16 burning questions before Stranger Things returns
The penultimate season of Netflix's hit series arrives next week. We're hoping for answers about the Upside Down, Will Byers' bangs, and more
TV Features Stranger Things
There’s so much to dissect when it comes to Stranger Things. Netflix’s big-budget sci-fi blockbuster returns for the first half of its fourth season on May 27. But it’s been a long road because season three aired in the summer of 2019, leaving multiple cliffhangers in its wake, including the maybe-we’re-not-quite-sure death of Chief Jim Hopper (David Harbour). Luckily, we quickly got confirmation that Hopper is, in fact, alive—if not necessarily well—and in Russian captivity.
While that was sort of answered, there are several more crucial questions after the finale, “The Battle of Starcourt.” Heck, the season four trailer only adds to the list. So The A.V. Club is breaking them all down, asking how the Duffer Brothers might resolve Stranger Things’ mysteries, yes, but also whether the show is still as big a deal as it once was. One thing is for certain, though: The number of queries will only increase during the wait for season 4B, which drops on July 1.
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16. Has the three-year break between seasons crushed the enthusiasm for Stranger Things?For me, a little bit. I’m still interested in seeing it but Netflix breaking it into two parts is why I’ve lost my enthusiasm from previous seasons.
I lost interest a little bit each season, now because of the break I find myself not super interested. I know Covid was at fault, I just hope others aren’t loosing interest.
i’m going to have to go back & watch the whole thing from the beginning. i’m an old with no memory.
“At no fault of Millie Bobby Brown’s, Hawkins’ former Eggo-eating savior
has been a one-note nightmare for much of the series—playing out a
wild-child-enters-society storyline that saw her sci-fi powers routinely
double in strength”This is technically a sentence buuut….
Yikes.
That is the sentence equivalent of those AI generated images of nonsense.
What does it all mean?!
I think Will’s haircut is avant-garde. He’s obviously a fan of comedian Emo Philips who (at least in the 1980s) wore a similar bob cut.
Wait that isn’t Andy Dick?
As someone who regularly rocked that Will haircut, I can tell you that the answer is “his mom cuts his hair and doesn’t know what she’s doing and he doesn’t care about it enough to tell her to stop”.
My mom tried to do that once back in the ‘80s, from that time until I was like 14 I just had her buzz cut me down to fuzz.
I’m really amused by how everyone seems utterly horrified by the haircuts everyone’s rocking this season. Like, have they ever seen a photograph from the eighties?
All the girls would have tall hair with ridiculous amounts of hairspray if they were to be accurate. Look at any yearbook from the time.
I would be happy to learn more about the other kids that were experimented on by the government, but the response to the Kali episode was so overwhelmingly negative that I suspect we don’t. (I liked it okay)
The problem with that episode is that it was just so out of place and unnecessary. They probably would have been better off like, showing little snippets of her and her story throughout the season and eventually just have her and Eleven randomly come across each other instead of just dedicating an entire episode to “Eleven randomly goes on a Chicago adventure!” lol.
This isn’t the final season. Season 5 has been ordered and is in production now. That will be the final season.
“obviously full-grown adults” The actors of the main group range in age from about 17-20, that’s still plenty young enough to pass as a high-school senior, if not exactly the right age, so why explain it? Maybe it’s just me, I think anyone under 30 looks like a kid.
Noah Schnapp and Millie Bobby Brown are both 18, Caleb McLaughlin is the oldest actor of the “kids” at 21, take a year off of everyone to account for filming dates vs. release, it’s fine.
I do think it would be cool if they skipped to college for the final season. They could do lots of eighties college cliches. We’d eat that shit up.
It’s bit cheesy because they’re only supposed to be 15-16 (Season 4 takes place three years after Season 1, when they were 12) but it’s not the worst. Sex Education has actors ranging from 23 to 29 playing 16 and 17-year-olds (although in that show’s case, there’s at least an explanation why they’ve cast waaaaay older than the characters).
Also, well, the onslaught of puberty was always an inevitability and Stranger Things wasn’t the only thing hit by COVID delays. This one’s really just real life being a pain in the ass, at some point you’ve just got to shrug and let it go.
I mean, I feel like there’s a pretty easy explanation for why the kids no longer look like kids: puberty. I know I certainly didn’t look the same at 12 as I did at 16. Maybe I’m crazy, though.
I think the big problem most people (that have a problem with it) have is that they used to be like 13 playing 12, and now they’re like 20 playing 14.
I’m going to be this annoying person but a correct for question 1. I re-watched season three last weekend and Eleven doesn’t actually beat the monster and save the world again at the end. She’d lost her powers before that. It was Joyce who shut down the portal to the Upside Down and the monster died because it lost its connection to the Mind Flayer.
Hot Take:That little Black girl got old after about 15 minutes. Bring back the Invisibles.
I’m just hoping Hopper finds Barb in Russia and brings her back with him.
Didn’t they already state she’s for sure dead?
16. Has the three-year break between seasons crushed the enthusiasm for Stranger Things?Are you insane? We’re all more pent up than a virgin on prom night.
My hope is that Max floating means she is getting powers like Eleven. The series went on for too long with only one character with superpowers. You had Dustin rocking the wrist-rocket in season one and Steve with a Bat in two, but they really needed an additional magic-user in the party dealing damage so they aren’t all just hiding from the monsters during the battle scenes.
I’m down for more people with powers showing up, but Max getting them would honestly be kind of bullshit.Like what, she just found the powers Eleven lost? All the shit Eleven and the other kids (and their parents?) went through for these powers to develop in the ones that actually survived everything was completely meaningless? If someone is randomly getting powers, why is it her and not the kid who’s spent most of the show being tortured by the shadow monster/mindflayer/whatever and actually has some plausible reason for it?So…nah lol. It better be Eleven or someone else floating her in an intentional misdirect.
17. Why does it burn when I pee?
Presumably you are making a reference to a STD, but I prefer to believe you are suggesting a better reboot of Firestarter than the one we got. Instead, shady government experiments yields a child who pees lighter fluid.
That’s a super power I would rock.
6. With all due respect, if Billy Hargrove does come back, will he be hot hot…or Upside Down hot?I’m confounded, by this question, but I shouldn’t be. The fact that this racist piece of shit is popular says a lot…
Yeah, he “redeemed” himself by dying; let’s leave it at that, okay? He abused his sister and was a bully. Enough.
Yeah, I’m super-confused by the inference that he was ever “hot”. He played an 80’s asshole creep. He was never “hot” so this phrasing is both dumb AND confusing.
14. If it were set in 1996 rather than 1986, that haircut would’ve been in style (or at least as close to “in style” as it’s ever been.
Hopper may have been a dick in Season 3, but I can’t help but suspect that being stuck in a Soviet labour camp will probably have been sufficient karmic rebalancing for what were ultimately some fairly period-relevant toxic masculinity vibes.
I really want to see David Harbour emerging from his Russian prison cell wearing his Red Guardian outfit from “Black Widow.”
There’s no way, in mid 80’s rural Indiana, you’re gonna go around rocking a “hellfire club” t-shirt for long, before the town pearl clutchers and elders have sit downs with your parents and shut it off.
They still look like high schoolers to me. Smart money is on some kinda time jump at some point.
!!!!!ENOUGH WITH THE EFF’ING SLIDE SHOWS!!!!!