By Caylee Brown Warning!!! Stranger Things Season 3 Spoilers Ahead After almost 3 years of waiting, the first volume of the 4th (and not quite near final) installment of Stranger Things premiered to the public on May 27, 2022. Stranger Things, for those who don’t know, is a sci-fi/drama series chronicling the lives of multiple families in Hawkins, Indiana (and now Lenora, California) that were impacted by a child from Hawkins Lab with telekinetic superpowers named Eleven and her escape. Audiences say it was the perfect mix of the storyline and characters from Season 1, with the visuals and spot-on accuracy of the 1980s ‘aesthetic’. The newest season presents a plethora of fresh problems for the newly moved Byers family, the Wheelers back in Hawkins, and people like Max dealing with their losses from Season 3 (Hopper included). The season begins with Eleven, who just recently moved with Joyce, Will, and Jonathon to California, trying to adapt to society at Lenora Hills High School. One of the main aspects of Eleven’s character this season is the fact that she’s unintentionally stiff and awkward in the way she talks and acts as a byproduct of being isolated from society, resulting in her being bullied by her classmates at school. Will, who’s never had to try to handle El’s problems until now, notices that the way she acts is very strange and disconnected from the way she really feels, which impacts her relationship with Mike. Speaking of Mike, the season starts off counting the days until Spring Break, when Mike flies to California to stay with Eleven. Back in Hawkins, Max is trying to cope with the death of her late brother Billy, and characters like Lucas are trying to escape their own interests (and the Hellfire Club) to be accepted by their classmates at Hawkins Highschool. Steve and Robin are still working at the video rental shop featured at the end of Season 3, Dustin is still dating Suzie, and characters like Eddie Munson and Chrissy Cunningham are rapidly introduced to the central conflict of this season. Along with new milestones and progressions within the characters lives within their time offscreen, the series also introduces the main cast with a new villain from the Upside Down, Vecna. The new villain holds a profound sense of sentience that other characters, like the Mind Flayer and the demogorgons, lacked. This villain directly targets those with dark secrets and pasts, and uses his abilities with time and ‘relieving people of the punishment of time’ to create what we think may be an army. This season was so unfamiliar compared to other seasons because it really introduced an element of horror to the series, ones that we hadn’t seen in previous installments of the series. Being genuinely discomforted by the spiders, gore, and the potential loss of your favorite characters really prove that Season 4 has put a lot up for stake without proving how far it will go. The production quality of Stranger Things has also blown all other seasons of the show (and even some other shows out too) of the water with it’s nightmare fuel imagery and CGI. What makes the new season so much more sinister and suspenseful is also the fact that we’ve already grown so attached to the existing characters, and having a character like Vecna attempt to kill them off and join his army has viewers on the edges of their seats. New songs like Running Up That Hill have surged in popularity due to their use in the new season, and Stranger Things has made it clear with factors like these that they do not miss out on any nostalgia points where possible, even from the generations that have no connection or reminiscence of the turn of the 20th century. Mixing nastolgia and the aforementioned element of true horror and suspense is a surefire way to keep returning viewers hooked and unsure of the Vecna’s next move, while grasping the attention of new viewers that want to watch a top-tier production. Overall, after watching the new installment of Stranger Things 4, the unfamiliarity and foreignness of having to genuinely worry about the wellbeing and mortality status of your favorite characters instead of cherishing the drama and storyline progression was something extremely tough to get used to, but made the show that much better. I loved the first volume of Stranger Things Season 4, and I’m praying that the next volume that comes out July 1st won’t leave fans hanging upside down waiting for the new, and final, edition.
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