this season, as does Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time. The absolutely gangbusters opening of the second episode, like much of the first season, owes an enormous debt to Poltergeist. And yes, the sounds of Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill,” a track turned into a bigger hit by Stranger Things than it ever was during the actual ’80s, continues to echo hauntingly throughout this streaming saga.

Stranger Things 5 also does things that are much more common in contemporary television than they were back in the Duran Duran days, such as show support for LGBTQ teens and depict relationships between parents and children that are neither adversarial nor distant, but genuinely supportive. It’s as if the Duffer Brothers actively tried to create the perfect ’80s pop cultural product: one with all the fun sensibilities of the era that course-corrects for that same era’s significant deficiencies. That’s why it makes perfect sense that Netflix has timed the final moments of Stranger Things to land on Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Eve. That’s the time of year when different generations are most likely to be in each other’s physical orbit, and most likely to sit down together and find common ground in the Upside Down.

Premieres: Part 1 premieres Wednesday, Nov. 26 at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT, followed by Part 2 on Dec. 25 and Part 3 on Dec. 31
Who’s in it: Millie Bobby Brown, Finn Wolfhard, Caleb McLaughlin, Gaten Matarazzo, Noah Schnapp, Winona Ryder, David Harbour
Who’s behind it: Matt and Ross Duffer
For fans of: Gen X nostalgia, Gen Z nostalgia
How many episodes we watched: 4