Stranger Things has finally got its mojo back

The 4th season takes us back to the 1st

Stranger Things surprised everyone when it debuted six years ago. It had a mixture of endearing kids, 80s references, and otherworldly action. The first season was heavily a mystery show: what happened to be the boy that disappeared?

And the mystery kept us going back, but the children's chemistry and lightness cemented this tv show as a fan favorite.

The children in Stranger Things are the real revelation. And yet, a whopping 1,213 actors—906 boys and 307 girls—auditioned for the parts of Eleven, Mike, and the rest. Among them, a certain Gaten Matarazzo immediately caught the eye of the Duffer brothers.

“As soon as we saw Gaten, who plays Dustin, we pretty much cast him through the audition tape he sent over. When you see someone like Gaten, who bursts the screen like he does, you say to yourself, 'This kid, we need him on the show, there's no doubt about it,'" Matt Duffer told The New York Times.

Nevertheless, it wasn't the fact that those kids were growing up that made Stranger Things start to drag out over the years. The former seasons have simply lacked some of the show’s flavor.

It lost its element of mystery, which is fine. Different seasons of television series might experiment with several genres. Some shows excel at this.

Its resemblance to actual events, in my opinion, was what it lost the most of. The first season focused a lot on how a mother and a small village dealt with a child being missing. A somewhat relatable topic. It also revolved around the Montauk Project conspiracy, according to which the US government reportedly kept testing children during the Cold War. Eleven, in the story, is one of those.

As opposed to making the monsters only a part of the show, Stranger Things started to focus more and more on the supernatural. The realness that made the earlier one engaging is utterly eclipsed by the supernatural elements. Kids battling monsters became the sole focus of the show.

A Netflix show

Every streaming service has a single program that drives the majority of its subscription growth. For instance, for Disney+ it was Mandalorian. The immense success of Stranger Things has allowed Netflix to thrive for years.

But Netflix different from many media giants has a known difficulty in keeping a show for many seasons. If they are not promptly canceled after the first season or two, the majority of them drastically deteriorate in quality.

Stranger Things suffered as well. I particularly disliked season 3. Mainly for 3. reasons:

1. The monsters. The series completely lost itself to include the upside-down monsters in the narrative. The explanations for all the monsters just got more complex and started to make less and less sense. It seemed that they just needed the action and found ways of doing so, not so cleverly so.

2. Hopper. Something that really bothered me and others, is how much they changed Hopper’s character. Hopper in season 3 was completely annoying and out of his character. They tried making him one of those snarky macho 80's cops from action movies, which was completely out of touch.

3. Eleven. She became a normal teenager that worried about clothes and boys, which is a little more ok than Hopper’s transformation, but still. This girl grew up as a human guinea pig in a laboratory. She was taken from her mother and had to fight ugly giant monsters. I don't think you can simply not be scarred for life. Or at least, much more awkward.

Season 4

Stranger Things 4 feels as though the Duffer Brothers (Stranger Things writers) have finally re-watched the first season again and tried to continue it. Following through with the show's characters and what attracted people to it.

The relationship between D&D and the underworld was revived. It also demonstrates the genuine worry that parents had at this time that D&D was a demonic game.

They seemed to have fixed Eleven who is now a broken girl with difficulties in socializing. Which makes far more sense. And while Hopper is in such a strange circumstance that we are unable to assess how he is behaving, he still appears to be a lot more like Hopper from season one than from season three.

This season even paid homage to the first one with the scene of the four kids riding their bikes on a dark road and other easter eggs.

Even with all the strange monsters, Stranger Things appears more grounded and approachable now. With a hunted house and all, it also parodies horror films, playing with different genera in a fun way.

It come back to the laboratory where Eleven was kept and we finally got to learn more about it. Something that always bothered me about Stranger Things is how they are never giving much information to explain this world and what has happened to the public.

There are still more episodes to come, so this season can still be ruined. But, so far, so good.

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What to read?

Carrie (Stephen King). The Duff Brothers referenced a variety of movies, tv, shows, and books on Stranger Things, but they said that Stephen King was a major influence on its creation. Carrie's story revolves around Carrie White, a friendless, bullied high-school girl from an abusive religious family who uses her newly discovered telekinetic powers to take revenge on those who torment her.

There are also some lists around with books like Stranger Things to read.

What to watch?

The Goonies. Stranger Things is famous for playing on many movie references, one of them being The Goonies - including having the main actor and once child-star Sean Astin, now playing the adorkable Bob in seasons one and two.

This Steven Spielberg's children classic is on Netflix but will be taken out in mid-July, so watch it while you can.

What to binge?

Dark also starts out with the search in a small town for a child that disappeared. But this time, in Germany. And just like Stranger Things, the kid was not dead, only stuck somewhere else that was unreachable for most.

But Dark is not a common mystery or supernatural horror story. The three seasons are well-thought and make sense. It's truly a trilogy and not an afterthought as most second and third seasons usually are. This keeps you coming back to trying to make sense of what happened, connecting different characters and multiple timelines.