Stranger Things Season 5. Vol. 1: Same old bloat

Stranger Things, Netflix’s first blockbuster TV show, returned for its final season last week, nine years after the series premiered in 2016. The first four (of eight) episodes dropped simultaneously as “volume 1”, depicting events set in 1987, nearly four years to the day since the events of the first season. If title cards and actual dialogue within the show did not make it clear, you will never know this, as the young actors making up the core cast of Stranger Things are now in their twenties and fully look it. It makes suspension of disbelief difficult and begs the question why series creators and showrunners, adult twins Matt and Ross Duffer, didn’t just write in a ten-year time jump and set the final season in the 1990s. It would work as an homage to It, and the grown-ass appearance of their core cast. 

Anyway, it’s now November 1987, eighteen months since the events of the previous season, and life continues in Hawkins, Indiana, despite a giant metal seam holding their town together and an ongoing military occupation shaping their lives. The kids (“kids”) pretend to be in high school, but their main purpose is planning and executing “crawls” in which they send Hopper (David Harbour) into the Upside Down to hunt for Vecna, who has disappeared. Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) is also officially missing, though her friends know she is just hiding in the woods, training relentlessly to confront Vecna once he is found. 

The first half of season five does not fix any of the existing problems of Stranger Things. The cast is still so enormous that no character is well served through development, the plot is so complicated there is no time to let any moment linger, several characters obviously should have been killed off or moved out of town long ago, having absolutely nothing of relevance to do. Mike Wheeler’s baby sister is kidnapped this season, and he STILL makes no meaningful contribution to the story. It’s nothing against Finn Wolfhard, he is doing his best, but he can’t do much when the writing simply isn’t there. Ditto for David Harbour, whose plot armor is so thick he's basically walking around in a Kevlar suit of writing, prolonging Hopper’s role in the story even though they’re on his like, fourth fake death scene.

This is a show about nothing, at this point, even nominal themes about coming of age have been abandoned. It’s basically a hangout show with monsters, but Stranger Things lucks out with its amazingly likeable, charismatic cast. If all we’re doing is hanging out with these people, at least it’s a good hang. And it IS a good hang, even if half the characters have nothing to do (shout out Jonathan Byers!), it’s still fun to watch the monster squad tool around town and try to save Hawkins—which, frankly, doesn’t really seem worth saving at this point—from either Vecna, the military, or the Russians, depending on the plot point. 

Season five is so action-forward, it’s mostly possible to ignore the lack of emotional grounding, clear motivation, or consistent tone and just roll with the quick pace and absorb the action beats. The main action revolves around the disappearance of Holly Wheeler (Nell Fisher), who has been aged up for the needs of this storyline. Now about ten, Holly is a cute kid who likes bright colors, and Vecna singles her out for reasons. She disappears almost four years to the day of Will Byers’ disappearance in 1983. What is Vecna up to? It’s the sole driving purpose of season five so far.

Speaking of Will Byers, Noah Schnapp is once again called upon to provide some kind of stable center for the show. Early on, that role belonged to Eleven, but she can no longer anchor the story because she is too much of a Special Child/Chosen One. El has simply become a plot convenience, her powers allowing her to do, or not do, whatever the writers need in the moment. El is so far gone down the contrivance trap, she is barely even a character anymore, which is a waste of Brown’s talent. Her performance is one note, because the writing is one note, and you can feel Brown trying to make more of it, but the writing simply is not there. 

Schnapp, however, gets a bump from Will’s ongoing queer realization, which allows him to play different emotional beats that give Will some levels throughout the four episodes. Will is one of the very few characters with any kind of arc, and he ably carries what little emotional thrust Stranger Things has left. Schnapp really deserves credit for holding as much of this show together as he does, especially saddled with an incredibly stupid plot twist right at the end of episode four. (I’m staying away from spoilers for now, but we WILL be discussing this later.)

On the one hand, Stranger Things is incredibly frustrating because season one works almost perfectly as an enclosed, one-off story, yet we are now five seasons deep in what is a hopelessly convoluted plot and a show about nothing. Stranger Things was simply never meant to expand beyond its first season, and season five shows all the strain of haphazard storytelling driven not by themes but by necessity—it’s a story on life support. It doesn’t mean the show is unwatchable, it is, in fact, very watchable thanks to the cast. It’s just exasperating watching such a talented ensemble cast endlessly tread narrative water for the sake of prolonging Netflix’s cash cow. 

Stranger Things season 5, vol. 1, is now streaming exclusively on Netflix. Vol. 2 premieres on December 25, 2025, and the series finale on December 31, 2025.