Stranger Things Season 4 Wraps with a Satisfying but Safe, Action-Heavy Conclusion

With the final two episodes of Stranger Things Season 4 now landed, we can finally dig into the full legacy of the season. The first seven episodes of the season were a frightening but bloated return that well-explored the series’ lore. The final episodes wrap to a satisfying conclusion, with some stunning emotional performances and great action sequences. It suffers from some oddly missed opportunities, but with it opening the rhetorical floodgates widely for Season 5 there will be plenty of opportunities to remedy this moving forward. Ultimately, it’s a satisfying wrap for a strong season.

We pick back up with the crew desperately seeking to thwart enemies both human and once human. Nancy, Steve, and that gang have a plan to take on Vecna once and for all—clear a path to him (using Dustin and Eddie as bait), distract him while he’s in a trance, and kill him. It’s a complex multi-part plan that will see a number of our favorite characters deep in the heart of danger.

Meanwhile Hopper, Joyce and crew are trying to get out of Soviet Russia, only to pivot back and try and finish off the myriad Upside Down beasties that have infiltrated the Russian prison site. Finally, Eleven must escape a military swarmed research facility with Mike, Will, and friends, and she finds a way to aid the fight against Vecna/One on the supernatural plane.

It’s a wonderfully action-heavy set up with real consequences at season’s end, and some of the best action sequences in the series’ history. The sequence with newcomer Eddie and Dustin, for example is literally metal and an absolute blast. Eleven restores her inner badass against a variety of enemies in some properly killer episode. Max embraces her inner boldness, Will comes very close to forthright personal revelation, and the final fight against Vecna is riveting and electric in a mind-hopping, multi-pronged attack that reveals quite a bit about his role in our history with the mysterious Upside-Down.

Some of the cast get absolutely stellar material this season. Millie Bobby Brown and Sadie Sink easily put in two of their finest performances in the series so far. Brown’s struggle through her traumatic past is handled with empathy and concluded in a satisfying way. Max’s embrace of her fate (and Sadie’s portrayal of the character’s frightened bravery) is truly impressive. Also notable is Noah Schnapp’s Will, who finally gets strong material after spending much of the season in the background (and he’s set up for a more important role in Season 5).

The final two episodes somewhat solve one major problem in the series’ first episodes, in that the widely separated characters and their respective storylines are better handled the closer they come to reuniting in purpose and geography. It’s been a bloated season, but when the action really hits it feels more streamlined in focus and pace. At the same time, the pacing in the final two feature-length episodes isn’t even… the eighth episode feels like a long set up for a showdown rather than a satisfying episode in its own right.

While it’s spread a little less thinly, the season’s end still has far too many characters to feel unitary and pointed, and the Duffers still seem a little hesitant to axe major legacy characters once and for all. It would be a heart wrenching surprise, honestly, that would show that the stakes are high and no one is safe… and they’re unwilling so far to commit to that choice. As a consequence, some of the intensity in an otherwise strong conclusion is blunted.

The season’s end does bring the danger into the heart of Hawkins in a way that promises a very dangerous Season 5, which is great. At the same time, there are some threads that are missed opportunities to raise tension. For example, the final episodes make use of the long-teased army of armed townie highschoolers, and there are plenty of opportunities where they could add dangerous variables to the fight against Vecna OR the Upside Down could pour into our world and they join the fight. Somehow neither of these things happened and the entire plotline somewhat fizzles.

The biggest issue overall is one that hopefully gets resolved in Season 5, and that’s how limited our view of the Upside-Down’s ecosystem still is. The Demogorgon is a wonderful and deadly creature, for example, and the Mind Flayer is a frightening cosmic terror. This season made great use of new flying monsters, but at the same time the Upside-Down is a conceptual blank check to develop an entire bestiary of nightmare-inducing creatures. That check still remains inexplicably blank.S With the setup being an evident opened door to the Upside-Down invading our realm, it seems somewhat unlikely we’ll get a better development than we have. Here’s to hoping the floodgates open wider in the series’ final season.

Stranger Things’ Season 4 ends with a strong, action-heavy conclusion and some of the most memorable scenes since Season 1. It gives series-best performance opportunities for Brown, Sink, and others, and the weaving of the disparate plotlines and locations is most successfully handled here. It’s a strong conclusion. On the other hand, there are still some bafflingly missed opportunities that blunt its emotional potential and tension. Nonetheless, it’s a fairly satisfying season ender that directly connects to what we can expect from Season 5, so there are plenty of opportunities to cash these in in the future.

Stranger Things’ full fourth season is now available on NetflixNFLX
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