Nine and a half years after it premiered on Netflix, Stranger Things concluded its fifth and final season last night. With a massive cast that has accrued over the course of its run, the series writers had a real challenge in front of them to tie everything up. There are some fundamental flaws in the writing of season five but it has some new ideas I appreciated and provided viewers with a satisfying conclusion for many favourite characters.
As I've noted in previous seasons, episodes not written by the Duffer Brothers, the series creators, tend to dip in quality significantly and the brothers are forced to do awkward cleanup in subsequent episodes. A prime example in season five is episode six, written by Kate Trefry, in which it is revealed that a character who had clearly died somehow did not and woke up in the hospital with minimal injuries. This character then manages to foil some monsters with a propane tank in a washing machine in an extremely improbable way.
In the subsequent episode, the brothers had a lot of other plot stuff to handle and they had to address this character's survival and what it means to the other characters. We don't get any explanation for how the character survived and Mike describes it as a "miracle" with a touch of, I think, meta-irony.
There's a lot of disjointed weirdness throughout the season but I really liked the subplot about Holly (Nell Fisher) and Derek (Jake Connelly). Their being trapped in Vecna's dream realm was a nice, paranoid fantasy. It kind of reminded me of an anime series called The Promised Neverland. Derek was the most interesting character this season and I liked how the show successfully made him come across as a real junior high school bully who's slowly turning over a new leaf--and then he has to navigate the complex and difficult situation in the dream house.
I felt like most of the original characters had had their arcs completed a season or two earlier so their plots this season didn't pack much of a punch for me. I did like that the Dungeons and Dragons references this season were to D&D modules I was actually interested in which I was a kid in the '80s and '90s, Ravenloft and Dragonlance. Maybe this will inject some life into plans to make one of those into shows or movies. D&D recently came under new ownership so there has been talk of new hope for some of their older properties.
Stranger Things is available on Netflix.