The Stranger Things season 4 finale leaves Hawkins as a darker place

*** This post contains plot details for Stranger Things season 4, volume 2. Go back if you want to avoid spoilers ***

Stranger Things has always shown his love for cinema, with its avalanche of film references to the 1980s. By making each of the final two season 4 episodes as long as a feature film, the film is definitely claiming its place in the world of cinema. It is therefore definitively affirming itself in the context of the discourse “it is not a TV series, it is a very long film”.

Visually, the second volume of the season offers a blockbuster experience, full of epic special effects, even if it is much closer to a gory horror than to adventure. in style ET And Goonies of the early years. This general obscurity, coupled with the endlessly frenetic pace of the season, can make long episodes exhausting to watch. Hawkins’ boys are pretty shattered for trying to wipe out Vecna ​​(Jamie Campbell Bower), the slime-covered villain with an army of evil bats and a tendency to levitate his victims. It doesn’t help that the show’s central characters are all scattered across America and Russia, so they’re continually jumping between groups of Vecna’s fighters, each engaged in their own existential battle. I can’t be the only one who wants the Russian contingent – Joyce, Hopper and Murray – to disappear into the wilds of Siberia, so that I have one less plot to follow.

The series also raised the expectations of fans who devoured the first part and started projecting all their fantasies and theories on the remaining episodes. Some theories have seemed like an attempt to cushion an early blow: Stranger Things has a habit of making characters die, from Barb to Billy, so fans have been anxiously speculating who could have been the dead of this season. The increasingly charming Steve Harrington (Joe Keery) would die, or maybe Will Byers (Noah Schnapp), which seemed to fade into the background with each episode of the season? And then there was the Robin Buckley alarm clock (Maya Hawke), who said in the trailer, “I have a terrible feeling this time it might not work for us” … While waiting for the finale, it seemed like every cast member could be skinned and grabbed by the neck.

However, I was not prepared for the immense melancholy of these last two very long episodes: the first half of the season, full of jokes, gives way to a long battle that leads to the death of some important characters, not to mention the emotional problems that arise. they are preparing. Clumsy Max (Sadie Sink) continues to deal with the trauma that has plagued her throughout the season (complete with Running Up That Hill), while Will gets the long-awaited revelation about his sexual desires – more or less. It’s such a subtle moment he might escape you, hiding in a heartfelt conversation with best friend Mike (Finn Wolfhard) on a canvas he painted with Mike as the heart of their gang. Pretending to speak for El (Millie Bobby Brown) Will says shakily, “Sometimes when you’re different you feel like a mistake.” Will has suffered so quietly all season that his rush of tears is startling. Mike is left in the dark and so there’s no real catharsis for Will, but at least the show is creating the space for him to finally come out next season.

Meanwhile, Steve is the show’s image guy when it comes to emotional transformation, ed he’s damn proud of his journey from idiot athlete to sensible idiot. During the dangerous journey to the Upside-down, during an open-hearted conversation with his ex-girlfriend Nancy, he tells her that as a child he crawled backwards: «From the beginning I’m super sure of myself, but I’m also an idiot. It’s a brutal combination, ”she admits,“ but the good news is that if I get a big enough blow to the head, I can change. ”

This season Steve is joined in his unlikely worth by Eddie Munson (Joe Quinn), a lovable metalhead and D&D master who becomes Dustin’s mentor (Gaten Matarazzo). One of the most hilarious scenes of the eighth episode sees him hot hooking up a stolen camper and joyfully going out with the gang to the tune of Up Around the Bend by Creedence Clearwater Revival. The citizens of Hawkins are convinced that he is a satanic killer, but Eddie proves his worth in a heroic moment that looks like an 80s heavy metal video, while he plays the Metallica song. Master of Puppets and he does it his way, with a loyal Dustin at his side, in a scene that provokes touching interpretations from both Quinn and Matarazzo.

Structure by Stranger Things has finally begun to open this season, sparking a series of revelations about the origin story of Vecna ​​(aka Henry Creel, aka 001) and the disturbing patriarchal figure known as Pope (Matthew Modine), some of which were more satisfying than others. “He wasn’t a monster, he was just a man,” says Vecna, grinning at Papa when he talks to Eleven. “This is why he sought greatness in you and in me.” The revelations also left the door open for further speculation: Is there a multiverse element in the Upside Down? There is a reason why Lucas is reading The Talismanthe novel by Peter Straub And Stephen King on parallel worlds, besides the fact that the Duffer brothers are currently adapting it? As my colleague recently told Anthony Breznican, that book «is about a boy who crosses another dimension not to save a friend, but to save his mother. There are so many parallels with Stranger Things “.

I’ve always loved the more melancholy and enthusiastic elements of the series much more than its mythology. Some of this cheer may fade as the final face-off with the Big Villain approaches, but hopefully this gives characters like Joyce, Robin and Hopper a better chance to shine. A special appeal: let Millie Bobby Brown get rid of her infantilizing white onesie and shaved head costume once and for all, and let El become the mature superhero that her friends know to be.

Vecna ​​tells El that, when she banished him into the void, “I became an explorer of a kingdom untouched by humanity” – commander of a hive of sentient particles and monsters that absorb the memories and essences of its victims. It also means that survivors of his wrath can feel it“I can still remember what he thinks and how he thinks,” Will says sadly, “and he’ll never stop until he’s got it all.” This leaves the inhabitants of Hawkins – and us – in a very bleak place, where the particles of evil emerge from the Upside Down, waiting for the apocalypse that awaits us.