After the Stranger Things finale: What I believe happens...

As of tonight it has been 120 hours since the series finale of Stranger Things dropped on Netflix.  And in that time the Internets have been going full-blown wacky with theories and speculations.  It's the kind of debate and discussion that I can't remember seeing in a very long time, at least not since the Lost finale almost sixteen years ago.

I have now watched "The Upside Down" twice all the way through and numerous bits and pieces of it since it went live on streaming.  And I thought it was the most beautiful thing that I've seen on the television medium in quite awhile.  But if you've seen it also, you're well aware that it left a few things dangling.  Not "critical" information, but we are certainly teased a bit about what becomes of these characters who we've followed for almost a full decade.  The Duffer Brothers, the creators of Stranger Things, have given us just enough to whet our appetites for more.  Or as one friend put it, they made a satisfying conclusion without putting a solid padlock on it.

So since everyone else it seems is weighing in with their own thoughts and theories, I might as well chime in with my own.  What happens to our heroes after their struggle against the Upside Down and Vecna?

Be warned: Spoilers ahead!!

I believe that El survived.  She did so knowing that never again could she see Mike and the rest of her friends but it had to be done.  El knew that she had to break the cycle and that nobody else could do it.  That there would always be people like Brenner and Kay who would continue the work.  So El took herself out of the equation and I think that in her dying breath Kali saw to it that El would escape as cleanly as she could.

I'm thinking to something that Hopper tells her earlier in the episode.  About El getting to have a normal life, and be a parent herself and have children.  I believe that she goes on to do that.  El goes on to find herself, and in time she will marry and have children.  But she will never forget the love that she had with Mike and I very strongly doubt that Mike is ever going to forget her. As long as they live they will be thinking of each other.

This finale evoked so much thought.  It's been a LONG time since a story has had me ruminating upon its ending.

I can't help but imagine that Will went on to have a better story than he could have imagined.  And I say that as a trauma survivor also.  The full measure of what Will went through because of Vecna was something that could not be portrayed on screen.  Will survived but he's going to forever be scarred.  Maybe Will goes on to make his life a triumph over Vecna.  I think Will becomes something like a behavioral therapist, with a master's degree and everything.  Will knows what it means to be damaged, he's going to use that experience toward helping others who have survived their own Vecnas.  Just a hunch that I have.  I may not have ever had a homosexual temptation but in many ways I still identify with Will (I also identify with Dustin a lot, but I digress).  I know what it's like to be hurt and be discarded by society.  There was a Vecna in my own life, and that's something I write about in my book.  Going through that, coming out on the other side, a person absolutely wants to do what he or she can to keep others from knowing that same pain.  It's what led to my having a career in the mental health field and I think that if Will doesn't end up doing much the same professionally, his heart is definitely inclined toward that direction.

I had wanted Dustin and Suzie to come together and get married.  But it's been established by the Duffer Brothers that their relationship ended.  It was mostly Dustin's fault.  He was so torn up about Eddie's death that he pushed aside almost every other relationship he had with people.  It took the party and especially Steve to pull Dustin back from the brink of self destruction.  In the end we see that Dustin comes back, and has embraced life again.  I like to think that he goes on to have a brilliant time in college and career in science and technology afterward.  That Dustin comes to fall in love again and he and his wife have a son who they name Eddie.

Lucas and Max are going to end up together happily ever after.  I've seen love like theirs a few times.  Sometimes it goes well and others, it doesn't.  But a young man like Lucas doesn't go to the hospital every day for a year and a half to play "Running Up That Hill" for a comatose girl without that meaning something profound.  By the way, the Duffers have said that the movie we see them sitting together watching is Ghost, so by the summer of 1990 their love is still going strong.  I think it's going to keep getting stronger.

I also think that Nancy and Jonathan end up with each other after all.  The two of them are each in a place where they're discovering who they are supposed to be.  They had that taken away from them for the better part of six years.  Now Nancy is pursuing her dream of being a journalist and Jonathan is where he wanted to be, studying photography and film at NYU.  They've seemingly gone separate ways but they're always going to share something remarkable and very unique and that's going to draw them together sooner than later.

Steve is a wandering journeyman of sorts for a few years.  But he comes to discover that his heart really is for helping young people be their best.  It started with being "baby-sitter" for the Party and it's going to continue.  If he doesn't get his full "six nuggets" he's still going to get that family he longs for... and that is very encouraging and inspiring.

Robin?  I'm not sure of her.  I do believe that she completes her college education.  I like to think that she ends up happy.

Holly, Derek, and the other kids that Vecna captured bounce back none the worse for wear.  Derek though has discovered personal responsibility, including for himself.  I think that Derek becomes quite the athletic type, taking part not only in baseball but also swimming (I say that because I was a swimmer in high school and taking part in that was one of the best things that ever happened to me).

Murray Bauman, the Duffers have already said he continues to be weird.  Maybe so but he's also a happy weirdo.  By the end of the series his conspiracy theories have been proven true, he's taken out government forces and he's saved the day for the entire world.  I imagine that ten years or so later Murray has become the master of a website devoted to conspiracy theories, and maybe even hosting a late-night radio show a'la the one Art Bell had for many years.

Mr. Clarke is going to be Hawkins, Indiana's most eligible bachelor.  But his first and foremost love is going to be teaching children.  Playing a part in the final battle against Vecna, seeing his star pupil Dustin come up with the conclusion that the Upside Down was a wormhole, filled Mr. Clarke with enormous pride.  He truly got to have a dream come true as a science teacher and he's going to do his best to catch lightning in a bottle again.

Erica.  Ahhhh yes, Erica.  Who ties with Dustin as my most favorite character in Stranger Things.  The Duffers have said that she goes on to be valedictorian also when she graduates.  Erica Sinclair is a force of nature and she goes far.  She's either going to get involved in Internet commerce at the start of the industry revolution (like Bezos, she can call her company Ericorps) or, more likely, she enters politics.  For some reason or another I think she's a registered Republican.  Erica eventually runs for U.S. Senate, wins the race, and provokes discussion about her running for higher office.  But that's maybe saying too much.

Hopper and Joyce spend the rest of their lives happy.  Hopper finds fulfillment that he never knew he needed before.  It's a quiet life at Montauk.  The only real trouble that comes about is when a great white shark starts prowling the waters and eating people.  Just kidding 😛 

And Mike?  The storyteller?  He goes on to write what he can about the time that he and the Party and their friends had together.  It becomes a book that goes on to be a bestseller, and it's going to be a story that will forever perpetuate debate and discussion about whether it's true or not.

The title of Mike's book?  It is "Stranger Things".

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"The Rightside Up", the Stranger Things series finale, finished about 20 minutes ago

 What did I think of it?

This was as perfect an ending to a story as The Lord of the Rings had.  I am soooo not kidding.

The final scenes... wow.  I was almost in tears.  Those nearly came after everything else that preceded it in this very last episode of Stranger Things.

I feel like it's the end of a journey for me.  This show, which I first discovered while staying in a hotel in Albuquerque in September of 2016, has been a part of my life ever since then.  I became a true believer in this story and its wonderful characters.  And now the story is done and... I don't quite know what to do now.  I feared this would happen.  Stranger Things has been the one thing of pop culture that I've held onto for almost a decade and now it's ended.  That is an enormous void that it's leaving in my time on this earth.  It's like a part of my youth peacefully passed away tonight.

Well, like is said at one point in this final episode, there are two paths to take.  I am going to choose the one that leads away from the sadness.  I am going to choose life.  Just as I've always been trying to do.

I think I needed to see this episode.  More to the point, I think that I needed this show.  What a ride it has been!

One of the greatest endings to a story in the history of anything.  I'm going to have to watch it again, after my brain calms down.

Dear Duffer Brothers: Thank you for sharing this story with us.  I for one feel all the better for being along for where you took us.  And I wish you well in your future endeavors.

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Well, I've done it...

Come midnight tonight, for the second year in a row, I will have made it through the entire holiday season without once hearing Mariah Carey singing "All I Want For Christmas Is You".

See?  It is possible after all!

It wasn't easy sometimes.  Like whenever I went inside a grocery store and had to brace myself for hearing that song over the supermarket's music system.  I made very sure that I ducked in and quickly got my stuff and then ran out

Allow me the opportunity to once again state that Christmas music does not belong anywhere before Thanksgiving.  As always around here, there were radio stations that began playing holiday songs on the morning after Halloween.  That is damn too early!!  Just as Christmas decor doesn't belong in stores even before Labor Day.  When the radio stations and retailers do things like that, all it does is make the year seem to go by much faster.  When instead the year should progress on its own accord, with every moment precious, instead of rushing through the last one-third of the year.

I must confess, I've had some help with skipping the Christmas music.  Ever since last month and continuing for the next week or so, I've been listening to WSQK The Squawk.  It's a 24-hours around the clock pop-up Internet radio station that's a promo for this final season of Stranger Things.  WSQK is far from a mere gimmick however.  There are some solid songs from the Eighties and a bit earlier in its playlist, as much as any "real" radio station is ideally going to have.  It's been a fun thing to have playing in the background while I work on stuff.  Check it out!

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I've been called conservative. I believe homosexuality is wrong. And I'm about to defend Will Byers on Stranger Things (buuuut...)

 On Christmas Night I started watching the newest three episodes, volume 2 it's being called, of the final season of Stranger Things.  I was as eager to see these next three chapters as I have been to watch anything else from the television/movies sphere of things in the past ten years or so.

I'll be honest: I felt like I'd "missed" something.  Volume 2 failed to stick the landing it seemed.  The previous four episodes were a high-balling rollickin' ball of high-grade hashish washed down with a bottle of pure awesomeness.  But these three episodes, well...

It seems that I wasn't alone in that sentiment.  Many people have said that these were the low point of the entire series.

Especially...

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Let's talk about the scene in episode seven, "The Bridge", that got the most attention.

I actually don't have an issue with Will's situation.  Not anymore than I do regarding Albus Dumbledore in the Harry Potter books.  That does NOT mean that I can condone homosexuality at all though!  That is something that I am forever going to believe is wrong.  But I also understand that it is a temptation that some people face, for whatever reason.  God knows that I have my own temptations, some even that I wonder if anyone on earth will ever remotely understand.  Having a mental condition that inflames those temptations at times only makes things worse, but I digress.

Will's confession to the others was something that had been building up since the first season.  He has always been different, off-kilter, something of an outsider to "The Party" and their allies, no matter how much he has been a part of that group of close-knit friends.  His own father cruelly believed that Will wasn't normal.  His ordeals relating to the Upside Down further severed that connection Will had to the human condition.  If nothing else, what he went through because of Vecna mutilated and disfigured Will in heart and soul.  There is no telling what he would have been like had the events of November 6th, 1983 not happened. That night forever marked Will Byers as being different, for the worst, in every possible way.

In some ways I find myself relating to Will.  I was quite an outsider also, growing up.  Always "looking in".  And as I've shared in my book, I did go quite a long time unable to allow myself to appreciate females.  I had been abducted also, and pulled into an "upside-down" too.  There was a Vecna figure who came into my life.  As I share in my book, I was thought of as being different - sometimes being called "fag" by other people - because of my reluctance to appreciate how girls look.  That stemmed from the abuse I experienced.

So, I can absolutely understand Will in ways that maybe most people can't.  I can empathize with Will.  It's almost like the Duffer Brothers were writing about me, when they wrote for the character.  I of all people am in a position to understand Will Byers more than many if not most other people can, and I'm glad that most people DON'T have to understand what Will has gone through.

For a lot of reasons, I am never going to be able to accept homosexuality as being something good.  But it is a temptation that many people have.  And I can understand Will if that's what he's been driven to.  If that makes sense.

So no, in all honesty, I don't have any problem with the scene in "The Bridge" where Will is "coming out" and saying "I don't like girls."  I can readily understand why he's telling the group that.  It's something he was ashamed of, and harbored deep resentment about.  He had to confront that, and make it into something that Vecna could not turn against him and consequently the group.  It was Will's biggest weakness and he negated it.  That is certainly something that I can appreciate, and even admire.  It could have been practically anything that Will had shame about.  But in the case of Will it was the most private thing that any young person in the years surrounding adolescence can wrestle with.  Vecna has become THE prototype of the child molester, in a fashion that no other fictional monster has ever been.  Will was his first and most tragic victim.  Of course there is going to be a secret shame from that.  But Will confronted that and came through with flying colors.

No, it's not what Will did that bothers me.  It's HOW that was handled is what bugs me.

Much of the entertainment industry has been accused of fronting an agenda.  It's not an unqualified accusation.  Stranger Things has been no different.  I've never found it any more so than most other series or movies though.  Indeed, other than the profanity (ehhhh Duffers, most kids did not talk like that in the Eighties, trust me, I was there) it's been pretty neutral so far as projected ideologies go.  Now, some are saying that Will's "coming out" is going to be a textbook example of leftist propaganda.

THAT is something that is certainly not an unfair accusation.

It was too "in your face".  Too blatant.  It was too much aimed at the audience more than it was a revelation meant for the group to absorb.  It was designed for shock effect, even if all the signs were there from the beginning that Will was headed for this moment.  I've never read Stephen King's It but when Will's time came, I imagined it would be something like Eddie's revelation in the It miniseries from 1990: his confession that he was still a virgin, that the only people he had ever really bonded with were the rest of the Losers.  That could have been the model for Will's confession.  It would have let down the burden of Will's secret shame and beautifully established his acceptance by the group, that no matter what Will was never going to be alone.  As it happened in the episode, it was too blunt, too "brusque".

That's the biggest problem I have with Will's coming to the group as he did.  It could have been written and executed and even acted better.  But the cast did the best they could with what they were given.  Maybe the Duffers will learn from this experience.  It certainly seems like I am not alone in my assessment about this episode.  Perhaps the Duffers will take it to heart.  Hey, we can't hit a home run every time.  And so far the creators and producers of Stranger Things have been doing pretty good.  I can forgive this one faux pas.

That's pretty much it.  That's everything of what's been bugging me since watching volume 2 about 96 hours ago.  But last night I rewatched these three chapters again, and found myself enjoying them much more than I had initially.  So much so that now I don't think they're bad at all.  They did what they were supposed to do at this stage in the same: set the board up for the final moves.  The pierces are now in place and war is coming.  Everything else has been cleared away.  The Duffer Brothers have been pulling rabbits out of their hat for the better part of a decade... and now they'd darn well better pull out an alligator.

Whatever else could be said about those three episodes, I'm expecting the grand finale, "The Rightside Up", to wildly exceed them.  Maybe in hindsight we'll all these three episodes as being set-up for what is to come.  And then they will be better appreciated.  Perhaps so.

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"It is time": Stranger Things Season 5 Volume 2 has a trailer!

Since Thanksgiving night I have watched the first volume of the final season of Stranger Things twice.  The shock still hasn't faded.  Dang it I want to talk openly about what's been streamed so far!!!  But there are still so many who haven't watched the latest episodes yet.  I'm going to be considerate of them.

But if you have seen the first four episodes of season five already, here is the new trailer that dropped earlier today:

I'll share an interesting theory I've heard, though.  It's being posited that Vecna, for all his malevolence and power, is not the ultimate villain of Stranger Things.  That there is some one or some thing over him that is the true monster behind everything that has happened.  I've heard it suggested that in keeping with the Dungeons & Dragons motif that's rife through this show, this final entity could be code-named Tiamat.  I kind of like that idea, though I don't know if there's going to be enough time to elaborate on that in the four final episodes.  Still a neat notion.

I'll go ahead and share my personal theory for the big finale.  Stranger Things's very last scene is going to be fifteen or twenty years later.  We get to see our heroes all grown up and happy and long past all the trauma and heartbreak that they went through together.  Among other things, Dustin and Suzie are married and have a son named Eddie.  That would be a happy ending for Dustin, who I've been cheering for since I first saw this show in a hotel room in Phoenix years ago.

Ten days to go.

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Just finished watching Stranger Things season five, volume one. Aaaaaand...

Good GOOGLY MOOOGLY!!  Holy HECK!!  Good LORD!!  Jeebus cripes crispies with milk!!!

I mean, did I just watch that?  I watched that.  That just happened.  That was much better television than we possibly deserve to have.  This is at least the greatest show since Lost.

And the kids do not too terribly old either considering it's been over three years since season four.  They all appear pretty consistent with their characters's on-screen ages.  Even Erica - who I was concerned about most, because I love that character - looks great!  The crew did an amazing job with makeup.  I totally bought that these were still teenagers.

I totally called it on the title of episode two, which was being called "The Vanishing Of..." ever since the titles reveal last year.  The foreshadowing was there all the way back in season one.  Can't believe I nailed that one :-)

It was a real delight to see that the copy of A Wrinkle in Time that Holly is reading is the very same edition of my own copy, that I got as fourth grader in 1984.  That became one of my favorite books from childhood and it was really something seeing how that classic tale got referenced in these episodes.

I'm just... wow.  The past five hours were amazing.  Definitely time well spent away from real world concerns.  That can be a good thing, in moderation.  I've neglected having some leisure time for my own enjoyment for much too long.  Tonight I got to have that again.

Today is officially Thanksgiving.  I'm going to be joining some friends for a late celebration tomorrow, so I have today pretty much to myself.  I'm going to spend it playing with my dog, for fun I'm going to make the dinner that Snoopy cooked in A Charlie  Brown Thanksgiving (complete with toast and pretzels), and I might watch these first four episodes again.  I'll certainly watch them again before volume two comes out on Christmas Day.

Okay well, go watch the new Stranger Things.  It gets my highest recommendation.  And if you've never watched it before, what are you waiting for??  You're missing a heck of a story, with an amazing cast of characters.  I hope this comes to Blu-ray eventually, because I would be very happy to have the series in my collection.  But you don't have to wait.  Get Netflix now, just for Stranger Things.  Trust me it's worth it.

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The final trailer for Stranger Things season five

"William, you are going to help me... one last time."

Love that cover of Queen's "Who Wants To Live Forever?"  I have to wonder what that portends.

Feels like the end of an era of my lifetime is looming.  I really don't know what is going to fill the void left by Stranger Things after the finale airs, streams, whatever.  I watched the first season on my iPad one day in a hotel room in Albuquerque.  From the very first moments I loved it.  That was nine years ago.  So much has happened since then.  And now... well, what do I do now?

The final season begins with volume one on November 26th.

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"Found you": The trailer for the final season of Stranger Things just hit the Intertubes!

Just like "Running Up That Hill" did three years ago, "Child In Time" by Deep Purple is no doubt going to burn up the charts on Spotify and iTunes the next few days

Behold the trailer for the very last season of Stranger Things:

The kids look GREAT!  It's almost like no time has passed at all since we last saw them in 2022.  For all the delays that COVID and then the strikes caused to this series's production, it doesn't really seem like the cast has become too old for their parts.

Maybe we should call Stranger Things "the little Netflix series that could."

Part one of the final season drops the day before this Thanksgiving.  The second part on Christmas Day.  The grand finale on New Years Eve.  And I seriously don't know what my pop culture drug of choice is going to be after this series is finished.  For the past decade Stranger Things has been the only series of television or movies that has really interested me.  What's going to take the place of that?  Or could it be that the final season will herald my "growing up" at last ?  I like to think that I've still got a smidgeon of "the old fire" in me, waiting to be fanned into new life with the right kindling.  But I really don't know what that could be.

EDIT: late yesterday Netflix released the poster for season five.  I'm getting the shivers looking at this one....

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Release dates announced for Stranger Things final season

Well, I know what I'll be doing from Thanksgiving to New Year's Eve in another six months...

"RUN!!  RUUUUUUUNNNN!!!!!"

Volume One at Thanksgiving.  Volume 2 on Christmas.  The finale on New Year's Eve.

Stranger Things has been the only show that I've followed at all during this past decade. I seriously don't know what's going to fill that void in my life.  It's one of the few things pop culture-wise that I've been interested in all this time.  I haven't watched Star Wars: Andor though I keep getting told that I must see that, it's supposed to be the best thing that Disney has done with that franchise since it took over.

But Stranger Things will forever have a very special place in my heart, just from when it started.  When I was on the road going across America for a year.  That it's ending this coming holiday season, well.. it's almost like that extended life journey since 2016 is finally drawing to a close for me.  Maybe something else will come along now.

EDIT: Netflix has released some pics from season five.  The kids don't look that much older than they did in the previous season three years ago (though it's good that the show is wrapping up now cuz this is no doubt the last time they'll be able to pull off that trick).  Click each image to embiggen it.

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Teaser video for the final season of Stranger Things

Why didn't somebody tell me about this??  It was released three weeks ago!!

Oh alright, I guess I've just been so busy with things that I didn't notice.  The past three months or so have been so whacked on my end.  I'm sure an awful lot slipped under my radar.

But I'm glad to be seeing it now.  Stranger Things has more or less become the only pop cultural franchise that I'm interested in anymore.  Star Wars is now such a mess that I finally gave up being a fan.  And Doctor Who has gone completely off the rails in the worst way.

Well, there is one final season left of Stranger Things.  Feels like an enormous epoch of my life is winding down.  This show is going to leave a vacuum and I don't know what is going to fill it.

So here is the teaser for season five, with the titles of the episodes to look forward to.  Speculate away!

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Anyone else feeling this way too? (Spoilers for Stranger Things)

The very last shot from "The Piggyback", the finale of Stranger Things season four:

Click to enlarge

That's the overwhelming sense of things that I've had for much of this past year and I imagine it has been for a lot of other people too.  The visual metaphor is a most fitting one.  Many of our heroes, who have just gone through an incredibly exhaustive tribulation that spanned the width of America, enjoying a brief moment of joy and reunion.

And then they see the particles floating downward, not just them but everyone else in Hawkins.  It builds up to the final scene as Hopper and Joyce lead the others out of the woods... and toward the inescapable reality that for all their effort they have failed after all.  All they can do is stand from afar and look on as the Upside Down begins its invasion of the world.

Here's the sequence in its entirety, from the goosebumps on the back of Will's neck on through the devastating conclusion:

 

That, for me, is the thematic encapsulation of what I've had to watch unfold around us these past couple of years especially.  Growing darkness.  For each apparent win it becomes apparent that it hasn't been good enough.  That the battles may be won but the war is far from over.

I feel like I'm in that field, standing at a distance away from the chaos and turmoil that's threatening to engulf everything.  Looking onward toward the encroaching darkness and the world really is being turned upside-down and inside-out.

It's a powerful sense to be hit with.

But that's not all that scene conveys.

Joyce and Hopper are holding hands, bracing themselves for what is to come.  They've gone through so much for each other and they're going to be together now, too.  They aren't giving up.

Neither is Eleven.  The very last closeup of her shows her face in grim determination that this is not the end.  That the fight isn't over.  That she's going to do whatever it takes to face the threat of the Upside Down.  Eleven is going to finish this.  She's standing between her friends and evil unleashed: literally as well as figuratively.

I look at that final shot and see a battle that has been lost.  Things look bad now.  Very horribly wrong.

But there is still hope.

I don't think this present darkness around us is insurmountable, unconquerable.  I think it can be held at bay, if only for a little while.  Maybe that's all it will take for things to begin to be set right.  We look at how circumstances are now and we're going to acknowledge that the situation is dire.  But that's the furthest we'll allow it to get.

What comes next will be difficult.  The darkness will not give quarter to us.  Many people are going to be hurt in some capacity.

I think of scripture, and the promises of God.  We just had the Easter season.  Remembering a time when things seemed beyond all hope... and then God intervened and turned grief into immeasurable triumph and victory.

That's what we have to cling to, as we stand in our own field looking out upon the world that's being engulfed in evil.

We don't have to win.  We only have to stand.

If there is strength to do just that much, it will be enough.

 

 

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Stranger Things and me

On July 1st I was having a severe headache, that had persisted since the night before.  I went home early from work and took some medicine and quietly prayed that I would be feeling better soon.  Because I did not want to miss volume two of the fourth season of Stranger Things on the day that it had dropped onto Netflix.

I haven't written nearly enough about Stranger Things on this blog.  Actually, I don't think I've written about it at all.  When this is a series that for the past six years has absolutely arrested me whenever a new season has been released.  The first part of this latest season premiered on the same day as Disney+'s Obi-Wan Kenobi and having seen both of them in their entirety now, there is no question as to which is the superior show... and I say that being a hopeless lifelong Star Wars fanatic.

So, about Stranger Things.  This show debuted in the summer of 2016, when Tammy (my dog) and I were journeying across America looking for a new home.  We were in Albuquerque, New Mexico when I finally decided to see what the big to-do about this show was about.  So one morning after taking Tammy out for a walk around the hotel (where she had become a big celebrity, they let her run up and down the hallways to her heart's content) I showered and shaved and put on clean clothes and then pulled out my iPad Pro and curled up on the bed and began watching the first episode, "The Vanishing of Will Byers".

My friends, it is RARE that any television series sucks me hard in from the start.  I can probably number them on one hand: Twin Peaks, Lost, maybe a few others.  Stranger Things had them all beat, with even fewer episodes.  After witnessing the death and destruction going on inside Hawkins Laboratory and the title credits (which I will never fast forward past, not for this show) the episode cuts to the basement of Mike Wheeler, whose friends are engaged in an hours-long Dungeons & Dragons campaign.

That's what did it.  That's what hooked and reeled me in.

This is a series about "my kind" of people.  I grew up in the Nineteen Eighties also, just as Mike and Will and Lucas and Dustin are in Stranger Things.  I "get" them and the world they inhabit.  This show has captured and conveyed that perfectly.  Stranger Things is a homage, a love letter, a monument to all that made the Eighties so amazing.  Ronald Reagan was President of the United States.  Vietnam wasn't long ago at all and our country was locked in cold war with Russia.  Comic books were mostly read, not adapted into blockbuster movies at the drop of a hat.  We listened to Michael Jackson and Cyndi Lauper and Devo and Eurythmics.  On television He-Man was constantly outsmarting Skeletor and Mr. T was shouting "Suckal!" on The A-Team.  We quoted from movies like Star Trek II and we speculated about Star Wars Episode One which was probably just three years away.  And kids still did things like ride their bikes to their friend's house and hang out for hours after school before the phone rang and it was Mom telling you to come home for dinner.

We were young people who lived under the threat of nuclear annihilation at any time and chose to make the most of the moments we were given.  I think that when The Day After aired in the fall of 1983, it drove the point home that much more.  It made us cling ever more so to that fleeting sense of childhood.  And now, forty years later, I think many of us are still clinging to it.  There isn't going to be quite the same reminiscing about the Nineties or the Aughts as there is now about the Reagan years.  In 1989 the Berlin Wall fell and I think we all knew that the Iron Curtain's days were numbered.  It was the sheer weight of the Eighties come smashing against that bulwark of the old ways.  If only that same spirit could still prevail against people like Putin who seem determined to restore the Soviet Union to it's former borders.  But, I digress...

Back to Stranger Things.  I had watched the first two episodes and then came the only interruption that day was when housekeeping came around about eleven.  I picked up Tammy and we went and got lunch and went for a quick walk and came back to our room.  And I binged the HECK out of the rest of that season.  It is VERY seldom that I binge watch anything... but I kept having to see "what happens next?!?"  At last we came to the Byers house at Christmas, watching this family that had endured so much over the past month... before shrieking anew at the sight of that thing from the Upside-Down coming out of Will's mouth.

Albuquerque did many things to me, in the five weeks that I was there.  Leaving town as a new fan of Stranger Things is one of them.  I don't lend my fanship to many things from pop culture.  But Stranger Things more than earned it.  And when we hit the road again the first season soundtrack was playing loud from my car's stereo.  It was as good as anything to listen to as we set out again across the New Mexico desert.

Season two came a little over a year later, and we were in decidedly different environs: living for awhile with friends in South Carolina.  It hadn't been the ending of our traipsing across America that I had originally intended.  But for the situation, it sufficed and even bore some fruit that I had not imagined.  Once again, I binged Stranger Things on my iPad Pro, pausing only to take Tammy out.  Season two ended well, but lacked the "bang" that I was expecting.  It did have a resolution that I was happy with though, especially Mike and Eleven dancing at the Snow Ball.

Season three... ahhh yes.  July of 2019.  Months before "the plague" hit and stopped everything in its tracks.  Who could have guessed that this would be the last Stranger Things that we would get for another three years?  "Not I, said the dog."  Speaking of which, by this point Tammy had become WELL trained to use the pee pads I set down for her.  So there was very little interruption while binging season three.  I started at about eleven and finished with "The Battle of Starcourt" around 8 and by that time was wiped out.  What a rush!  And not for the first time I thought that the show had perfectly captured the Eighties.  We really did use to hang out in shopping malls, ya know.  Most of them didn't have Soviets tunneling beneath them though, thankfully.

And that was all until May of this year, when I watched the entire series again, only now taking time to pause every so often and tend to other things.  I wanted the show to have room to "percolate" in my mind, instead of assaulting the senses full-blast.  By the time season four premiered I was refreshed and ready for the new episodes.  I took half a day off from work so that I could get home and started watching the next season... which is something I have not done at all for the Star Wars series on Disney+ and likely never would either.  Season four was split into two "volumes" by Netflix, because the last two episodes are so long.  After finishing volume one's "The Massacre at Hawkins Lab" I just sat there stunned and dazed.  And all I could think of was "how are they going to top THAT??"

Well, the last two episodes of the season came out three days ago.  I took a few hours break between them.  And it dropped my jaw hard on the floor too many times than could be counted.  And then came those final minutes, as Stranger Things theme music began then developed into a full instrumental composition, as our heroes see what's falling around them...

Yowza!  Season three had cliffhangers.  Season four has everyone dangling from that cliff by their fingernails.  It was eight hours before I could fall to sleep.  No episode of television since Lost's "Through the Looking Glass" has had that kind of effect on me.

So now we're awaiting the fifth and final season of Stranger Things.  I am hoping and praying that there will be a panel for the show at this year's Comic-Con, and that they'll announce production of the new season beginning soon after.  But I will trust them to get it right.  The Duffer Brothers, the creators of Stranger Things, have done all right so far.  They have given us what is perhaps the best written and finest acted television series currently in production.  I can wait.  Even if it's another two years, by which time I'll be fifty.

Which seems the perfect time to enjoy a series about the years when many of us came of age.

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Lenten Blogging 2022: Day 42

Gonna be WAY easy to post today!  The trailer for Stranger Things season four dropped this morning.  I may or may not have watched this a few times at the office today.

Holy smokes!  Hard to believe it's been three years since season three.  Looks like the wait will be worth it though.  Love the use of Journey's "Separate Ways" in this.  Just... epic, man.

War is coming indeed.  And did you catch Robert Englund's character with the gouged-out eyes?  What the heck?!

Stranger Things season four hits Netflix on May 27th. 

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