Stranger Things

[ArthuriusMartyrius]

Jesus H. Christ, this season was so fucking retarded it makes the stupidity of the previous ones look fucking tame.

Vecna is still a shit villain and to top it off, he's completely incapable as a villain seeing as Eleven kicked his ass TWICE now in a 1-on-1 confrontation. And we're now being told he's the BIG BAD of the entire show. They could've at least fixed this by not making Henry Creel get banished into the Upside Down by Eleven (how the fuck did she even do that?) and be tied to her past that she conveniently doesn't remember but have him be her predecessor that found his way into the Upside Down on his own. It would still be incredibly fucking retarded that a psychic human is the reason the Upside Down is all evil and shit but it would at least establish him as a somewhat threatening opponent. It wouldn't fix all the dumb shit about him acting like some generic supervillain but still.

The Russia subplot was quite literally pointless. Hopper and company deciding to go back to the Russian prison to kill some random demodogs because of a 5 minute call from which they make so many logical leaps it's ridiculous only happened for the sole reason that the Duffers needed some flimsy reason to tie it into the main plot. It's also ridiculous that the Red Army wasn't on-site only minutes after the breakout to vaporize everything in sight in typical Russian fashion but I guess the Soviet Union has to be retarded for the plot to work.

The girl power angle went to absurd lengths here to make Nancy even remotely useful, including cucking Steve out of his hero moments. I guess at least they changed their minds about killing him and killed poor Eddie instead, they just forgot to fix the CGI Steve in Vecna's house with Nancy and Robin and Dustin's heartbroken reaction to a dead Eddie which was clearly meant for a dead Steve. And why did the show go out of it's way to try and separate Robin and Steve so much? Aren't they supposed to be all best friends now? Are they afraid of making them too popular a ship considering Joe Keery still has more chemistry in 1 scene with Maya Hawke than 100 with Natalia Dyer?

The government hunting Eleven subplot was dumb as hell considering that Eleven was being held at a government-sanctioned facility loosely based on the CIA's MKUltra experiments so they should already know everything about Eleven, including her not being a killer. Brenner being alive was even more stupid considering that I'm pretty sure he got his brain exploded by Eleven at the end of Season 1 along with the rest of his goons.

Also whole town literally has glowing red quake lines and a huge-ass portal to the hell dimension at the end of the series but they are passing it off as an earthquake? Um, fucking how? This literally should be impossible to cover up, there should be monsters pouring in through that portal like it's the Biblical deluge.

 

[ArthuriusMartyrius]

Tbh the biggest plothole was how they retconned time in the upside down. For some reason time is stuck back from when L opened the second gate (given that even though we now know when 1 was pushed through the upside down there wasn't ANY Hawkins whatsoever. I guess there's the idea that L sent 1 into a deep part of the upside down and Hawkins was constructed around it but everything seems extremely messy. I mean I give them credit because once you start messing with time in media it's almost impossible to write it consistently but they managed to screw up the time situation within a single season, which brings me back to what I was saying about how they clearly fucked up at some point but didn't have the time or options to rewrite or reshoot certain scenes so just hoped it all worked out.

There's also the issue of the season 2 ending when the Snow Ball happens and it turns upside down and we see the Snow Ball banner in the upside down, so either the snow ball coincided with that test Nancy was studying for or they just needed to retcon an excuse why there weren't any weapons in Nancy's house.

Even if we assume that the Upside Down changes every time the gate is opened, then the last recorded time period shouldn't be Season 1 but Season 3 when the Soviets activated their machine beneath Starcourt Mall.

 

[Tom Nook's Gloryhole]

Even if we assume that the Upside Down changes every time the gate is opened, then the last recorded time period shouldn't be Season 1 but Season 3 when the Soviets activated their machine beneath Starcourt Mall.

I mean technically wouldn't it be in Season 4 when Chrissy gets killed and it opens up the gate? It makes absolutely no sense why time is stuck where it was.

 

[ArthuriusMartyrius]

I mean technically wouldn't it be in Season 4 when Chrissy gets killed and it opens up the gate? It makes absolutely no sense why time is stuck where it was.

Yeah, true. Another thing that doesn't make sense is why monsters don't start pouring in the moment Vecna opens a gate into the real world by killing Chrissy. In fact, why did he even need to kill 4 victims? Just to open an even bigger gate? So? Maybe he can now open gates at will anywhere he wants? We don't know because the show doesn't explain any of this crap.

Also why are Dustin and company so focused on killing Vecna that they completely forget about the Mind Flayer? I know it's revealed at the end of the season that Vecna IS the Mind Flayer but the kids shouldn't know that yet by that point in time, they should be panicking over the fact that there are now multiple gates open all over Hawkins that the Mind Flayer can enter the real world through. But they only care about Vecna almost as though they have read the script.

 

[Tom Nook's Gloryhole]

Another thing that doesn't make sense is why monsters don't start pouring in the moment Vecna opens a gate into the real world by killing Chrissy. In fact, why did he even need to kill 4 victims? Just to open an even bigger gate? So? Maybe he can now open gates at will anywhere he wants? We don't know because the show doesn't explain any of this crap.

You know what, I completely forgot about this part. Season 1 and 2 had the only portal to the upside down being heavily safeguarded in the underground of the Energy building (bar the Demogorgan that could create portals to snatch its foes), Season 3 had the portal heavily guarded at the bottom of the mall by the Russians but all of a sudden there's 3 portals that are all open in some way or form and yet nothing is coming through. No demodogs, no bats, no demogorgans. Also them being 'open' or not is bizarre because when the police came to investigate Chrissy the hole wasn't open but when the gang came back to the trailer it was, then that portal underwater stayed open despite an entire lake of water on top of it.

Also what the fuck ever happened to glasses kid? We know he dies but there seems to be absolutely zero follow up on him and he even dies on a main road so the portal there should be incredibly obvious to everyone. His body being found would have raised the stakes on the 'Eddie is a serial killer' thing the town was going on but when the basketball player was found dead they only really mentioned him and Chrissy. I guess he'll end up in the unresolved plot threads pile that includes how Vecna managed to get his father to slice his own eyeballs out and how the KGB smuggled Hopper out of the mall.

 

[ArthuriusMartyrius]

You know what, I completely forgot about this part. Season 1 and 2 had the only portal to the upside down being heavily safeguarded in the underground of the Energy building (bar the Demogorgan that could create portals to snatch its foes), Season 3 had the portal heavily guarded at the bottom of the mall by the Russians but all of a sudden there's 3 portals that are all open in some way or form and yet nothing is coming through. No demodogs, no bats, no demogorgans. Also them being 'open' or not is bizarre because when the police came to investigate Chrissy the hole wasn't open but when the gang came back to the trailer it was, then that portal underwater stayed open despite an entire lake of water on top of it.

Also what the fuck ever happened to glasses kid? We know he dies but there seems to be absolutely zero follow up on him and he even dies on a main road so the portal there should be incredibly obvious to everyone. His body being found would have raised the stakes on the 'Eddie is a serial killer' thing the town was going on but when the basketball player was found dead they only really mentioned him and Chrissy. I guess he'll end up in the unresolved plot threads pile that includes how Vecna managed to get his father to slice his own eyeballs out and how the KGB smuggled Hopper out of the mall.

I think the implication is that Hopper was somehow blasted through the portal by the machine exploding into the failed portal that the Soviets tried to create in the Siberian facility at the start of Season 3 but still...how and why?

See, this season suffers massively from having to have everything Upside-Down-related be tied to Hawkins. The logical follow-up that would also ensure that rescuing Hopper doesn't feel like a pointless subplot is that the Soviets were also experimenting with weaponizing psychic powers and their own experiments with the Upside Down and the Mind Flayer is now trying to enter the world from Russia or even worse, Soviets are trying to weaponize the Mind Flayer and his monsters. All of a sudden, rescuing Hopper no longer feels like a side quest but something that our heroes must do on their way to get to the Soviet Union in order to stop whatever shenanigans are happening there. But because Hawkins must always be the center-piece we get some dumbass psychic serial killer plot that retcons at least a third of the previously established backstory and brings up even more plot holes.

 

[Tom Nook's Gloryhole]

I think the implication is that Hopper was somehow blasted through the portal by the machine exploding into the failed portal that the Soviets tried to create in the Siberian facility at the start of Season 3 but still...how and why?

Nope, he just falls down a ledge and is intercepted by KGB guards. He doesn't fall far enough to go through the portal and it's clear that the Russian portal is completely different from the Hawkins mall portal. Somehow this means he's transported out of the mall (despite the only exit being heavily guarded by SWAT team) put on a plane and sent to Russia.

Plus wasn't the whole reason why Alexei started the project in Hawkins down to the Russians being unable to open their own portal? They have a few cracks here and there (which I guess could explain the demodog they caught and were experimenting on) but they mentioned time and time again that the Russians were unable to get it working to where Hopper could fly through the Hawkins hole into the Russian labs.

 

[Car Won't Crank]

Yeah, true. Another thing that doesn't make sense is why monsters don't start pouring in the moment Vecna opens a gate into the real world by killing Chrissy. In fact, why did he even need to kill 4 victims? Just to open an even bigger gate? So? Maybe he can now open gates at will anywhere he wants? We don't know because the show doesn't explain any of this crap.

Also why are Dustin and company so focused on killing Vecna that they completely forget about the Mind Flayer? I know it's revealed at the end of the season that Vecna IS the Mind Flayer but the kids shouldn't know that yet by that point in time, they should be panicking over the fact that there are now multiple gates open all over Hawkins that the Mind Flayer can enter the real world through. But they only care about Vecna almost as though they have read the script.

4 is the number of death for the Chinese and Japanese so that's why it's the magic number. Basically the underground is an undead army of the fire nation that's cursed and plans to attack again since the last air bender died 10000 years ago. The curse he placed on the fire nation is finally wearing off hence the dust like particles. This is the 10000 years of pain everyone was talking about.

 

[ArthuriusMartyrius]

Nope, he just falls down a ledge and is intercepted by KGB guards. He doesn't fall far enough to go through the portal and it's clear that the Russian portal is completely different from the Hawkins mall portal. Somehow this means he's transported out of the mall (despite the only exit being heavily guarded by SWAT team) put on a plane and sent to Russia.

Plus wasn't the whole reason why Alexei started the project in Hawkins down to the Russians being unable to open their own portal? They have a few cracks here and there (which I guess could explain the demodog they caught and were experimenting on) but they mentioned time and time again that the Russians were unable to get it working to where Hopper could fly through the Hawkins hole into the Russian labs.

Huh, see I didn't think of that because A) that would be incredibly retarded considering that the US army was on scene like seconds after the machine exploded and B) the way the scenes were filmed where they show Hopper lying on the ground surrounded by Russian soldiers then immediately cut to him getting the crap beaten out of him in some Soviet prison cell implied to me that he was now in a different location post-explosion.

If I remember correctly (and I'm not sure and I certainly don't have the desire to watch any ST season more than once to check), Alexei said that they needed a location that had a strong connection to the Upside Down to keep a portal going but not to open one. But like you said, they already have demodogs and a demogorgon, plus some captured Mind Flayer smoke, so I'm not even sure if the implication is supposed to be that they have other portals outside of Hawkins.

Speaking of Alexei, I have no idea why they picked two actors who can speak Russian barely more coherently than Murray's actor to play the two most prominent Russian characters. After Season 3, where every single Russian character actually spoke coherent, non-accented Russian, was it really that hard for them to find another two actors who can also speak coherent Russian and understand English? It was especially painful when they had scenes where Enzo and Yuri speak 1-on-1 in Russian and they might as well be gargling golfing balls.

 

[DeadwastePrime]

4 is the number of death for the Chinese and Japanese so that's why it's the magic number. Basically the underground is an undead army of the fire nation that's cursed and plans to attack again since the last air bender died 10000 years ago. The curse he placed on the fire nation is finally wearing off hence the dust like particles. This is the 10000 years of pain everyone was talking about.

that explained the flying hippos

 

[Troonologist PhD]

Did anyone else think it was complete bullshit that the Mind Flayer was retconned into a complete nothingburger? Season two built it up as a terrifying eldritch horror, and season 3 and most of this one kept building it up as well. Then they subverted expectations and just had it be a puppet of a lame supervillain that never had any will of its own to begin with. I feel blueballed.

 

[Tom Nook's Gloryhole]

Did anyone else think it was complete bullshit that the Mind Flayer was retconned into a complete nothingburger? Season two built it up as a terrifying eldritch horror, and season 3 and most of this one kept building it up as well. Then they subverted expectations and just had it be a puppet of a lame supervillain that never had any will of its own to begin with. I feel blueballed.

The joke is that if it was Vecna who was planned to be the big bad all along then that introduces its own seperate bunch of issues. If they were truely looking for 1 in the beginning with the experiments then why were they sending mooks into the upside down with barely any weapons? By Season 2 they were definitely trying to contain the spread of the upside down because they didn't know how to close it, but Season 1 seemed entirely about exploring this new phenomenon without having any real clue what it was. That was the genius of Season 1, knowing that Brenner, the kids and we, the viewers had no fucking clue what was behind the door but were transfixed with how the story progressed. I could probably buy they were sowing the seeds for Vecna with Season 3 with the "He wants to show you" or whatever it was that Billy told Eleven but whatever they were sowing in Season 1 wasn't looking for a single person in the slightest (other than the missing guard, but I might be confusing that with Season 2).

They can use all the callback videos all they want but it's clear as day they're making things up as they go along from season to season and hoping that it all kinda works out. That alone isn't particularly bad (funnily enough Breaking Bad was the exact same, they didn't even know how the final episode would go at the start of the final season) but combined with them tripping up over their own internal logic just complicates things. It's not like issues like this are confined to Season 4 because even dismissing the Hopper/time issues and the underground Russian Mall from season 3, we still have one of the most ridiculous moments of all in L simply walking back through the school walls at the start of Season 2 ten minutes after the events that had just taken place because whatever, we need to have her back and can't be bothered thinking of a storyline to make it happen.

I might go back and watch Season 1 again because honestly I thought it was really enjoyable and easily the best season by leaps and bounds, just to see if any of the Vecna shit actually adds up with our newfound knowledge. I have a weird feeling it won't.

 

[Car Won't Crank]

They can use all the callback videos all they want but it's clear as day they're making things up as they go along from season to season and hoping that it all kinda works out. That alone isn't particularly bad (funnily enough Breaking Bad was the exact same, they didn't even know how the final episode would go at the start of the final season) but combined with them tripping up over their own internal logic just complicates things. It's not like issues like this are confined to Season 4 because even dismissing the Hopper/time issues and the underground Russian Mall from season 3, we still have one of the most ridiculous moments of all in L simply walking back through the school walls at the start of Season 2 ten minutes after the events that had just taken place because whatever, we need to have her back and can't be bothered thinking of a storyline to make it happen.

I might go back and watch Season 1 again because honestly I thought it was really enjoyable and easily the best season by leaps and bounds, just to see if any of the Vecna shit actually adds up with our newfound knowledge. I have a weird feeling it won't.

This is show is suffering from the same storytelling issues Attack on Titan suffers from.

 

[Soycast Guy]

Men can’t be friends anymore. They must be gay.

https://www.vulture.com/article/stranger-things-4-finale-did-will-byers-come-out.html

 

[Tom Nook's Gloryhole]

The girl power angle went to absurd lengths here to make Nancy even remotely useful, including cucking Steve out of his hero moments.

My hunch is that they originally wanted to kill off Steve this season but chickened out so instead ended up writing in Eddie as a Steve stand in (hence why Dustin had so many scenes with him) which inevitably left Steve with no real plotlines other than that retarded love triangle with Nancy and Jonathan and his only stand out dialogue this season was the cringefest in the forest about wanting Nancy to shit out 6 of his kids.

Eddie was always going to die the moment he was introduced and implicated in the murders because there's no undoing that once the entire town thinks he's responsible, although I still laughed at how fucking pointless his death actually was (he was within walking distance of the trailer and decided to start swinging at bats with a fucking SPEAR), like all he had to do was run and distract the bats and that would have been that. He literally chose to fight in the worst fight or flight decision of his entire life.

Funnily enough that's just made me think of another plot point that hasn't been discussed yet: How did the gang get back from the upside down? All four of the portals were seemingly trashed by Vecna opening his gate so was the whole point of Max in a coma simply to reclose the gates to give them enough time to leave and THEN have her die? But even still, those houses are burnt to a crisp, there's no way it's safe to actually come back out through those portals. Also didn't Eddie cut the rope that would have let them come back?

 

[MadStan]

The first 3 seasons was the same shit told 3 times loaded with smack-you-in-the-head nostalgia and foreshadowing that was ghastly. Season 1 great. Season 2 & 3 was season 1 told differently.

I started watching the 4th season and could instantly see this was like the writers of GOT in the 5th 6th and 7th season coming up with whatever to keep it going.

Pass.

 

[I (Don't) Have A Gun]

Men can’t be friends anymore. They must be gay.

https://www.vulture.com/article/stranger-things-4-finale-did-will-byers-come-out.html

Stranger things is a show that had a good concept... for a single season.
The problem with season 2 onwards (beyond how formulaic it is) seems to be that they keep needing to find things for their characters to do while at the same time constantly adding new characters to try and keep the group dynamics fresh and introduce new character arcs.

If what's his face wasn't suddenly gay what would he have done this season? Nothing, he'd just be sitting in the pizza van... well the difference now is that he has himself a little cry in the pizza van instead... ok that's still so not much of a difference, but hey I'm sure some demographics in the fanbase loved it.

 

[Der weiße Teufel]

I'm just glad that no one was singing this time. The Metallica bat fight was bearable, I guess.
It was entertaining overall, though (as plenty of others said) the Russia plot was dragging and annoying. Also the plot holes and rather predictable dialogue. I rewatched season 1 recently and while S4 is watchable, the whole show just went off the rails somewhere, maybe it's the curse of popularity or too much budget. S1 was so good at building suspense and intrigue and using the 80s setting without being all "see what we did here?" It also didn't need a 2+ hours "finale".

I still laughed at how fucking pointless his death actually was (he was within walking distance of the trailer and decided to start swinging at bats with a fucking SPEAR), like all he had to do was run and distract the bats and that would have been that. He literally chose to fight in the worst fight or flight decision of his entire life.

100% agreed.

 

[Car Won't Crank]

I'm just glad that no one was singing this time. The Metallica bat fight was bearable, I guess.
It was entertaining overall, though (as plenty of others said) the Russia plot was dragging and annoying. Also the plot holes and rather predictable dialogue. I rewatched season 1 recently and while S4 is watchable, the whole show just went off the rails somewhere, maybe it's the curse of popularity or too much budget. S1 was so good at building suspense and intrigue and using the 80s setting without being all "see what we did here?" It also didn't need a 2+ hours "finale".


100% agreed.

I bet you the Metallica bat fight was inspired by the game Brutal Legend.

 

[JimiHendrix]

season 4 was significantly better than season 3.

the upside down "invading" the real world was an obvious final step for the show, but I assumed that when the gate was opened, six gorillion demons would immediately flood out. so the fact the show skipped 48 hours ahead and people are just mildly inconvenienced was really funny. don't know what the fuck that was about. did I forget a step they need before they can bust in or