Matt Reviews: Stranger Things 2

WARNING: SPOILERS follow

Finn Wolfhard is back from fighting killer clowns to take on more eldritch horrors.

A year has passed in the town of Hawkins. Eleven is secretly being taken care of by Chief Hopper, though she longs to be in the real world to find out more about her past. A new girl arrives in Hawkins and creates a divide between members of our main party. Hawkins Lab is under new management, seemingly for the better. Nancy and Jonathan set their sights on blowing the whistle on what really happened to Barb to the entire world. Joyce is dating Samwise Gamgee. And poor Will, finally back from the Upside-Down, continues to have horrible visions of that place, and of a new monster that has set his sights on the boy. Evil has begun to spread through Hawkins once more.

Much like with the first season, the characters and the actors’ performances are really what make this show great. All of the actors – both child and adult – put their all into making their respective characters likeable and memorable. Sean Astin’s role as Bob was a standout for the season. He played such a nice, resourceful, charming dork of a character that I for the first half of the season, I was certain he was going to turn out to be a mole sent by the bad guys to spy on Joyce and Will. But no, they played it straight and made Bob an extremely likeable good guy, which makes his death all the more painful to watch. He was too pure for this sinful earth.

Steve was always a character I thought was underrated in the show. It would have been so easy to write this character as the jerk jock boyfriend of Nancy to showcase how much better of a love interest Jonathan is. But, surprisingly, they decided to make Steve a decent, likeable human being. Season 2 continues this trend by giving him a heartwarming old brother type relationship with Dustin and, by extension, the other kids. The fact that they make him the vulnerable one in his relationship with Nancy (how he’s actually the one who’s truly in love with Nancy, while Nancy is unsure of her feelings for him) is another pretty good subversion that makes Steve even more sympathetic.

These new Ghostbusters reboots are getting ridiculous.

The only main character that I think gets the shaft in the season is Will. Despite the fact that he’s actually in this season and not just a plot device trapped in an alternate dimension, his defining character trait still seems to be “suffering.” The other members of the party each have their defined roles – Mike is the leader, Dustin is the heart, Lucas is the hands-on one – but Will just seems to be labeled as “the fourth one.” I think the show tries to imply he’s the brains with his D&D character being called “Will the Wise”, but the season decides to focus more on his struggles with being possessed by a shadow monster than any characteristics. Don’t get me wrong, Noah Schnapp puts in some fantastic performances showing Will’s trauma. It’s just a shame that the same effort couldn’t be put into finally giving him some character traits.

The new additions to the paranormal are pretty neat, particularly the introduction of the Mind Flayer, who was a nice step up in terms of danger and gave the serious a more cerebral antagonist compared to the demogorgon. At first, I was a little disappointed that the primary antagonists wound up being just a bunch of demogorgons rather than some new monster from the Upside-Down, but then I realized what they were doing. The “demodogs” were an army of the same kind of deadly monster from the previous installment, serving a bigger and more dangerous enemy and showing how serious the stakes have gotten. You know what else that sounds like. The plot of Aliens, perfectly going along with the ‘80’s love letter the series is known as.

(Also, Paul Reiser – who played the businessman in Aliens – plays Dr. Evans here. Don’t know if that was intentional or not, but it’s a nice touch.)

Despite being a fan favorite from last season, Eleven’s storyline winds up being one of the weaker bits this time around. The stuff with her and Hopper is pretty good, as David Harbour and Millie Bobby Brown act really well off of each other and it gives Hopper a chance to raise another daughter that he (hopefully) won’t lose. The problem is that because Hopper is intentionally secluding Eleven from the rest of the world, her storyline becomes so disconnected from everything else. She doesn’t officially meet up with the rest of the kids until the last episode, meaning that her relationship with Mike can’t be explored to its fullest over an entire season.

This show has more red in it than the posters for The Last Jedi.

Despite the fact that Eleven was one of the main paranormal forces of the first season and basically responsible for everything that happened, she doesn’t actually get involved in the battle with the Mind Flayer until the very end, instead focusing her time on finding her psychic sister. Speaking of that, the season opens with showing that another one of the government experiment children is off robbing banks with her powers, yet that seemingly important plot point isn’t followed up on for seven episodes. When it is followed up, the episode has some character development for El, but ultimately, it winds up being filler and set-up for the next season.

The best parts of the season are the beginning half and the very end. The first half has a lot of what made the first season great: a mystery peppered in with the supernatural. It makes us ask the questions of what’s going on with Will, what’s killing the pumpkins, and what’s up with the weird pollywog Dustin found. The second half starts to teeter a little in quality, but it picks up again in full force in the finale. All the characters are back together fighting the same battle, and we get those great character interactions that we came here for. Eleven’s using the full brunt of her powers to banish the Mind Flayer. Joyce is trying to exercise the Mind Flayer’s influence out of Will, despite the fact that there’s a chance she could kill her son. And Steve gets into a bloody fistfight with the new bully character while trying to wrangle a bunch of headstrong kids trying to go out on a suicide mission. The ending kind of goes on for a little long, seeing as how the monsters are defeated and the last fifteen minutes are devoted to the shenanigans at the middle school dance. But the very end hits you one more time with the revelation that the Mind Flayer is still out there watching Hawkins. Looks like bigger things are coming to Stranger Things next season.

Stranger Things 2 may not be as good as the first one, but it is still plenty good. The wandering focus is the real monster this season. Had Eleven actually met up with Mike at the school like she almost did and then stayed with the party, the season might have been stronger by bringing the main plotlines together more efficiently. Or maybe they could have had Eleven’s psychic sister and her crew of delinquents wind up in Hawkins and participate in the battle with the Mind Flayer. But this season’s still got the great characters we loved from the previous season, as well as a healthy dose of timely spookiness and a killer ‘80’s soundtrack. (In case my previous reviews of Kingsman: The Golden Circle and Baby Driver weren’t enough evidence, I love me some 1980’s jams.)

I feel like I’m a lot more lenient on this season that other critics have been, but I genuinely feel like the first half of the season and the finale are just as good as the first season. Maybe my opinions are just a little…upside-down.

I’m sorry. I was in a weird mood when I wrote this.

Final verdict: 8/10.

Now I can’t wait to see what Lovecraftian horror gets named after a Dungeons & Dragons monster next season. Season 1 had the demogorgon. Season 2 had the Mind Flayer. I’m expecting Season 3 to have Duckbunny.