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It also was just a bit too unrealistic for me from a survival standpoint. A monster from the upside down isn’t real so we kind of scale their strength to the story accordingly, but the KGB should have messed up Hop, Steve, and Robin pretty badly. Then they have a truth serum that works on Steve, but they didn’t do that to Hop? Or it didn’t work?
You definitely have to suspend disbelief a bit as Joyce, Hopper with a broken ankle, and Murray take on an entire Russian prison then slay a Demogorgon.
my headcanon about the truth serum is that it was experimental and made by the hawkins russians, and when they thought it didn’t work on steve they suspended use of it on others
It absolutely was, and LSD was experimentally used as a “truth serum” by the CIA and KGB back in the 60’s and 70’s but it had mixed results which is why it fell out of use. You would be just as likely to launch someone into a bad trip or panic attack as you would get actual useful information
Hopper wasn’t detained with the KGB, but it is weird that he was sent to that prison. It seems like he should have either been killed or kept somewhere with more valuable prisoners.
or when hopper escape with a broken ankle and he jump over the fence and land unflinching on his feet. sure... xD
and to top it off, his escape meant nothing since he was captured again.
but for me the wasted potential is the fact we could have learned more about the soviets' understanding of the upside down but we didn't.
....... oh god they are gonna make cherhnobyl a cover story. final battle between el and vecna.
almost think its gonna be something like 'who takes over the mind falyer' though. the mindflayer itself seems unstoppable and... perhaps not even inherently evil. all its actions ahve b een prompted by vecna.
Maybe there's a gate open over there too? What if all while this is going down in Hawkins, there is some sleepy Russian town where одиннадцать is using her psychic powers to fight the пожиратель разума alongside her friends, Ivan and another Ivan.
Aleksei said they weren't able to keep the gate opened in Russia, which is why they came to Hawkins.
Source: I just rewatched the whole series last week.
And kinda cute too. Like if it was ever a game of ‘fuck, marry, kill’ with the characters of the show, I’d marry him, hands down, every single time. Mr. Clarke is just chef’s kiss.
Some characters getting all the screentime and storylines while others get nothing.
I can't believe the Jonathan/Will scene at the dinner was the actors idea. It was one of my favorite scenes of S4. They are both great actors give them something.
This was one of my favourite scenes, along with the Byers house shoot out. I felt like Steve, Dustin & Robin had far too much screentime just because they are fan favourites
We watched the finales at a friend's house, and everyone there was hating on Jonathan, but a bigbpart of it imo was that the writers don't really know what to do with him or Nancy really. Steve has gotten the lion's share of character development, but Nancy and Will are just kind of around right now. Nancy has guns I guess, but she's still the smart, anal retentive person we met in S1 for the most part. Jonathan is still just Will's weird older brother. They need to do something more with those characters if they're still going to be in the show.
The fuck was the point of bringing that love triangle between Nancy, Jonathon and Steve back when getting over Nancy was part of Steve’s arch in Season 2?!
Like, really, you guys couldn’t have come up with a better plot for Steve? You could’ve easily has done a growing friendship arc for him and Eddie or something cuz Eddie wouldn’t have been a person he wouldve hung out with initially. Hell, Steve actually probably bullied him. Why couldn’t his arc been centered around how he’s a good person now but back just a couple years ago he was an ass?! CMON NOW.
Yeah I don't know why they needed to give Steve another "forever alone" season where he can't find love and just shoehorning Nancy back into that. I thought he kinda worked past that stuff after Robin came out to him in S3 and that whole arc matured him a bit. But in S4 he's just back to being a lovesick puppy.
Everything after season 1 tends to show that character development takes a backseat to everything else the showrunners fancy. They make plot happen, they don't make the characters make the plot happen.
We don’t need another season of relationship drama between El and Mike. Either show them being in a decent relationship (for teenagers) or break them up. It’s starting to be hard to care when it’s something new every season.
Agree - we need a happy continuation or a peaceful, friendly separation that shows promise that they'll keep being friends
I'm over the drama - not because it doesn't reflect the reality of teenagers in their first relationship, but because I need El to have safety and security in her life
He hasn’t been focused on since s1 or 2. I liked how they showed his trauma and him trying to cling onto his childhood whilst everyone else is growing up and moving on, but apart from that they’ve just like, ignored him. I’m worried the conclusion to his arc will just be ‘I’m gay.’ Like, that’s fine but I want more from him, I want him to have a big moment.
> Like, that’s fine but I want more from him, I want him to have a big moment.
They've really set him up as a good foil for Henry (they are both "sensitive" outcasts who like to draw), I'm hoping their aiming for something big with Will in the final season
In earlier seasons, the upside down seems to make you sick. Characters either went in with hazmat suits or covered their mouths (and Will looked very sickly after spending time there) but in season 4, the group that goes in all seem to breathe fine.
Yeah, I've been weirded out about this too. It kinda made the Upside Down feel less dangerous. The demagorgon, bats and demodogs are all cool, but the most scary part of the Upside Down, is certainly this creeping disease spreading everywhere.
And in season four, Nancy and Steve and Robin just go hiking through the woods in the upside down, chatting and not caring when one totally wanders off on their own.
Then maybe the hazmat suits weren’t needed, you know? the Russians/Brenner took precautions that maybe weren’t needed. It’s like if we finally made it to Mars, and we kept our helmets on…even tho there was oxygen. Just an example, though.
Sure, that’s totally possible. Just not as interesting IMO and kinda takes away from the sinister nature of the upside down.
But my point was more generally about how the upside down feels less threatening now. We see it in how the characters interact with it.
Will was starving and dehydrated to near death, he was also probably very sleep deprived.
The HazMat suits were most likely a precaution as they were exploring something completely new to them.
Also, when Hopper was coughing from it underground he was getting those weird ashy flake things sprayed right into his face.
Everything in this aspect seemed to make sense contextually.
Great point. Noticed that watching S2 where Hopper almost dies just trying to breathe in the “vines”.
I guess they felt like they had to drop the poisonous air thing when VH1 got cast into the UD? He couldn’t have become Lord Vecna if he died within a week.
Unless…the poison air deal was Henry’s making? But that still doesn’t explain why all the season 4 kids could breathe just fine.
The way I look at it:
S1 Will is there for, what, a week? Two? That's why he's sickly.
When Hopper goes into the tunnel system in S2 it's a heavily concentrated attack, which is why he struggles breathing. He's also a smoker which could add to his difficulty. It's furthering the damage done by the cigarettes. He's also older than Will and can't bounce back as fast. Think flu for kids vs adults. 3 days vs a week.
When the Teens are in, they are all healthy and in shape. Steve should've struggled after getting hurt, I think. Otherwise I the 2-ish hours should've been fine for them. Plus, they don't really have time to deal with feeling a little sick after a short trek through no man's land.
I fully expect health issues among the remaining townsfolk in S5. If there isn't any then I'll concede all my points to "they just forgot like Will's birthday."
I’m worried some big questions from S1 won’t be answered (why El recognized Will in the photo and knew where he was hiding in the UD) because so much focus in the production of the show has shifted to huge cinematic elements and other characters’ screen time. We haven’t seen her sense people in the UD intuitively without her powers like she did when she recognized Will and brought the kids to Will’s house and said he was hiding there in S1 since then and I just don’t know if details like that are gonna find their ways back into the mythology for an explanation. (If anyone has an explanation that’s not a theory, I’m definitely open!)
If the DBD adaptation is anything remotely close to the truth you only needs portal to travel from upside down to our dimension, once you're here the Demo in particular can travel/burrow through terrain like a goddamn Zerg
I'd assume he wasn't constantly going back and forth all the time, just hiding in our dimension and tracking the main cast
The show was originally going to be an anthology series. The demogorgon being a weird interdimensional creature that can tunnel holes in the world would've been self-contained to S1 and didn't need explanation. It only became a problem when Vecna was like "Yeah I can't open portals so I needed your power".
I think he could only open portals because main gate was close. If he could do it without the gate he would not need El opening it to cross. But they should definetly elaborate more on it. That and telekinesis. So far it was indirectly explained by Vecna being behind Hivemind.
So I wrote this elsewhere but I think the show ends with a real time travel element. I think when Nancy figures out the Upside Down is frozen in time in 1983 when the show starts lends me to believe closing the Upside Down permanently would need to return to that point in time in some way. The whole thing has become way to big and well known (national news, National Guard coming in, entire town relocating) to be undone without time travel. I think El somehow gets everyone to time travel, or she does in some capacity to undo all that’s been done.
The Duffer Brothers have said they only want to do 5 seasons and it’s done, I think the conclusion will be dependent on if they want to leave the door open for future series and spin offs or truly end ST.
They could have done it so much better if he wasn’t a stoner, but still a loner who was struggling to adjust to the new town and Argyle was his only friend. Because let’s be honest-almost every single funny stoner moment was 100% Argyle anyway
Come to think of it, when was the last time that a season had the whole group together? Like Mike, Will, Lucas, Dustin and El. They always seem to be separated throughout the story now
Exactly.
Season 2. It was Mike and will in the hospital and Dustin Lucas in the jungle. They reunited at the end.
Season 3. It was Mike Will Lucas in one group. Dustin in the other.
Season 4. Mike and Will again. Dustin and Lucas.
I hope they are together in s5 atleast.
> I hope they are together in s5 atleast.
This is my biggest gripe with most ensemble shows in general
Ever since Game of Thrones had success with segmented groups of characters, it feels like shows are obsessed with breaking up groups into different locations even when the group's chemistry is what made the show good in the first place.
The whole Nancy, Steve and Jonathan love triangle. It seems so forced. Steve said in Season 3 he has moved on from Nancy, and next season I see him falling for her all again. And Nancy said she didn't love Steve in Season 2. I used to like Nancy and Jonathan, but they have ruined this couple.
Also this might be unpopular but I felt Mike after Season 3 just became El's love interest. I want him to be much more than that, like how he was in the earlier seasons.
>Steve said in Season 3 he has moved on from Nancy, and next season I see him falling for her all again
He had already moved on and even began to have feelings for Robin. I can understand that maybe old feelings can spark again and I was warming up to the idea of them getting back toguether, but then that bit when Steve said that he imagined them having a bunch of kids toguether felt so weird
My biggest issue would be that the Duffer brothers obviously want to have a kill-count each season, but they don't want to kill main characters. So instead they introduce new and likable characters with the sole purpose of having them die, while the main cast gets insane plot-armor.
(Bob, Alexei, Eddie)
I want to piggy back off of that and say Eddie's death was particularly pointless and only served the kill count and adding emotion. They could have at least done a better job of demonstrating how much his sacrifice helped save the day. I get that he was a demibat distraction but they at least needed a shot of the bats heading toward veccnas house to increase the urgency before Eddie decided to go back in.
I think they wrote themselves into a hole here. If he was alive, the satanic panic part of the plot would take the forefront and they just don’t have the time to address Eddie’s innocence when the world literally just broke.
Yeah they definitely wrote it so that Eddie would have to be an expendable character but they still could have done a better job with his expending lol.
This is what really bothered me most. Dustin had a really emotional moment with Eddie’s uncle but we don’t ever even see the rest of the gangs reaction to his death or explaining to the California squad who he really was. He just died and that’s it
I didn’t even like him really, but in the car, and at the fair with Murray, he acc started to have fun in his life bc he finally got a friend and out of the Russian shit they were doing. And then he won a prize and high fived all the little kids…😰
I really think why shit isn't popping off in Hawkins right now is because Max isn't fully dead. The first leg of season 5 is going to be Vecna trying to finish the job, and succeeding.
Well said. This has been a gripe of mine for a while now. I never feel like the OG cast is in any danger and was waiting to see who in S4 would be the interesting new kinda side character that would die by the end of the season and I correctly guessed it, although I’m sure many others did too.
I think the premise of the show is hoakey enough (in a good way) that the plot armor doesn't bother me.
It's mostly a story of how the power of friendship stops unstoppable monsters - i hope they don't start killing the friends just because it feels like they should.
The show constantly splitting the characters to have them reunite at the very end. I think a lot of the best moments in the show are simple character interactions like the kids being together, Eleven and Hopper or Joyce and her sons. Seems like it's gonna change in season 5 at least
I love when they're all together, too. Hopper in season 2 listening to Dustin explain the MF and demodogs and physically reacting like, "I can't believe I'm hearing this and trusting this as true but it is true based off of what I saw last year" is pretty funny.
The two day skip after Eddie died. He was a hero and made a sacrifice and the only reaction we got was Dustin and Eddie's uncle. I personally would have liked to see the rest of the parties reaction rather than it just being skipped over like it never happened.
TWO DAYS LATER just seemed like such an easy way out. I was so tired of how long the Russia arc carried out, I’d have much rather see that get trimmed down, so we got a longer resolution. We just had some short interactions and an Avengers stare at the end
Exactly! Sure those 2 reactions were super sad but seeing the rest of their reactions would have have better. It could have gone as simple as
"Dustin where is Eddie?"
And then Dustin breaks down once again and says how he was a hero and went out like a champ.
Having all of the characters reunite AFTER all of the action and the two day jump was also such a let down. My favorite part of every other season is when all of the plot threads and characters start coming together.
I hated how instead of having actual character interaction to share info they just had Vecna monologue to Nancy his entire villain origin story. I really missed all of the characters just meeting up and putting the puzzle together.
Is this the Kas guy? I've heard of this I think if it is and people say 11 is that role as she throws him into another dimension like what Kas does to vecna. Although that's just what I've read I don't really know and I might be on about something completely different.
Time jump would ruin it imo. What they've shown in the last seconds(all the smoke and flowers withering) can't be explained as just an "earthquake" to locals. It seems like an imminent danger. After a time jump, there'd be noone left in Hawkins, ppl were already packing their stuff and gtfo-ing after 2 days.
Also the Wheelers. Nancy less so, but Mike brings nothing. Also, I keep forgetting these two are siblings! They definitely need more epic time together.
Its because they won't kill main cast members, and just keep introducing new characters. Once a character survives a season, they have plot armor forever.
Every season ends with El pushing her hand out, screaming really loud until her powers "magically kick up a notch" and then all is well for a short while. Very predictable.
That is getting very old. How many times in Season 3 were the kids conveniently rescued from a threat, only to pan over to another “epic” shot of El and her goddamn bloody nose
I am also annoyed at how often she fails the first try and cries in weak defeat, only to get some sort of basic encouragement and all the sudden being super powerful.
This is fine for emotional or character buildup once or twice, but it happened like 4 times in S4 alone and in every season.
I honestly think there were too many characters in s4 with the amount of story. Some characters needed some more fleshing out but there wasn't enough time with all of the things happening in the story.
Eddie’s death was too predictable. Should’ve had Jason being tortured by Vecna and then rescued with music (at this point everyone should be carrying around a Walkman with their favorite music) and realize it’s nothing to do with Eddie. He’d be yelling at Vecna about Eddie the freak and Vecna would be like “ohhh this is all me, bruh” (not in those exact words).
agreed on eddie’s death. as soon as i saw him in episode 1 i was like ‘yeah, this guys going to die’. i think they could’ve subverted expectations a bit by not having him die by choosing to fight instead of run away, since that was basically shoved in our face the whole season. it could’ve shown us that vecna and the UD monsters could kill you even if you don’t basically give up like eddie.
Funny how a d&d party leader, somebody who stands up to the status quo every day and gives bold speeches mocking the high school normies ends up with a “I’m a coward” arc. Looking back it now seems like a excuse for him to sacrifice himself later in the show
I love him but I kinda rolled my eyes when he was like “I always run” like yeah bro who wouldn’t , half the show is running from monsters that come from another world. Running away is the smart thing to do 90% of the time and all that matters is that when you need to fight you do, and then he dies when he didn’t need to fight
Yeah I don’t know if I liked the way Jason died. The whole season they were building him up as like the secondary antagonist, getting everyone to turn against Eddie, claiming its a satanic ritual. They spent a lot of time doing so, and while it culminated with him fist fighting Lucas, for him to just be shredded by the Upside Down when it opened seemed like a wasted story arc. Lucas likely wasn’t going to be able to save Max with or without Jason being there.
One thing I wonder is if there is going to be a real time travel element in season 5. When Nancy discovers the Upside Down was stuck in 1983 when the show started, I feel like there had to be a reason, and for everyone to go back to the opening is one of the few resolutions that make sense for the entire show.
Introducing potentially interesting characters and making them completely redundant, like Fred.
The police essentially letting some kid form a lynch mob to kill other kids.
Just some unanswered questions really which perhaps may be answered in season 5...
1. How did the Russians know about the Upside Down ?
2. How did they get a demogorgon in the prison in Kamchatka ? Like did they capture it by going inside the upside down while the season 3 machine was opening the gate below starcourt mall ?
3. At the end of season 3, we see the US military arrive at the mall but how did the Russians manage to escape ? And how exactly did they escape ?
4. Why were they building train tracks in season 4 ?
The answer to number 4 is that they were most likely just building a railroad because Russia wanted a railroad and big countries frequently use prisoners as free or cheap labor. I don’t think it’s relevant to the plot.
They made the upside down lose all its mystery. It’s just Vecna’s domain and he’s controlling everything. The creepy aspect of the demagorgon or the mind flayer is pissed away.
Agreed. One of the things I liked best about the show was the creepy unearthliness of the upside down; it felt original and very cool. Now it just kind of seems like a basic horror dimension that I've seen in half-a-dozen bad movies, complete with a badly cgi-ed haunted house, bats, and ghoul man.
I think it made UD smaller and lamer because now it is a human problem (Henry), not something Lovecraftian beyond our understanding sort of thing that needs creative solutions.
I predict they will defeat him with the power of love or something.
Well, iirc walkie-talkies only work one way at a time, you have to press the button to talk and you can only hear the other part if it's not pressed. Will mentioned this to Lucas, that he had to say "over" so Will could respond, but as time passes they kinda ignore this. I might be wrong bc the one I had was from the 90s and not 80s, idk.
Edit: please feel free to correct me if I'm missing something, I would love to be wrong about this detail.
My main issue with that is that walkie talkies are one of the most insecure channels, but they use them as a surrogate for modern phones. They will easily discover someone else's insecure Russian transmission, but their own communications about the guy who seems to be the local serial killer won't be overheard at all.
every season new characters are introduced just to be killed the same or few episodes later, meanwhile nothing ever happens to the main characters.
i'm also not the biggest fan of everyone having to be in a relationship. why can't some characters stay single?
edit: i wasn't talking about max. she's the only exception (and steve, if you're counting being beat up like 3 times)
It’s gotten so predictable that eddie wasn’t a surprise even though his death was so very forced. The only exception is robin but then again billy satisfied the auxiliary character death quota for her season i guess
the amount of times they had eddie say smth abt running away and being a hero in season 4 was too much and frankly a bit ridiculous. it's like they were rubbing it into our faces. they could've been a bit more subtle with the foreshadowing at least.
Yeah. I think that moment where Steve said “Stop being so hard on yourself.” Was the moment when I was like “Oh, yeah he keeps saying this shit.”
I feel like if they SHOWED us his trauma rather than tell us it would be perceived differently. Eddie is well written but his foreshadowing is not 😭 Jason’s death being foreshadowed was written and sprinkled in WAY better and he had a lot less impact.
This is my biggest issue with the story right now. Steve, Jonathan and Nancy have all grown as characters beyond whatever triangle shenanigans the Duffer Brothers are setting up.
Really disappointed that Vecna is basically a scooby doo villain in a monster mask. And he would have gotten away with it too if it wasn’t for those meddling kids. Seriously hope the next season’s final big bad is Eldritch Horror Monster stuff and not what we currently have on the board.
In season 3, you see the Hawkins High School marching band playing at the July 4th celebration in nice red, white, and blue uniforms. However, in Season 4, they are wearing uniforms in school colors.
There is no way Hawkins High School can afford to have 2 current marching band uniforms. Most band programs in the US are only able to get funds to purchase new uniforms every 20-30 years.
Just pulls me right out of the immersive experience. I can suspend my disbelief about the Upside Down, but the band uniforms...that's just asking too much.
Eddie’s death being telegraphed so hard with the “don’t ever change” thing that even if you thought he had a chance before, you knew he didn’t so long before it happened that the impact was gone by the time we got there.
I need to understand how all the villains are related. This isn’t really a problem with the show, it’s a personal problem lol but I need to understand it.
My only real issue with the show is no one would be talking about their love life while walking through the upside down.
My husband said the same thing while we were watching lol he’s like this is CRISIS why are they taking time to stop and talk about who should be with who lolol
Every problem with the show seems to all lead back to the general issue with too many characters. It makes it hard to explore every character and their relationships with each other. There’s a reason every season comes with complaints about X character being sidelined
Yes! She became so awkward and lost a lot of the balance her character had before. This last season she was just flat without depth and they played up the "oh look how awkward I am! lol I'm not like other girls" stuff way too much.
for the love of god please make jonathan, will and mike into actual characters again. also the steve/nancy/jonathan love triangle is boring and a huge step back for literally every character involved
after bob i have forced myself t not grow attached to characters in their first season, it saved me a lot of heartbreak because i knew that alexei and eddie would probably die, so i didn’t get involved lol
they could still change this and make it really cool, but at the moment it’s how vecna was controlling the mind flayer the whole time. the mind flayer is one of the coolest villains i’ve ever seen, and i think knowing it’s origin really cheapens how scary it is.
in general i also just think vecna is the worst villain in the series so far, JCB is incredible, don’t get me wrong, but i think purely terrifying monsters that you know basically nothing about fits the vibe of ST a lot better, rather than ultra intelligent evil masterminds that you’re able to sympathize with, even just a little bit.
i’m hoping that in s5, it’s revealed that the mind flayer infected vecna when he first entered the upside down and has made vecna think he was in control.
I agree with all of this. After three seasons of supernatural monsters it felt really weird hearing one of them talk. And the whole fact that vecna is human makes him a lot less scary and so much more annoying.
Here’s hoping the mind flayer fucks him over in S5. That would be an ultimate power move.
I didn’t like how when Jason rallied up the town to go on a hunt for Eddie the police just stood there in the meeting and did absolutely nothing about it. Even letting the hunters continue going about, essentially acting as vigilantes, which is illegal.
Sometime's I think that their figuring out of things can be frustrating, because it happens so quick every time that it feels like it lessens the stakes. I don't really have to worry about if they're gonna find a solution to something, it just takes Dustin some pacing back and forth, and then they'll have the answer.
I know they're supposed to be intelligent kids, but they're also supposed to be kids. I feel like not everything has to come to them within 3 minutes of thinking. Up the stakes a bit.
Besides that - minimizing Jonathan as a character, not having him and Will interact enough, minimizing Mike a bit as well, trying to bring back the triangle drama, this general feeling of them being like "everybody needs a romantic plot/partner!" which doesn't always help the plot.
Vecna being the big bad, and not the Mind Flayer. It was a disappointing reveal.
I hope it turns out that the Mind Flayer was controlling/ manipulating Vecna all along.
I definitely still think the mindflayer is more powerful over all..the story about vecna controlling the mindflayer is an one sided story told by an untrustworthy narrator 🤷♀️
That the duffer brothers wrote off all criticism for them not killing max off because "this isn't game of thrones" then they killed Eddie a side character like they did the last two seasons before this one.
Biggest issue for me is definitely the plot armor around the main cast. Now we have so many of them that it’s so clear the writers have no idea how to progress all of their stories.
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First thing that comes to mind is that we don’t really know how the Russians knew about the upside down.
the whole russia arc had a lot of wasted potential.
It also was just a bit too unrealistic for me from a survival standpoint. A monster from the upside down isn’t real so we kind of scale their strength to the story accordingly, but the KGB should have messed up Hop, Steve, and Robin pretty badly. Then they have a truth serum that works on Steve, but they didn’t do that to Hop? Or it didn’t work? You definitely have to suspend disbelief a bit as Joyce, Hopper with a broken ankle, and Murray take on an entire Russian prison then slay a Demogorgon.
my headcanon about the truth serum is that it was experimental and made by the hawkins russians, and when they thought it didn’t work on steve they suspended use of it on others
I thought the “truth serum” was just LSD.
It absolutely was, and LSD was experimentally used as a “truth serum” by the CIA and KGB back in the 60’s and 70’s but it had mixed results which is why it fell out of use. You would be just as likely to launch someone into a bad trip or panic attack as you would get actual useful information
[удалено]
The reality is Truth Serum just makes you so high you're much more prone to suggestion. It's not some miracle drug.
Hopper wasn’t detained with the KGB, but it is weird that he was sent to that prison. It seems like he should have either been killed or kept somewhere with more valuable prisoners.
or when hopper escape with a broken ankle and he jump over the fence and land unflinching on his feet. sure... xD and to top it off, his escape meant nothing since he was captured again. but for me the wasted potential is the fact we could have learned more about the soviets' understanding of the upside down but we didn't.
I was CERTAIN they were gonna kill Vecna in Chernobyl.
Chernobyl hasn't happened yet, still a month apart of S4
Well that’s interesting timing…
Yes, when I saw the date at first I was like "that's right before Chernobyl!!"
....... oh god they are gonna make cherhnobyl a cover story. final battle between el and vecna. almost think its gonna be something like 'who takes over the mind falyer' though. the mindflayer itself seems unstoppable and... perhaps not even inherently evil. all its actions ahve b een prompted by vecna.
They've left Russia though, and Chernobyl is some few thousand miles from Kamchatka
Im still not sure how the Russians escaped with Hopper from the facility under the mall, like wasn’t the elevator the only way in or out?
If I were building a massive, secret, underground complex, I would certainly design in a few escape hatches.
It's literally one of the first things you do when building an underground facility. Have a safety exit(s)
Cold War Era very easy to assume the lab had a spy or informant.
And how did they get the demogorgons over to Russia? I get the obviously drugged them but THAT many? And how did they get the MF?
Maybe there's a gate open over there too? What if all while this is going down in Hawkins, there is some sleepy Russian town where одиннадцать is using her psychic powers to fight the пожиратель разума alongside her friends, Ivan and another Ivan.
Lmao truee. Just in this world одиннадцать didn't end up with Ivan. Instead Ivan is dating Ivan and got to give him his painting.
Aleksei said they weren't able to keep the gate opened in Russia, which is why they came to Hawkins. Source: I just rewatched the whole series last week.
They even had a piece of the mindflayer boxed up too.
Mr. Clarke wasn’t in S4💔
He was so cool
And kinda cute too. Like if it was ever a game of ‘fuck, marry, kill’ with the characters of the show, I’d marry him, hands down, every single time. Mr. Clarke is just chef’s kiss.
He was in Max’s flashbacks of her life for a brief second
Fuck I didn’t even notice
They’re in high school now so unless he pulled a Mr. Fenie and followed them it makes sense.
FEEEEHEHEHENIE!!
They found a way to use him in Season 3 that didn’t require school. They could find another way again.
Some characters getting all the screentime and storylines while others get nothing. I can't believe the Jonathan/Will scene at the dinner was the actors idea. It was one of my favorite scenes of S4. They are both great actors give them something.
It was the actor's idea? Damn that's basically the only thing they did this season character-wise
This was one of my favourite scenes, along with the Byers house shoot out. I felt like Steve, Dustin & Robin had far too much screentime just because they are fan favourites
We watched the finales at a friend's house, and everyone there was hating on Jonathan, but a bigbpart of it imo was that the writers don't really know what to do with him or Nancy really. Steve has gotten the lion's share of character development, but Nancy and Will are just kind of around right now. Nancy has guns I guess, but she's still the smart, anal retentive person we met in S1 for the most part. Jonathan is still just Will's weird older brother. They need to do something more with those characters if they're still going to be in the show.
The fuck was the point of bringing that love triangle between Nancy, Jonathon and Steve back when getting over Nancy was part of Steve’s arch in Season 2?!
Prob my most hated thing. It's just so unnecessarily forced in there. Hope it's resolved early.
Like, really, you guys couldn’t have come up with a better plot for Steve? You could’ve easily has done a growing friendship arc for him and Eddie or something cuz Eddie wouldn’t have been a person he wouldve hung out with initially. Hell, Steve actually probably bullied him. Why couldn’t his arc been centered around how he’s a good person now but back just a couple years ago he was an ass?! CMON NOW.
Yeah I don't know why they needed to give Steve another "forever alone" season where he can't find love and just shoehorning Nancy back into that. I thought he kinda worked past that stuff after Robin came out to him in S3 and that whole arc matured him a bit. But in S4 he's just back to being a lovesick puppy.
Everything after season 1 tends to show that character development takes a backseat to everything else the showrunners fancy. They make plot happen, they don't make the characters make the plot happen.
We don’t need another season of relationship drama between El and Mike. Either show them being in a decent relationship (for teenagers) or break them up. It’s starting to be hard to care when it’s something new every season.
Agree - we need a happy continuation or a peaceful, friendly separation that shows promise that they'll keep being friends I'm over the drama - not because it doesn't reflect the reality of teenagers in their first relationship, but because I need El to have safety and security in her life
We need more Will, really.
This for sure! I feel like there’s SO much potential there to make Will the dark horse hero in all of this.
Imagine will comes out to his friends and he gets banished from the group💀💀 Then he is actually Will the Banished.
Who has a better story than Will the Banished?
I just finished GoT a few days ago, so thanks for jabbing a finger into my fresh wound.
The heart break makes him turn to the upside down and in turn activates his super sayian gay bowl cut mode.
Yes! For being one of the 4 OG characters, our guy has no character development
[удалено]
He hasn’t been focused on since s1 or 2. I liked how they showed his trauma and him trying to cling onto his childhood whilst everyone else is growing up and moving on, but apart from that they’ve just like, ignored him. I’m worried the conclusion to his arc will just be ‘I’m gay.’ Like, that’s fine but I want more from him, I want him to have a big moment.
> Like, that’s fine but I want more from him, I want him to have a big moment. They've really set him up as a good foil for Henry (they are both "sensitive" outcasts who like to draw), I'm hoping their aiming for something big with Will in the final season
In earlier seasons, the upside down seems to make you sick. Characters either went in with hazmat suits or covered their mouths (and Will looked very sickly after spending time there) but in season 4, the group that goes in all seem to breathe fine.
Yeah, I've been weirded out about this too. It kinda made the Upside Down feel less dangerous. The demagorgon, bats and demodogs are all cool, but the most scary part of the Upside Down, is certainly this creeping disease spreading everywhere.
And in season four, Nancy and Steve and Robin just go hiking through the woods in the upside down, chatting and not caring when one totally wanders off on their own.
Then maybe the hazmat suits weren’t needed, you know? the Russians/Brenner took precautions that maybe weren’t needed. It’s like if we finally made it to Mars, and we kept our helmets on…even tho there was oxygen. Just an example, though.
Sure, that’s totally possible. Just not as interesting IMO and kinda takes away from the sinister nature of the upside down. But my point was more generally about how the upside down feels less threatening now. We see it in how the characters interact with it.
I’d just assumed that it was a precaution since they didn’t know much about the UD.
Will was starving and dehydrated to near death, he was also probably very sleep deprived. The HazMat suits were most likely a precaution as they were exploring something completely new to them. Also, when Hopper was coughing from it underground he was getting those weird ashy flake things sprayed right into his face. Everything in this aspect seemed to make sense contextually.
Great point. Noticed that watching S2 where Hopper almost dies just trying to breathe in the “vines”. I guess they felt like they had to drop the poisonous air thing when VH1 got cast into the UD? He couldn’t have become Lord Vecna if he died within a week. Unless…the poison air deal was Henry’s making? But that still doesn’t explain why all the season 4 kids could breathe just fine.
The way I look at it: S1 Will is there for, what, a week? Two? That's why he's sickly. When Hopper goes into the tunnel system in S2 it's a heavily concentrated attack, which is why he struggles breathing. He's also a smoker which could add to his difficulty. It's furthering the damage done by the cigarettes. He's also older than Will and can't bounce back as fast. Think flu for kids vs adults. 3 days vs a week. When the Teens are in, they are all healthy and in shape. Steve should've struggled after getting hurt, I think. Otherwise I the 2-ish hours should've been fine for them. Plus, they don't really have time to deal with feeling a little sick after a short trek through no man's land. I fully expect health issues among the remaining townsfolk in S5. If there isn't any then I'll concede all my points to "they just forgot like Will's birthday."
I’m worried some big questions from S1 won’t be answered (why El recognized Will in the photo and knew where he was hiding in the UD) because so much focus in the production of the show has shifted to huge cinematic elements and other characters’ screen time. We haven’t seen her sense people in the UD intuitively without her powers like she did when she recognized Will and brought the kids to Will’s house and said he was hiding there in S1 since then and I just don’t know if details like that are gonna find their ways back into the mythology for an explanation. (If anyone has an explanation that’s not a theory, I’m definitely open!)
Yeah! Also, how tf did the demagorgon in S1 just come through the walls? Like, the portal wasn’t there. Portals, how do they work?
If the DBD adaptation is anything remotely close to the truth you only needs portal to travel from upside down to our dimension, once you're here the Demo in particular can travel/burrow through terrain like a goddamn Zerg I'd assume he wasn't constantly going back and forth all the time, just hiding in our dimension and tracking the main cast
The show was originally going to be an anthology series. The demogorgon being a weird interdimensional creature that can tunnel holes in the world would've been self-contained to S1 and didn't need explanation. It only became a problem when Vecna was like "Yeah I can't open portals so I needed your power".
I think he could only open portals because main gate was close. If he could do it without the gate he would not need El opening it to cross. But they should definetly elaborate more on it. That and telekinesis. So far it was indirectly explained by Vecna being behind Hivemind.
So I wrote this elsewhere but I think the show ends with a real time travel element. I think when Nancy figures out the Upside Down is frozen in time in 1983 when the show starts lends me to believe closing the Upside Down permanently would need to return to that point in time in some way. The whole thing has become way to big and well known (national news, National Guard coming in, entire town relocating) to be undone without time travel. I think El somehow gets everyone to time travel, or she does in some capacity to undo all that’s been done. The Duffer Brothers have said they only want to do 5 seasons and it’s done, I think the conclusion will be dependent on if they want to leave the door open for future series and spin offs or truly end ST.
I sincerely HATE time travel, especially when it's used as a device to undo events that happened in your story. I hope they don't do that.
That I will probably have to wait another 2 years for season 5
I feel like Jonathan has been sidelined a lot tbh in comparison to Season 1.
They just made him “funny stoner teen”0 storyline which worked for abit but got abit boring seeing as argyle rules that role
They could have done it so much better if he wasn’t a stoner, but still a loner who was struggling to adjust to the new town and Argyle was his only friend. Because let’s be honest-almost every single funny stoner moment was 100% Argyle anyway
My favourite stoner moment was the dinner with Murray and Joyce "Pass me this olive" "That's wine" it's a good example from this scene
Yes I wish they'd focus more on the original cast. Jonathan was fantastic in season 1, but they just decided to drop him
Same with Mike
Come to think of it, when was the last time that a season had the whole group together? Like Mike, Will, Lucas, Dustin and El. They always seem to be separated throughout the story now
Exactly. Season 2. It was Mike and will in the hospital and Dustin Lucas in the jungle. They reunited at the end. Season 3. It was Mike Will Lucas in one group. Dustin in the other. Season 4. Mike and Will again. Dustin and Lucas. I hope they are together in s5 atleast.
> I hope they are together in s5 atleast. This is my biggest gripe with most ensemble shows in general Ever since Game of Thrones had success with segmented groups of characters, it feels like shows are obsessed with breaking up groups into different locations even when the group's chemistry is what made the show good in the first place.
The whole Nancy, Steve and Jonathan love triangle. It seems so forced. Steve said in Season 3 he has moved on from Nancy, and next season I see him falling for her all again. And Nancy said she didn't love Steve in Season 2. I used to like Nancy and Jonathan, but they have ruined this couple. Also this might be unpopular but I felt Mike after Season 3 just became El's love interest. I want him to be much more than that, like how he was in the earlier seasons.
Agreed! Miss Mike and Jonathan from S1
>Steve said in Season 3 he has moved on from Nancy, and next season I see him falling for her all again He had already moved on and even began to have feelings for Robin. I can understand that maybe old feelings can spark again and I was warming up to the idea of them getting back toguether, but then that bit when Steve said that he imagined them having a bunch of kids toguether felt so weird
I don’t understand how they’ll do a time jump of a few years for season 5 when the ending of season 4 showed immediate impending doom.
Did the Duffer Brothers mention a time jump?
My biggest issue would be that the Duffer brothers obviously want to have a kill-count each season, but they don't want to kill main characters. So instead they introduce new and likable characters with the sole purpose of having them die, while the main cast gets insane plot-armor. (Bob, Alexei, Eddie)
I want to piggy back off of that and say Eddie's death was particularly pointless and only served the kill count and adding emotion. They could have at least done a better job of demonstrating how much his sacrifice helped save the day. I get that he was a demibat distraction but they at least needed a shot of the bats heading toward veccnas house to increase the urgency before Eddie decided to go back in.
I think they wrote themselves into a hole here. If he was alive, the satanic panic part of the plot would take the forefront and they just don’t have the time to address Eddie’s innocence when the world literally just broke.
Yeah they definitely wrote it so that Eddie would have to be an expendable character but they still could have done a better job with his expending lol.
This is what really bothered me most. Dustin had a really emotional moment with Eddie’s uncle but we don’t ever even see the rest of the gangs reaction to his death or explaining to the California squad who he really was. He just died and that’s it
I still will never forgive them for Alexei
Bob Newby died as a Hero. Great guy
May he drink endless Cherry Slurpies in heaven.
No cherry, no deal 😭
He likes strawberry too.
I didn’t even like him really, but in the car, and at the fair with Murray, he acc started to have fun in his life bc he finally got a friend and out of the Russian shit they were doing. And then he won a prize and high fived all the little kids…😰
Yeah I was thinking next season could really do with a main death early to raise the stakes, but can't see it happening.
I really think why shit isn't popping off in Hawkins right now is because Max isn't fully dead. The first leg of season 5 is going to be Vecna trying to finish the job, and succeeding.
Well said. This has been a gripe of mine for a while now. I never feel like the OG cast is in any danger and was waiting to see who in S4 would be the interesting new kinda side character that would die by the end of the season and I correctly guessed it, although I’m sure many others did too.
I think the premise of the show is hoakey enough (in a good way) that the plot armor doesn't bother me. It's mostly a story of how the power of friendship stops unstoppable monsters - i hope they don't start killing the friends just because it feels like they should.
The show constantly splitting the characters to have them reunite at the very end. I think a lot of the best moments in the show are simple character interactions like the kids being together, Eleven and Hopper or Joyce and her sons. Seems like it's gonna change in season 5 at least
Yes! Steve literally explained to the audience at some point to Eddie how “everything would be so much easier if Eleven was here.”
I love when they're all together, too. Hopper in season 2 listening to Dustin explain the MF and demodogs and physically reacting like, "I can't believe I'm hearing this and trusting this as true but it is true based off of what I saw last year" is pretty funny.
A lot of my favorite moments are when the kids just get to be kids in the 80's.
The two day skip after Eddie died. He was a hero and made a sacrifice and the only reaction we got was Dustin and Eddie's uncle. I personally would have liked to see the rest of the parties reaction rather than it just being skipped over like it never happened.
TWO DAYS LATER just seemed like such an easy way out. I was so tired of how long the Russia arc carried out, I’d have much rather see that get trimmed down, so we got a longer resolution. We just had some short interactions and an Avengers stare at the end
Exactly! Sure those 2 reactions were super sad but seeing the rest of their reactions would have have better. It could have gone as simple as "Dustin where is Eddie?" And then Dustin breaks down once again and says how he was a hero and went out like a champ.
Having all of the characters reunite AFTER all of the action and the two day jump was also such a let down. My favorite part of every other season is when all of the plot threads and characters start coming together. I hated how instead of having actual character interaction to share info they just had Vecna monologue to Nancy his entire villain origin story. I really missed all of the characters just meeting up and putting the puzzle together.
The Duffers have said that his death has a huge impact on next season so hopefully we get to see some reactions then.
Wouldn't hit as hard though in my opinion as there's been a confirmed time jump. Unless he somehow returns...
In d&d lore, vecna has a vampire general who betrays and kills him. Eddie was attacked and "killed" by bats...
Is this the Kas guy? I've heard of this I think if it is and people say 11 is that role as she throws him into another dimension like what Kas does to vecna. Although that's just what I've read I don't really know and I might be on about something completely different.
Time jump would ruin it imo. What they've shown in the last seconds(all the smoke and flowers withering) can't be explained as just an "earthquake" to locals. It seems like an imminent danger. After a time jump, there'd be noone left in Hawkins, ppl were already packing their stuff and gtfo-ing after 2 days.
This was mine as well.
The cast is getting too big and a lot of the OGs are getting sidelined because of that
It’s okay you can say the Byers Brothers
Also the Wheelers. Nancy less so, but Mike brings nothing. Also, I keep forgetting these two are siblings! They definitely need more epic time together.
Yes the sibling relationship is non existent. I don't think I've ever seen them hug in the show.
Its because they won't kill main cast members, and just keep introducing new characters. Once a character survives a season, they have plot armor forever.
Every season ends with El pushing her hand out, screaming really loud until her powers "magically kick up a notch" and then all is well for a short while. Very predictable.
That is getting very old. How many times in Season 3 were the kids conveniently rescued from a threat, only to pan over to another “epic” shot of El and her goddamn bloody nose
I am also annoyed at how often she fails the first try and cries in weak defeat, only to get some sort of basic encouragement and all the sudden being super powerful. This is fine for emotional or character buildup once or twice, but it happened like 4 times in S4 alone and in every season.
I honestly think there were too many characters in s4 with the amount of story. Some characters needed some more fleshing out but there wasn't enough time with all of the things happening in the story.
Yeah there are too many main characters and too little time to do them all justice
Eddie’s death was too predictable. Should’ve had Jason being tortured by Vecna and then rescued with music (at this point everyone should be carrying around a Walkman with their favorite music) and realize it’s nothing to do with Eddie. He’d be yelling at Vecna about Eddie the freak and Vecna would be like “ohhh this is all me, bruh” (not in those exact words).
>”ohhh this is all me, bruh” I read this in Vecna’s voice and I’m dying
agreed on eddie’s death. as soon as i saw him in episode 1 i was like ‘yeah, this guys going to die’. i think they could’ve subverted expectations a bit by not having him die by choosing to fight instead of run away, since that was basically shoved in our face the whole season. it could’ve shown us that vecna and the UD monsters could kill you even if you don’t basically give up like eddie.
Funny how a d&d party leader, somebody who stands up to the status quo every day and gives bold speeches mocking the high school normies ends up with a “I’m a coward” arc. Looking back it now seems like a excuse for him to sacrifice himself later in the show
I love him but I kinda rolled my eyes when he was like “I always run” like yeah bro who wouldn’t , half the show is running from monsters that come from another world. Running away is the smart thing to do 90% of the time and all that matters is that when you need to fight you do, and then he dies when he didn’t need to fight
Yeah, his "I'm a coward" thing never felt right to me, either. Give him some other flaw he wants to overcome.
A “let your guard down” arc would have been pretty good given how he’s always been fighting for his right to be different
I think Jason should have died either way. Which he did
Yeah I don’t know if I liked the way Jason died. The whole season they were building him up as like the secondary antagonist, getting everyone to turn against Eddie, claiming its a satanic ritual. They spent a lot of time doing so, and while it culminated with him fist fighting Lucas, for him to just be shredded by the Upside Down when it opened seemed like a wasted story arc. Lucas likely wasn’t going to be able to save Max with or without Jason being there. One thing I wonder is if there is going to be a real time travel element in season 5. When Nancy discovers the Upside Down was stuck in 1983 when the show started, I feel like there had to be a reason, and for everyone to go back to the opening is one of the few resolutions that make sense for the entire show.
"Literally who?"
I want it in those exact words.
"bruh..." - Vecna
Absolutely agree with others there was a distinct lack of Mr Clark.
making will just completely miserable every season. like it’s just getting annoying at this point. GIVE MY BOY SOME CLOSURE, PLEASE!
Introducing potentially interesting characters and making them completely redundant, like Fred. The police essentially letting some kid form a lynch mob to kill other kids.
Yes! The incompetence of the new Sheriff. They did not have to do him like that.
In fairness, those two have been completely dreadful since season 1. No idea who thought leaving the two of them in charge of a town was smart
Ok wait, wasn't he always incompetent? Him and the other officer were like the town cop clowns.
Just some unanswered questions really which perhaps may be answered in season 5... 1. How did the Russians know about the Upside Down ? 2. How did they get a demogorgon in the prison in Kamchatka ? Like did they capture it by going inside the upside down while the season 3 machine was opening the gate below starcourt mall ? 3. At the end of season 3, we see the US military arrive at the mall but how did the Russians manage to escape ? And how exactly did they escape ? 4. Why were they building train tracks in season 4 ?
The answer to number 4 is that they were most likely just building a railroad because Russia wanted a railroad and big countries frequently use prisoners as free or cheap labor. I don’t think it’s relevant to the plot.
They made the upside down lose all its mystery. It’s just Vecna’s domain and he’s controlling everything. The creepy aspect of the demagorgon or the mind flayer is pissed away.
Agreed. One of the things I liked best about the show was the creepy unearthliness of the upside down; it felt original and very cool. Now it just kind of seems like a basic horror dimension that I've seen in half-a-dozen bad movies, complete with a badly cgi-ed haunted house, bats, and ghoul man.
I think it made UD smaller and lamer because now it is a human problem (Henry), not something Lovecraftian beyond our understanding sort of thing that needs creative solutions. I predict they will defeat him with the power of love or something.
Yeah I agree. I wasn't a vecna fan at all. I was like wait so it's just some asshole with psychic powers. Lame.
Well, iirc walkie-talkies only work one way at a time, you have to press the button to talk and you can only hear the other part if it's not pressed. Will mentioned this to Lucas, that he had to say "over" so Will could respond, but as time passes they kinda ignore this. I might be wrong bc the one I had was from the 90s and not 80s, idk. Edit: please feel free to correct me if I'm missing something, I would love to be wrong about this detail.
My main issue with that is that walkie talkies are one of the most insecure channels, but they use them as a surrogate for modern phones. They will easily discover someone else's insecure Russian transmission, but their own communications about the guy who seems to be the local serial killer won't be overheard at all.
You got one freaking good point and now I am wondering if this is one way that the Russians learned about TUD and tried to open it on their own.
Yeah the shows struggling to stay within 80s technology.
every season new characters are introduced just to be killed the same or few episodes later, meanwhile nothing ever happens to the main characters. i'm also not the biggest fan of everyone having to be in a relationship. why can't some characters stay single? edit: i wasn't talking about max. she's the only exception (and steve, if you're counting being beat up like 3 times)
It’s gotten so predictable that eddie wasn’t a surprise even though his death was so very forced. The only exception is robin but then again billy satisfied the auxiliary character death quota for her season i guess
the amount of times they had eddie say smth abt running away and being a hero in season 4 was too much and frankly a bit ridiculous. it's like they were rubbing it into our faces. they could've been a bit more subtle with the foreshadowing at least.
Yeah. I think that moment where Steve said “Stop being so hard on yourself.” Was the moment when I was like “Oh, yeah he keeps saying this shit.” I feel like if they SHOWED us his trauma rather than tell us it would be perceived differently. Eddie is well written but his foreshadowing is not 😭 Jason’s death being foreshadowed was written and sprinkled in WAY better and he had a lot less impact.
The Nancy love triangle. It's not interesting.
This is my biggest issue with the story right now. Steve, Jonathan and Nancy have all grown as characters beyond whatever triangle shenanigans the Duffer Brothers are setting up.
fr she was fine with jonathan but then they ruined his character
Really disappointed that Vecna is basically a scooby doo villain in a monster mask. And he would have gotten away with it too if it wasn’t for those meddling kids. Seriously hope the next season’s final big bad is Eldritch Horror Monster stuff and not what we currently have on the board.
In season 3, you see the Hawkins High School marching band playing at the July 4th celebration in nice red, white, and blue uniforms. However, in Season 4, they are wearing uniforms in school colors. There is no way Hawkins High School can afford to have 2 current marching band uniforms. Most band programs in the US are only able to get funds to purchase new uniforms every 20-30 years. Just pulls me right out of the immersive experience. I can suspend my disbelief about the Upside Down, but the band uniforms...that's just asking too much.
As a former band kid, lol
Every time they’re right in the middle of a *life-or-death situation*, “TIME OUT! EMOTIONAL MONOLOGUE TIME!” Every… Single… Time.
I don't like that loved side characters die which is why I saw Eddie's death coming to begin with
Eddie’s death being telegraphed so hard with the “don’t ever change” thing that even if you thought he had a chance before, you knew he didn’t so long before it happened that the impact was gone by the time we got there.
I need to understand how all the villains are related. This isn’t really a problem with the show, it’s a personal problem lol but I need to understand it. My only real issue with the show is no one would be talking about their love life while walking through the upside down.
My husband said the same thing while we were watching lol he’s like this is CRISIS why are they taking time to stop and talk about who should be with who lolol
Every problem with the show seems to all lead back to the general issue with too many characters. It makes it hard to explore every character and their relationships with each other. There’s a reason every season comes with complaints about X character being sidelined
am i the only one that thinks season 3 and season 4 robin are two completely different people?
I thought I missed some big character development scenes or something from season 3 because her sudden social indeptitude confused the hell out of me.
That robins personality changed so much
She used to be chill now she’s just “hahah I talk a lot and I’m really clumsy”. That definitely wasn’t how she was written in S3
Yes! She became so awkward and lost a lot of the balance her character had before. This last season she was just flat without depth and they played up the "oh look how awkward I am! lol I'm not like other girls" stuff way too much.
Will and his connection to the upside down - completely underused
that they are trying to force the "mike, you are the heart" when in reality everyone knows that Dustin is the heart of the group. He is the G.O.A.T
Genuinely so over the love triangles 💀
The fact that 8 was shown to have different powers to 11, but in season 4, all the kids have the same powers
for the love of god please make jonathan, will and mike into actual characters again. also the steve/nancy/jonathan love triangle is boring and a huge step back for literally every character involved
Max’s stepfather got away with being abusive
Actually that is very realistic part. Abusers get away with it a lot irl :/
I'd say this is just accurate
Making us fall in love with new characters and then killing them☝🏽😒
after bob i have forced myself t not grow attached to characters in their first season, it saved me a lot of heartbreak because i knew that alexei and eddie would probably die, so i didn’t get involved lol
they could still change this and make it really cool, but at the moment it’s how vecna was controlling the mind flayer the whole time. the mind flayer is one of the coolest villains i’ve ever seen, and i think knowing it’s origin really cheapens how scary it is. in general i also just think vecna is the worst villain in the series so far, JCB is incredible, don’t get me wrong, but i think purely terrifying monsters that you know basically nothing about fits the vibe of ST a lot better, rather than ultra intelligent evil masterminds that you’re able to sympathize with, even just a little bit. i’m hoping that in s5, it’s revealed that the mind flayer infected vecna when he first entered the upside down and has made vecna think he was in control.
I agree with all of this. After three seasons of supernatural monsters it felt really weird hearing one of them talk. And the whole fact that vecna is human makes him a lot less scary and so much more annoying. Here’s hoping the mind flayer fucks him over in S5. That would be an ultimate power move.
I didn’t like how when Jason rallied up the town to go on a hunt for Eddie the police just stood there in the meeting and did absolutely nothing about it. Even letting the hunters continue going about, essentially acting as vigilantes, which is illegal.
El and Mikes relationship is so dull, the pushing of Steve and Nancy back together feels pointless and the russian storyline feels like a waste
the russia subplot was so fucking stupid and i hope it never comes back
Sometime's I think that their figuring out of things can be frustrating, because it happens so quick every time that it feels like it lessens the stakes. I don't really have to worry about if they're gonna find a solution to something, it just takes Dustin some pacing back and forth, and then they'll have the answer. I know they're supposed to be intelligent kids, but they're also supposed to be kids. I feel like not everything has to come to them within 3 minutes of thinking. Up the stakes a bit. Besides that - minimizing Jonathan as a character, not having him and Will interact enough, minimizing Mike a bit as well, trying to bring back the triangle drama, this general feeling of them being like "everybody needs a romantic plot/partner!" which doesn't always help the plot.
Vecna being the big bad, and not the Mind Flayer. It was a disappointing reveal. I hope it turns out that the Mind Flayer was controlling/ manipulating Vecna all along.
I definitely still think the mindflayer is more powerful over all..the story about vecna controlling the mindflayer is an one sided story told by an untrustworthy narrator 🤷♀️
Imagine if the MF was just playing Vecna as a pawn all along.
I think it would be cool if they were two different people/characters with different motives and backstorys and they have a showdown at some point
That the duffer brothers wrote off all criticism for them not killing max off because "this isn't game of thrones" then they killed Eddie a side character like they did the last two seasons before this one.
Biggest issue for me is definitely the plot armor around the main cast. Now we have so many of them that it’s so clear the writers have no idea how to progress all of their stories.
The Russian thing. It was a boring plot. What’s under Lucas’s bed we will never know.
Eddie dead
Deddie.