A supersized Season 4 over delivers in every possible way
BY: JACOB POLITTE
Managing Editor
Stranger Things | Season 4
Release Dates: 5/27/22 and 7/1/22
All 9 Episodes Now Streaming On Netflix
“Stranger Things” finds itself in a precarious position every season. The children on screen age considerably while the story only moves along a few months or years at a time (largely due to the fact that the seasons aren’t released for years at a time), and after a while it’s hard to suspend that kind of disbelief.
But while the charm of cute kids acting in a hit series has definitely worn off, the Duffer Brothers make up for it each season by constructing episodes of television that rival anything ever put on a screen. Stranger Things 4 is no exception, and the series expands its boundaries far beyond Hawkins, Indiana, while making sure the series maintains its rich, small town feel. There’s not one single interaction that feels forced, and almost everything in the series feels organic.
Perhaps the only real determinant is the length of the season overall. The last few episodes specifically have movie-length runtimes, and it can get a bit exhausting to binge-watch. But despite that, not a minute of this season feels wasted.
Stranger Things 4 largely follows four major plotlines. Surprisingly, the central character of the season is Max Mayfield (played by actress Sadie Sink). Her grief and sadness that carried over from the death of her brother in the previous season allows her to be a potential victim for Vecna, the newest (and arguably most frightening) monster to haunt Hawkins. She spends a large part of the season fighting him off, and Sink’s incredible acting is nothing short of astonishing to watch.
Max is in the most jeopardy throughout the season, which considering what Eleven (Milley Bobby Brown) is going through, really says a lot. After the “death” of her “dad” Hopper, Eleven was relocated with the Bryer family to California. Going by the name Jane, Eleven struggles to adjust to life with her powers and Hopper, and lies to her boyfriend Mike (Finn Wolfhard) even when he flies out to visit. She is relentlessly bullied by her classmates, including Angela (Elodie Grace Orkin), who she later assaults with a skating boot. All of this becomes a moot point when government agents start to hunt her down, and Sam Owens (Paul Reiser) steps back in to help her escape and get her powers back… with the help of the long presumed dead Dr. Martin Brenner (Matthew Modine).
The Brenner/Eleven dynamic takes center stage once again for the majority of the season, in both the past and present. More than any other arc this season, it helps to recontextualize and simplify the series’ overall mythology, and ends in a satisfying, definitive manner.
One of the season’s other major plots involves the reappearance of Jim Hopper, Eleven’s surrogate dad that actually survived the events of Season 3’s “mall fire” (which was, of course, actually the destruction of a secret underground Russian science lab). Hopper is taken to a Russian prison and held there with seemingly no hope of escape, until a corrupt guard helps get a message to Joyce (Winona Ryder) in California. Joyce gets Murray (Brett Gelman) involved, and the two stowaway on a plane to get Hopper back. Of course, hijinks ensue. While it totally feels different to everything Stranger Things has represented to this point, it’s often an interesting, engaging diversion that does loop around and connect with the main story near the end of the season.
Overall, Stranger Things 4 does a masterful job setting the table for the series’ final season, whenever that may arrive. It introduces interesting and pivotal new characters, incorporates different and spectacular locations and ends on one hell of a cliffhanger.
Rating: 5/5 Demogorgons
