It’s been a while since this blog has talked about Stranger Things. In years past, Jake Buckler was a big fan of the show. I haven’t been so enthusiastic, for an odd reason. I think that the first few seasons were just so authentically 1980s that they repeated a lot of the mistakes of 1980s horror films. Later seasons have done more to address a lot of the socially inappropriate stuff. It might make the show a little less authentic but it does make it quite a bit more watchable in 2022.
There are just a few more days before the last two episodes of Stranger Things 4 drop. Each, we’ve been told, is essentially a feature-length film. Remember, this show was produced before Netflix’s recent troubles with subscriber numbers. It had a virtually unlimited budget, which means extravagantly long episodes with huge special effects. You could argue that neither of these things have made the show better but so be it.
My advice: lean into the time jump. A lot.
The Duffer brothers, who created the show, have said they will have to address the time jump between seasons 4 and 5. As a result of the pandemic, season 4 was delayed, and it shows in the way the actors have grown. It’s the biggest challenge of working with minors in film; they grow. You can get away with it perhaps once, as they did in season 4. Kids hit puberty, they grow up somewhat. But addressing another jump of several years in production isn’t going to be as easy. That’s what I think that season 5 should be totally different.
Each season has followed 1980s horror movie tropes, and I think that season 5 should lean into Stephen King’s It with a 25-year time jump. In my vision for the show, it’s now 2010 and the former Hawkins kids are now in their 40s. I say “former Hawkins kids” because it’s my hope that at the end of season 4, Hawkins is destroyed in order to destroy the upside down. I also hope that at least one major character dies. In fact, I’m sort of hoping the entire Byers clan bites it.
My treatment for season 5
With Hawkins destroyed and long forgotten, the crew have dispersed all over the country. They haven’t talked to each other in years, and several of them have become convinced that none of it actually happened, as a result of some government-guided “therapy.” But it’s 2010, and the gang discovers Facebook and reconnects. They realize it all did happen, and that the key to understanding a lot of their ongoing personal trauma is to reunite with Eleven.
Eleven disappears after the destruction of Hawkins, and is thought to be dead. She becomes part of the skeevy hacker community that’s portrayed in movies like Hackers and The Matrix and effectively lives off the grid. She’s gained fine control of her powers. Rather than creating destruction, she uses them to influence probabilities and win enough at gambling in order to live.
The team finally finds Eleven, but them all being together (and fully aware of the 1980s events) threatens to open up a new portal. They realize that if the cycle is ever going to end, the whole team needs to relocate permanently to the upside down and never have contact with the real world ever again. They allow the portal to open, walk through it, and let it seal behind them.
In the first of two post-credits scenes, you realize that two brothers who were minor characters in Eleven’s hacker community are actually Matt and Ross Duffer, who think the entire journey would make for a really spiffy script for Netflix.
In the second post-credit scene, you find out that the combination of David Bowie dying in 2016 and the operation of the Large Hadron collider permanently merges the upside down with “our” universe. That would be an excellent explanation for pretty much everything that’s happened since.
The elephant in the room
Right now someone is thinking it. “Those actors couldn’t play 40.” Why not? Several of them are pushing 30 and they’re playing teenagers. 40 wouldn’t be such a stretch, at least not in my opinion. I think that this is how you address the actors getting older. Plus, it gives the Duffer brothers a new time period to work with. You wouldn’t have to give up those sweet ’80s tunes, because the crew would still listen to that music. But now they would be filling up their iPods. We tend not to think about how long ago 2010 was, but it’s getting to be far enough away that it’s become possible to frame it. It was the edge of the smartphone revolution, the beginning of social media, and a pivotal time in shaping the political world we live in.
It would probably also be cheaper to shoot in “2010” than it is in “1985” and that would be a key selling point for Netflix. They need to cut back. By some reports, season 4 cost close to $300 million. Season 5 could cost a lot less. That’s pretty important right now.
Would you watch?
I would. I’ve enjoyed the slavish attention to detail of the first seasons, and the jump to a more stylized and palatable vision for season 4. But it’s time to leave that all behind. We’re now almost 40 years from the time season 1 was set. It’s time to look at a different version of our past selves.
I don’t know if I’ll like the next two episodes of Stranger Things, but I’ll watch. That’s all that counts to Netflix, I guess.
