Code Red! What is there to love and hate about the long-awaited fourth season of "Stranger Things"?
We tell you about the great return to Hawkins without spoilers.
The fourth season of "Stranger Things" is that rare case where you want to start at the end but can't. Netflix's once flagship project is back after three years of filming, rescheduling, covid restrictions and other miscommunications, but not the whole thing. Seven episodes were released on May 27 (the last of which lasts longer than an hour and a half), and the massive (no doubt about it) finale the streaming service will show on July 1. There's almost a month of speculation, high-profile promos, Reddit user theories and YouTube parses ahead. For now, we can say that after watching it, there is only one wish: to rewind and start over in order to at least briefly extend the feeling of endless adventure. Such a brief recommendation may be exhaustive for those who waited and believed, but let's be honest: devoted viewers have already watched the new episodes, the rest of us will try to explain how "Stranger Things" became great again.
The seven-episode plot is divided into four parts almost equally. Somewhere in Kamchatka, Sheriff Hopper (David Harbor) bangs a sledgehammer on the railroad tracks and sends packages to Joyce (Winona Ryder) in California. Mrs. Byers and Will, Jonathan and Odie (Noah Schnapp, Charlie Heaton and Millie Bobby Brown) are settling in on the West Coast: the boys are doing well, but the superheroine without superpowers is having trouble getting used to school customs and waiting for Mike (Finn Wolfhard) to arrive for spring break. Things go awry: Joyce flies off with weirdo Murray Bauman (Brett Gelman) to rescue Jim from prison and fight the Russians. Scientists (no longer just Dr. Owens) hide Odie from the hostile military in a lab, where the girl tries to regain her abilities and remember a defining episode from her childhood. Mike, Will, Jonathan, and his new friend Ergyle (Eduardo Franco) head off in a pizza delivery van to follow Eleven.
What about in Hawkins? There, as always, some very strange things are going on. Teenagers are dying one by one, soaring to the ceiling and writhing in pain. There are more and more victims, the police can't find a motive and pick a convenient suspect - Eddie Munson (another new recruit, Joseph Quinn), the eccentric host of the familiar Dungeons & Dragons board game, who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Dustin, Lucas, Max, Erica (Gaten Matarazzo, Caleb McLaughlin, Sadie Sink, Priya Ferguson) and Nancy, Robin and Steve (Natalia Dreyer, Maya Hawke and Joe Keery) try to "meet" the sinister guest from the Dungeons, responsible for the ruthless deaths. It is this line that looks mainline, at least because all roads lead to Hawkins and sooner or later the others will also find themselves in a town gripped by satanic panic over a series of murders.
Retelling the twists and turns in the text is the most laborious and thankless task: the return of "Stranger Things" has been scolded precisely for its multiple compositions. Perhaps the constant jumps may indeed seem tedious (especially to fans of binge-watching), but it is worth admitting that the composition came out the best possible. First of all, all the significant characters just don't fit into one frame, as they did at the end of Season 2 - there are too many of them now. Secondly, "Stranger Things" exhibits crazy montage choreography: the entire timeline is built on parallels. If it is possible to come up with each line independently, then it is a true art of rhythm to masterfully merge an array of episodes into a four-headed monster in post-production.
The mainstay of the Duffer brothers was and still is the genre, but now the escapades of adventure and sci-fi flashbacks are firmly embraced by 80s slashers with an exact address: Elm Street. It's not just about Robert Englund - the actor played a cameo but a key role in the season - but about that very visitor from the Netherworld, Vecna. The spider-like tormentor was named after another board game villain, but he learned his nightmares from the best: Vecna penetrates the minds of teenagers and administers twisted justice with a palm topped with blades like Freddy Krueger did, but chooses his target like Stephen King's Pennywise. Children are today and always victims of the vices of adults: the killer is looking for mentally vulnerable, traumatized teenagers who are strangled by guilt. Needless to say, there are those among our old acquaintances who find themselves at risk?
It would be superfluous to start a new round of retelling the plot, but, one way or another, the authors have come up with their own arc for each of their charges - all transformations are about defining identity, whether it is a desire to be popular or, on the contrary, a desire to distance oneself from the crowd, the painful experience of bullying and loss, an attempt to sort out one's own feelings or sexual orientation, eternal escapism or the same eternal heroism in defiance of common sense. Here comes another opportunity to berate the show for simple truths: the pendulum has only two trajectories, and "Stranger Things" has entered the fundamental orbit of choice through which the Jedi, the wizards at Hogwarts and the rest of the pantheon of pop culture idols passed.
But it is the ingenuous genre didacticism that seems to be the most welcome comfort zone today: there is good and there is evil, but people are just people and therefore can make mistakes. It's not the Americans fighting the Russians, but the little people fighting the big system: the torture of army personnel is equally brutal at any latitude, and the devastating effects of warfare echo through both the '50s and the '80s. You can fall out of love and then fall in love again, or you can be scared and not admit it. It is easy to hate yourself, but even easier to be willing to do anything for the sake of those closest to you. And in this roundabout of brief moments of doubt between black and white, right and wrong, Stranger Things derives the basic formula of our media consciousness. Even at the creepiest moments, when there is nothing to breathe and the Uncanny is clenched around our throats with an iron grip, it is pop culture that becomes a lifeline and a beacon of calm. Whether it's Kate Bush's most beloved song, a strange magazine about UFOs and Bigfoot, a board game, or new episodes of a favorite show, the mass culture saves our souls.
This article was sponsored by Ruslan Samusenka
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