After four seasons of serial disappearances, gruesome murders, and a litany of monsters terrorizing their town, the residents of Hawkins, Indiana, the fictional setting of Netflix‘s Stranger Things, have proven impressively resilient. For reasons either sentimental or suicidal, they simply refuse to relocate. Their stubbornness echoes the indomitable American spirit former President Ronald Reagan invoked when he said, “If we lose freedom here, there’s nowhere to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth.”
In the much-anticipated final season, we return to find that Hawkins’s residents can’t leave. Following the catastrophic breach between their world and the Upside Down, the town has been quarantined by an opaque, curiously well-funded military apparatus that insists the air is poisonous. Though series creators the Duffer Brothers do not advertise their political views, we can draw our own conclusions from the fact that the final season centers on their protagonists sleuthing around state-mandated lockdowns and whispering conspiracies about clandestine government motives.
Season Five also restores what the show lost during its more geographically sprawled fourth season: the boys’ camaraderie. Mike Wheeler (Finn Wolfhard), Will Byers (Noah Schnapp), Dustin Henderson (Gaten Matarazzo), and Lucas Sinclair (Caleb McLaughlin) are together again — older, wearier, but closer. We have watched them progress from basement-dwelling misfits obsessed with Dungeons & Dragons into adolescents navigating puberty, Yoko Ono–adjacent relationship friction with Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown), and even interstate separation when Will moves to California.
The heart of Stranger Things has always been found in their fellowship — boys on bikes, devising plans, solving mysteries with walkie-talkies, and forming the kind of analog childhood bond that feels almost antiquated in today’s iPad adolescence. This season appreciably returns to that form.
The Duffer Brothers’ influence is, as ever, festooned across the narrative. There’s a newly erected wall in the Upside Down that evokes Game of Thrones, there are clandestine radio codes that recall The Last of Us, and Will’s monomyth echoes Harry Potter‘s chosen-one arc. Yet the Duffer Brothers channel these references with an idiosyncratic frequency that remains distinctively Stranger Things. My favorite element endures: the cross-cut problem-solving, with characters scattered across disparate scenes, inching toward solutions that converge in the finale like gears in a Swiss watch.
One such moment involves Steve Harrington (Joe Keery) hacking pieces off a van in a desperate attempt to lighten the load and outrun a Demogorgon. Dustin, ever the lateral thinker, suggests simply relocating the tracking antenna onto Steve’s 7-series BMW instead. It’s a throwaway scene, but the kind that reminds you Dustin is destined for Stanford Business School should Hawkins ever return to normalcy.
But for all the children’s ingenuity, the writing occasionally indulges in baffling laziness. The makeshift military compound, which houses a lab and a menagerie of captive Demogorgons and Mind Flayers, appears to have learned nothing from the previous four seasons of carnage. The soldiers remain embarrassingly unaware that Demogorgons are largely immune to automatic rifle fire, yet terrified of fire. This new branch of the U.S. military is strategically upstaged by a squad of high schoolers who, in one of the season’s standout sequences, rig a Home Alone-style series of traps to ensnare a Demogorgon with more competence than anything Uncle Sam’s big-budget brigade manages to muster.
Vecna, or Henry, the show’s overarching villain revealed last season, is still very much at large. A self-styled communist revolutionary, he believes that capitalism, through clocks and workdays, has enslaved humans. Like any communist revolutionary, he decides to ameliorate things by murdering innocent people.
Alongside friendship and courage, Stranger Things has always foregrounded family. One of the season’s most unexpectedly affecting scenes features Karen Wheeler (Cara Buono) shielding her daughter from a towering Demogorgon, armed with nothing but an emptied chardonnay bottle, which she smashes into a makeshift shiv. “Stay away from my daughter!” she roars.
The show’s formula remains intact: identify Vecna’s next target, race to intercept him, and devise a trap. The new sacrificial lamb is Derek Turnbow (Jake Connelly), introduced as an abrasive bully whose mother cheerfully instructs him, “Get the door and be polite — unless it’s a Mormon or a Democrat.”
Erica Sinclair (Priah Ferguson), Lucas’s younger sister, is one of the series’s great additions — an ardent anti-communist and patriotic firebrand whose personality stole every scene in Season Three. My sharpest criticism of Stranger Things is that she has been diluted into a banal and boring “tech girl” archetype; it’s a sadder fate than what befell Max Mayfield (Sadie Sink), who remains in a coma (at least she is still interesting!).
Speaking of whom: Music remains a vital artery of the Stranger Things bloodstream. “Music has a way of finding you, even in the darkest of places,” Max explains — a mild spoiler perhaps, but surely no one believed she wouldn’t appear this season. Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill” returns, joined by ABBA’s “Fernando,” the Psychedelic Furs, and Diana Ross.
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The Duffer Brothers still have not used The Smiths, but Morrissey best articulated Max’s insight in their song “Rubber Ring,” writing, “But don’t forget the songs that made you cry / And the songs that saved your life. Yes, you’re older now, and you’re a clever swine / But they were the only ones who ever stood by you.” Even as the children grow older, those songs still stand by them.
With its cast reunited, its mysteries still compelling, and its emotional arcs coming full circle, the final season of Stranger Things opens on a strong note — ready either to deliver Hawkins from Vecna’s communist and totalitarian ambitions or to watch it take the first step into a thousand years of darkness.
Harry Khachatrian (@Harry1T6) is a film critic for the Washington Examiner‘s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a software engineer, holds a master’s degree from the University of Toronto, and writes about wine at BetweenBottles.com.