While Season 3 was often characterized by a relaxed tone that presented the summery setting in the style of a teen comedy (of course with plenty of monsters and dangers, as befits this 80s homage), you really feel in the first new episode remembered. While Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) has moved to California with the Byers family and describes their life there in the most dazzling colors in letters to Mike (Finn Wolfhard), the not always funny high school life has begun in Hawkins – including all the cliques that this includes.
The Duffer brothers take their time staging their characters in the new environments – only a lot of it happens in a bigger and more detailed way than you’re used to. The role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons, which was so formative for season 1, is no longer played in Mike’s basement, but with the loud-mouthed outsiders from the Hellfire Club, while Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin) distances himself more and more from his nerdy friends and with the athletes (and thus cool kids) is looking for a connection. And Eleven’s beautiful days in the new home? Are just a facade, the girl is bullied like crazy – but without being able to defend herself with her supernatural powers, which she recently lost.
You quickly notice: things are going haywire with the kids from “Stranger Things”, who are slowly becoming young adults. Above all, however, the makers of the series have the problem that they have built up a fairly large number of main and important supporting characters over three seasons, all of whom want to be served in the more than one-hour episodes. There is, for example, Mike’s sister Nancy (Natalia Dyer), who has developed into a young journalist who works hard to research, or the former school darling Steve (Joe Kerry), who shines particularly in the interaction with know-it-all Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo), while police chief Hopper (David Harbour) fighting for survival in a Russian prison. All of this has the consequence that a lot of things in the first episodes seem like a mere stringing together of individual stories without contributing to the big picture.
At the latest, however, when a new horror moves into Hawkins and claims its first victims, the story begins to gain momentum. Depending on your point of view, the four or five main strands of the new season are apparently aimed at a secret from the past that is intended to retrospectively explain what is happening in the small town. And this much can be guessed: It probably has to do with the experiments that Eleven was exposed to as a small child.
Nevertheless, the first thing for fans to do is be patient. The first seven episodes, which will be followed by two more from July 1st, calmly follow the different tracks and outline the challenges for the individual groups. It remains to be seen whether the “bigger is better” principle (according to a report by the “Wall Street Journal” Netflix paid around 270 million dollars for the new season).
But what also fits in this passage are the many pop culture quotes, the lovingly detailed and atmospherically coherent staging and above all the (inter)play of these characters, who have grown fond of over the years. With such a chemistry, even scenes that are not necessarily convincing in terms of content are a pleasure. And you should savor it extensively, as the definitive end was announced with season 5.
Source: Nachrichten
