Ten years after the original season of “Stranger Things” was released, Season 5 arrived just in time for the holidays. A lot of people have now grown up watching Stranger Things, including myself, and it’s been crazy to watch the franchise grow. This series finale finally concludes the unending battle between Mike, Lucas, Will, Dustin, and El and Vecna.
The season starts by showing the mark Vecna left on the town of Hawkins after Season 4. Vecna split Hawkins, and military officials took over and quarantined its residents. Max Mayfield (Sadie Sink) is in a coma, recovering from Vecna’s last attack. It’s a dark way to set up the season finale, if you ask me.
But then comes the beloved character and radio host of The Squawk radio station, Rockin’ Robin (Maya Hawke), lightening up Hawkins with her undeniably great taste in 80s pop music, accompanied by Steve Harrington (Joe Keery).
The party has been conducting missions they call “crawls” in order to locate Vecna and finally kill him. After 30 “crawl” attempts, Hopper (David Harbour) investigates the Upside Down with the help of the others behind the backs of military officials, but Vecna is still nowhere to be found. Instead, military officials believe that Eleven is behind everything, sending search parties around Hawkins to locate her.
Overall, Vol. 1 of the finale is filled with many unexpected events and definitely keeps the audience on the edge of their seats, at least it did for me. I’ve seen a decent amount of backlash with the characters “not being the same” as they used to be, which is understandable to an extent; however, what most viewers aren’t accounting for is the fact that they have gone through several traumatic events, and this is compounded by the fact that they’ve also undergone significant character development.
If you’re into some good sci-fi horror with a side of 80’s culture, I highly recommend watching the show entirely. Sure, some of the characters might seem to lack character building on behalf of the Duffer brothers (all the main characters having insane plot armour). Nonetheless, it has a great storyline that has not once failed to keep me hooked.
