This text comprises spoilers for “Stranger Issues” season 5, episode 1 — “Chapter One: The Crawl.”
Keep in mind that wild cliffhanger ending of “Stranger Issues” season 4, half 2? You would be forgiven for being hazy on the main points — in spite of everything, it was nicely over three years in the past. Within the climactic moments of the season finale (titled “Chapter 9: The Piggyback”), a chasm opens in Hawkins, permitting the Upside Right down to enter our world. What’s extra, Will Byers (Noah Schnapp) realizes that Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower) is not executed but, regardless of the villain’s obvious fiery demise.
With a setup like that, absolutely the present’s ultimate season can be a “Jurassic World: Dominion” sort scenario the place the creatures of the Upside Down are stalking the conventional world? Or maybe a smaller-scale invasion that gives an applicable backdrop for the present’s grande finale? Because it seems, nope. The “Stranger Issues” season 5 premiere (“Chapter One: The Crawl”) does the seemingly unattainable by simply up and restoring the established order.
Granted, there are some modifications to what was earlier than. Chunks of Hawkins are nonetheless in ruins and the entire space is below gated army quarantine. Nonetheless, the day-to-day life is happening, with folks going to high school and work per common. There are even people within the city who do not appear to concentrate on the Upside Down’s horrors in any respect. If I am being trustworthy, the entire thing smells like a ploy to maintain the present’s “regular small city with horrible issues lurking on the background” motif intact for one final trip. Even the present’s personal characters do not actually appear to purchase the way in which the present duct-tapes the established order again collectively after a wholesale dimensional invasion, seeing as Robin (Maya Hawke) particularly refers back to the metallic strip overlaying the chasm as a band-aid.
Stranger Issues season 5 desires to be the small city present that it was, nevertheless it’s advanced into one thing totally different
I get that “Stranger Issues” desires to take the premise that made it well-known for one final spin. It is simply that to be able to stay a small city supernatural thriller, it has to leap by so many hoops to undo its personal world-building that it is simply not plausible anymore.
For its first three seasons, the present managed to present us a collection of ever-escalating variations of the “youngsters vs. Upside Down monsters” theme, however the globe-trotting fourth season raised the stakes. Like the remainder of “Stranger Issues” season 4, half 2, “The Piggyback” was an epic, overstuffed factor with massive emotional moments, and the issues it teased for the present’s future had been probably world-changing, “Hell on Earth” stuff. In opposition to that backdrop, ready over three years to see the Upside Down invasion casually flip into yet one more installment of the patented “the federal government has a portal into an evil dimension, and our heroes have to determine what to do” state of affairs is a bitter tablet to swallow.
Maybe the present will be capable to flip this into a bonus, beginning with a comparative sluggish burn earlier than escalating into the type of utter mayhem “The Piggyback” promised us. However even when that seems to be the case, placing a short lived cork on the invasion that the present already explicitly teased looks like a little bit of a cop-out.
“Stranger Issues” season 5, quantity 1 is streaming on Netflix.
