Stranger Things 5, the review of volume 2 of the final season of the Netflix series

Endings, as we wrote, are difficult. However, there is something even more difficult from a narrative point of view: the moments of transition, the second chapters of the trilogies, the interlocutory passages. The volume 2 di Stranger Things 5 suffers from this difficulty: The first 4 episodes of the last season had convinced us a lot, because they prepared the field and began the journey towards the final battle in the right way, while the following three episodes published on December 26th left us with some more doubts, because they continue and develop, draw the strings and explain, but cannot reach a conclusion. By their nature as a central block, they have neither a beginning nor an end and the epic nature is affected at least in part.

Although in line, qualitatively and narratively, with the previous ones, they leave you with a different sensation, with a greater sense of incompleteness which we didn’t expect. There final season of Stranger Things 5 in any case, it confirms the high production value, but by design it risks leaving its viewers, or at least some of them, with a bad taste in their mouths. A calculated riskprobably, given that the time distance from the actual ending was only one week instead of the month that separated volume 1 from volume 2, but the feeling when reading the reactions online is that at least part of the public was expecting something more or at least different. And maybe us too.

Prepare the final match against Vecna

From the first to the second volume, the needs change in part: the first four episodes resumed the individual characters and their state preparing their path towards the finale, the following three episodes bring together a good part of the separate paths they have traveled to bring the group together towards the final episode which we will see on New Year’s Eve, when it will be put into the catalog at 2 in the morning, immediately after the appropriate toasts. The three episodes of volume 2, therefore, ensure that the different characters are no longer divided into subgroups, but return to being a single, united, compact and “without fear” against the eternal enemy, against Vecna ​​and his plan to use children to destroy the world by merging it with the evil and dangerous one that we have come to know as Upside down and which has managed to forcefully enter the collective imagination.

What is the Upside Down in Stranger Things? Time for answers

For Stranger Things it’s time for explanations, for answers to almost all its questions and mysteries, starting with true nature of the Upside Downwhich is actually a wormholea bridge (as per the title of the seventh episode) to another world that Dustin names “The Abyss”or like in Dungeons & Dragons, “a realm of evil and pure chaos”the place of origin of the Demogorgons and all the other monstrosities we have come to know. The Duffers don’t hold back and concentrate a lot answers and information in this volume, also taking up many of the things we had already discovered along the way of the series. A way to draw the threads and take stock of the situation before moving towards the actual ending.

A bit of a “everything you should know before the finale”along the lines of many contents that we on the web create to accompany the great titles of contemporary entertainment for the benefit of the public… but signed by its authors themselves. Right, even dutiful, but with the feeling that the center of gravity of these new episodes is more focused on information than on emotions, even if the emotionally charged moments of the characters are not lacking, if the expected comparisons arrive. Even on that front the authors close the games and try to give space to everyone, doing justice as much as possible to the chorality of the series.

The Duffer Brothers’ Mission Impossible: What Works and What Doesn’t

In dividing screen time and space in the evolution of the story of Stranger Things 5some characters stand out more than others and leave their mark more. Above all, Sadie Sink’s Max, which confirms itself as one of the best discoveries of the Netflix and Duffer series. Just like Jake Connelly’s Derek, who in this last season threatens, in the moments in which he appears, to steal the show from the historical faces of the series. Balancing everything was the Duffers’ mission impossible towards the finale and like all impossible missions it had a great risk of failure. Well this failure was avoided, but something worked less than anything else in seven episodes that take their time, probably even a little more than was actually necessary. If volume 1 closed with an important emotional charge that filled the heart and prepared the month of waiting for the second, that climax, that strength, is missing in these new episodes.

For example, among the comparisons between the characters, the one between Nancy and Jonathan seemed less focused, or perhaps simply more forced than others due to the moment in which it arrives, ending up breaking the rhythm of the story, whereas those between Robin with Will and then with Vicky instead work. Among the disappointments there is certainly the final journey of Millie Bobby Brown’s Eleven, who paid the price for the space claimed by Will and his emotional evolution towards the role of Sorcerer set in the final episode of volume 1, with all that comes with it. But we are aware that Undi will have the opportunity to make up for it in the series finale, in which her role in the discount with Vecna ​​can only be key.

What can we expect from the latest episode?

So what can we expect from the ending based on how the Duffer brothers placed the pieces on the board? It is clear that everything that is put forward and told by the seven episodes of the two volumes of Stranger Things 5 serves to focus attention on what is the basic mythology of the series in view of the finale, catalyzing attention on what is truly preponderant despite other things that have been told over the course of the previous four seasons. A way to underline what matters more than anything else, given that it is natural that an ongoing story like a TV series has taken paths over time that lead to narrative dead ends.

The Duffers took the opportunity to definitively abandon those secondary roads to build the highway towards the grand finale: beautiful, asphalted and direct despite its length. Now there is room for the long-awaited clash and a definitive closure that we expect to be epic and exciting. For the last episode we expect the main characters, the core cast that this series launched, to be the center of attention, as Endgame put them back at the center Avengers originals among the large group of other heroes we had known over time. Will, Mike, Dustin, Lucas and Eleven are the Avengers of Stranger Things and they can only be the heart of the conclusion of the series. To close the circle of one of the most important series for the popular imagination of the last twenty years. They deserve it and we deserve it as spectators.