Chapter Nine: The Piggyback

No point in spoiling you just have to watch yourself. Every season just gets bigger and bigger and at the end the duffer brothers are making sure the final season is one for the ages.

Truly excellent conclusion to an epic wonderful season. The last few seasons of this show were hit and miss, this one was all hit all the time. Congrats to all involved on making some of the best TV in 2022. I was truly impressed with the heart, character development, acting, cinematography, the heroes and villain - the battles - the suspense - the comedy - just all around wonderful. Some really really great work in this season.

To just summarize without going into too much detail this finale has some obvious flaws. But it is definitely entertaining as hell. The actors deliver outstanding performances (in my opinion). The production is off the charts. The music all fits together and I loved it. Definitely a fun ride. But when you start to think about what just happened there's a lot of that ... wait... how does that actually work? Or oh...I didn't know that was possible... moments.

There's also just a lot of feeling like ok we have to tie up this, finish that, bring this together. Its almost too neat. I was hoping for a sloppy mess of a finale. With characters dieing that make you wonder what the hell is going to happen in season 5? With things happening that you wouldn't be able to guess.

This finale episode is unfortunately both predictable and also somewhat unsatisfying, but still has a lot of that stranger things magic that makes it fun to watch.

That there's anything to critique in this finale is really just a reflection of how high the team behind this show have set the bar. The performances are fantastic - across the board - sometimes mesmerising. Sadie Sink as Max is just phenomenal here, as she has been the entire season. David Harbour (Hopper) and Caleb McLaughlin (Lucas) bring their characters to a profound place in this episode too. Whatever's going on behind the scenes to support the cast in this show is a beautiful thing.

But I felt there were too many balls in the air this time. It almost works, and the writer's nearly get the emotional crescendo they were looking for - but the editing seems to deflate the tension. There are weird chronological issues, where the audience (and the unfolding drama) is put on pause for extended periods. The dips to black sometimes ruin the beat of highly dramatic moments. In general the editors needed to be much more liberal with the razor in my opinion. This show generally doesn't talk down to it's audience. We didn't need to be cued to care for the fate of the characters in this finale, or to recognise epic moments as such.

Finally. Why oh why didn't you just give Dustin some crutches?

We couldn't take our eyes off the screen, amazingly directed, and an amazing finish to the season. Having a finale that is 2.5 hours long with each minute a piece of art is incredible.!