Has anyone else been seriously nervous about Stranger Things season 5? We’ve only had to wait 84 years (well, three and a half) for the final episodes to drop, and these “kids” are now full-grown adults off-screen. Like, Millie Bobby Brown is married and has a kid!
new BrightcovePlayer(‘6103636748001’, ‘1656287865355575363’, ‘zf2tqmk2’, ‘brightcove-video-player-3d0ec00729’);
Well, we’ve finally made it to the premiere, and the first batch of episodes has dropped to select media. Must be nice! That means we’ve also got our first reviews trickling onto the internet, reviews that we read while holding our breath and hoping the show hadn’t nosedived into the Upside Down.
So far, it’s looking good. Real good.
The Guardian gave the first Stranger Things season 5 episodes a solid 4/5. With a headline like “Stranger Things season five review – this luxurious final run will have you standing on a chair, yelling with joy,” it’s sounding like it’s even better than 4/5, to be honest. Writer Jack Seale immediately acknowledges the whole “adults playing kids” issue, but he says the show has worked around it by “shrinking” its world, never leaving Hawkins and therefore our once-child stars have “become ageless, their core characteristics trapped in amber”.
He says the first four episodes are like a “five-hour action-comedy-horror movie”, with each tied to the next, designed to be binged, basically. That whole standing-on-a-chair business? That’s tied to episode four, which Seale describes as a “flame-throwing, bullet-dodging spectacle”. That episode is also 90 minutes long. That’s basically a movie!
The BBC had equally fabulous stuff to say about the season. The mood is dark, according to writer Laura Martin. “The tone has shifted far away from the relative, Stand By Me-like gentleness of early series,” she writes, and the season is immediately dealing with all the unsolved questions we’ve had since Stranger Things began back in 2016. It’s a season that has a lot to do, and it gets about doing it immediately.
Martin says there are definitely “repetitive” elements, but that it’s “poking small holes in a giant televisual beast”. “No Stranger Things fan is going away disappointed from these episodes,” she adds.
The Age also gave the first four episodes four stars out of five, and writer Karl Quinn says a “massive suspension of disbelief required” when seeing all these adults playing kids. However, he says if you can “look past the disconcerting five o’clock shadow on the face of Lucas,” there’s plenty to love.
He says this season is way more horror-focused, even when you compare it to season four. In fact, he feels it’s “a much darker thing than anyone could have predicted when it all began.”
Well, that all has us seated. Stranger Things season five hits Netflix on November 27.
Image Credit: Netflix.
The post The ‘Stranger Things’ Season 5 Reviews Are In, And It’s Looking Good appeared first on PEDESTRIAN.TV .
