There are going to be spoilers in this. A lot of spoilers, not even going to pretend to do a review without it. If you want the two sentence review if this is good, the answer is yes. It’s not a perfect season but it’s really good.

Spoilers Ahead

The Storylines

This is a bit of a different season. As the boys are growing older, it is like they are closer to the ages of the older generation. So instead of getting that split of the older kids, younger kids, and adults, we have two groups of kids and a group of adults. Plus then Eleven is split off on her own some. I think it is important to talk about all of these different groups and if their stories worked.

Eleven

Eleven is the best spot to start because really this world and overall story revolves around her. Her story, is both one of the more interesting parts and one of the less interesting parts. Her time in California is just fine. It has strong Carrie vibes but doesn’t really pay off. We already know she’s not a normal kid and doesn’t fit in.

And then we go to the new lab with Brenner and Owens. It is a very good vehicles for telling the story of Eleven’s powers, and who Vecna, Henry, the Orderly and One all are. The unraveling of that mystery with Eleven and Nina and Eleven getting her powers back works well. However, her time in this new lab, the fighting between her, Brenner, and Owens, the military showing up, there is too much of that and that part was not interesting.

The Adults

Then we head over to Russia with Joyce, Murray, Yuri, Hopper, and Antonov. And this is a bit of a mixed bag for me again. I really loved Antonov and her and Hopper’s relationship. How they loosely work together to really work together. How they both help out the other. And Murray and Yuri provide some good comedy for this.

Overall, really know knocks on the storyline for the adults. It does feel a bit like it’s less connected to the overall story though. And I get it, they need to get Hopper back to the rest of the group. The fact that they never really were in the same fight, even though they tried to help, is interesting. I’d have loved for there to be something more to get them directly involved.

Hawkins Kids

Easily my favorite part of the story, and I don’t think that’s a surprise. The Hawkins story has most of the bigger cast with Dustin, Lucas, Max, Erica, Nancy, Steve, and Robin and introducing Eddie. All characters that you really start to like.

They also have the best ability to interact with the upside down and it was fun to delve into there more. We’ve gotten these hints throughout the other series. We even spend time there, but this time we really get to spend time in the upside down. There are still mysteries to it but we know more now, some because of them.

And I also think that the Max storyline was interesting. What she is going through, Vecna targeting her, she’s a character I really like. She brings something different to the group. And to have her be a focus and really the whole Hawkins kids side of thing being so relationship drama free, I think it worked well.

California Kids

Finally, the California kids with includes Argyle, a great character, and Mike, since he timed up his spring break amazingly. But their story was intriguing. They got to do the whole road trip thing which is fun and very much a trope from that time period. And getting to meet Suzy’s family was interesting.

I think that their story was stronger once Eleven was gone and them trying to get her. While that intersected with hers at one of the more boring parts, overall, it felt real. And to see the emotion from Will and Mike. And just that relationship and rebuilding between Eleven and Mike, it worked well. Plus Argyle was a great humor character.

Stranger Things Season 4 Overall Story

To me, while there were outliers, mainly the adults, the whole story did work together. And I think you could argue that they lost this fight, Vecna still lives, Max is in a coma, because they split the party at the end of season 3. Now the adults being split off, or at least Hopper, makes sense, really all of them splitting makes sense. But it’s leaning into a D&D trope that way where you never split the party.

I also think that building up the history of the upside down is very good. And for Eleven and her powers. It makes the world that is being more impactful to go back. And they did it in a smart way where the consequences to the real world mattered as she was finding out all of this. It was an information dump, technically, for her stuff, but not one that felt only like explaining. There is a reason behind it.

How It Ended

So, this is a bit more speculation going forward. If you don’t know, season 5 is going to be the final season of Stranger Things. Now there is plans for a show set in the same “world” as Strangers Things. And The Duffer Brothers are the runners for that show as well. It is an idea that they had, not someone that they were asked.

But let’s look at the world as it is now. Vecna is out there. Hawkins is a disaster area, what is going to be happen next? I expect that the finale will again be a face off against Eleven and Vecna, though that might be mid season. If they split it into two, I wouldn’t be shocked if Vecna is defeated by the end of the first half. For Hawkins, the question is, how do you close it up again? And that is where the story gets interesting.

Because I think that is going to be the harder part. Vecna might have an army around him, but he is injured both on the mental level and the physical. But how do you close everything back up again. I think we might see a character lost to doing this. In particular, I think Will might need to sacrifice himself. Not die, but go back to the upside down. Face that fear that he has and go back to close the portal. Eleven working on the outside and him on the inside.

I also think we end with more deaths in the season. Murray, unfortunately, and possibly Joyce or Hopper I could see dying. One of Steve, Jonathan or Nancy might die. And I don’t know if I think one of the kids will die or not. Max seems like a choice, if she never recovers, but she’s had that experience. And Will staying in the upside down could be seen as that. But I don’t know about Lucas, Dustin, or Mike. Mike seems fairly safe, but Lucas or Dustin could be a casualty.

Stranger Things Season 4 Final Thoughts

It is a very good season. I put my rankings of the seasons as 1 followed closely be 4. Then there is a gap down to 3 and a gap down to 2. Two is not bad, I think that it feels like it’s trying to be season 1 again without capturing that same feeling. Season 4 captures that feeling of season one and is darker as well. For me that is really interesting and works really well.

I think they walked that line nicely, though. It is darker, but they kept much of the essence of Stranger Things. And with that it let people who maybe don’t love that slight step darker stay engaged. Because, in the end, we want it to feel like Stranger Things and this season really did.

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So that we’re all talking about things from the same starting point, I want to introduce a concept that I think is important in this season of Stranger Things and that isn’t there in other seasons. This is the writing concept, but also works in other creative mediums, that you don’t want to show your audience the gears, the workings behind what you are doing. To explain this further, in a good book, the story can seamlessly transition between multiple characters having their moment or finding the information that they need (for a mystery sort of story) and it feels like it’s all part of the same story. When you start to see the gears, you can tell when it’s going to be one characters turn to be hero or the focal point, because the other characters change to foil or background roles. The story lacks that smooth storytelling consistency that you expect.

If I’m introducing this concept, that clearly means that I think that Stranger Things Season 3 suffers from this. And that would be correct. I think in a few of the relationships or pairings, Joyce and Hopper and Lucas, Mike, Max, and El it is really notable. There are almost moments where it seems like the character changes from what they were before to match what they needed for this season. This might get a little bit spoilery here, but you might have seen online about them messing up Hopper in some people’s opinions. And, I can see why people say that and in some ways that I agree with it.

In this season, Hopper is much more aggressive or angry, and I think that there are several reasons for this, but I also think that they are a bit heavy handed with it. The reason that I think it can work is because Hopper has closed himself off or a long time from feeling. And now with Eleven, he is starting to feel again, but it isn’t just the happy emotions, it’s the hard emotions, and he reacts strongly to feeling those again. He isn’t able to fully process them, but, like I said, I think that it done with a heavy hand too often. It became his personality, being the angry person, instead of having more of a complex character. And sometimes, it’s so that you can see the gears working to set-up a moment for Joyce.

With both groups, Joyce and Hopper and Mike, Lucas, Max, and Eleven, their stories are taken to the extreme reaction of things. And when it’s more extreme, you start to lose the depth of character that was created to them in previous seasons. That isn’t to say that it wouldn’t be easy to bring it back in a future season, but the writing was done to give everyone their moment, but done too obviously. Compare that to Dustin, Steve, Robin, and a surprise character, and their banter and relationships are done so extremely well. The actor who plays Steve, Joe Keery, is really good, and does a good job of playing what is now a caring but also still wanting to be popular character. He went from a jerk in the first season without much depth to a character who has a ton of depth and interest now, as compared to some of the others who are working backwards from that this season.

But let’s talk some about the whole story and the monsters. I actually really liked the season as whole, even with some rough spots with various character groups. What makes it work pretty well, in my opinion, is that you get a human aspect to a larger extent as a bad guy, like you did in season one, but you still have that upside down and monster feel. The big addition of another evil organization works really well, but what is that organization. I will say that Cary Elwes as the mayor only works so well. The main issue is that he’s clearly putting on an American accent and it’s obvious. Most of the time it isn’t an issue, but it just doesn’t work as well as it could have, which is a shame, because I like Cary Elwes, especially in Psych. This season, to me, felt a bit more like highlights of 1980’s tropes, as well. While, at times it felt a bit heavy handed with that, what they started with and how it ended, it actually worked well and made sense. I also really like where they ended the season. I’m not going to go into spoilers, but they are setting it up for season four to be a story that is potentially bigger than just Hawkins, which feels like what they need to do at this point.

Overall, I really enjoyed this season. I just think, especially early in the season, there are some things that a writer can take from the story as to what not to do. But you can also take good things from it, like how to use period piece references so it’s not too heavy handed, so like the 80’s references, versus the too heavy a hand in Captain Marvel with 90’s references. I’m at the point with Stranger Things, though, I hope that they start writing seasons that they are going to be their last, they could probably run the show for a few more seasons, but, it feels like a story that should be wrapping up soon, and while still really good, a story that I don’t want to overstay it’s welcome or overstep, like it did with the book that I trashed in review before.

What did you think of season three? Were there any fun surprises in it for you, who was your favorite character from the season?

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In this book, a bit of a spoiler coming up here, we get the story of Brenner and his experiments in 1969 to 1970. What we know about those from the show is that Eleven’s mother was part of those experiments back in the day. So we kind of guess that we are going to get that story and find out about the horrors of Brenner’s experiment, at least that is what the tagline tells us for the book. The tagline, if you are wonder, is “Before the demogorgon… before the mind player… terror wore a human face.”

The kids are the biggest draw to Stranger Things, Mike, Dustin, Lucas, Eleven, and Will are all fun and flawed characters. They bicker, they fight, and then they make up because in the end, they are all friends. In Stranger Things: Suspicious Mind, we have four people, cool, same number as the main group, who meet at the experiment, okay, so not good friends, who them become friends, that sounds good, and never fight or disagree, wait, that’s not realistic, and are all some level of a Mary-Sue or Marty-Stu. By that, I mean these characters don’t make mistakes. They only make mistakes when it comes in how the show has actually dictated things will have to go. The heart of the characters has been ripped out in this book. There are two interesting characters who actually seem to have some development, and even with those characters, they are at times treated in ways that removes the character work that has been done to them.

We also lose the adventure feel that we get from Stranger Things, the show. Instead of getting characters trying to solve a mystery, we have our main Mary-Sue immediately be suspicious, I guess that makes sense given the title. They immediately figure out what they need, their plans keep on being thwarted, kind of, and I feel like that’s only because the Netflix series dictates that they are. If we go back to the tagline and the last part, “Terror has a human face”, this book doesn’t have suspense, let alone terror. This is a YA book, kind of, in that it really doesn’t know how to treat itself, so maybe it’s set-up as a book where it’s supposed to be suspenseful or have terror for a younger reader, but if they have seen Stranger Things, which I don’t know why they would be reading this book otherwise, this will seem like nothing. There is not a sense of satisfaction, like you get in the show, when the boys, or the teens, or the adults, eventually unravel something. Here, it just progresses as you’d expect.

Finally, the writer seems to think the most important thing in this book to make it feel like Stranger Things is Hawkins, Indiana. Or at least that is how it feels to me. That’s where the lab is, that is where Brenner is, that is where they go for the experiments. But we only really see the lab, and it could have been suspenseful if they had only been there and crazy things were happening to them, but instead, we get them going back and forth. The location is one of the least important things for making it feel Stranger Things like. The mystery, the adventure, and the friendships are what make Stranger Things, and this has the location and the bad guy and we’re expected to accept it as an entertaining book, like the show is entertaining.

One rant from me, I know I promised not to rant too much, but this one gets me. Stranger Things, the show, does a good job of sampling from a whole lot of 80’s movies, books, and TV series. You get the John Carpenter film feel, you get the Stephen King film and book nods, and so much more. But in the end, Stranger Things is it’s own show that does some of it’s own things and respectfully handles it’s nods to the materials it samples from. Stranger Things: Suspicious Minds feels like a straight up ripoff of Firestarter by Stephen King. This, of course is minus any of the suspense that King puts in, a good bad guy, like King has, and flawed characters, which King writes so well. If Stephen King wanted, I’m pretty sure that he could sue them for plagiarism with how closely this parallels what he’s written. Okay, it might not be that bad, but this feels like a sanitized version of Stephen King. If someone were to have gone through and picked out every part that could be slightly troubling or stressful in Firestarter, you’d probably still have a better book than Stranger Things: Suspicious Minds, but they would be close. And just with how it’s written, I’m not 100% sure the author knew they were ripping off Stephen King as much as they were. If they had known, it feels like they would have given a nod to it, instead of just writing something so straight forward. It feels like they knew what the show had wanted to create as a backstory for Eleven, and just went with it, not realizing that it referenced Firestarter.

Anyways, enough ranting. It’s fairly therapeutic to get that out, but I don’t want to be a website that rips on things all that often. However, I do want to give a fair view of when something is bad, that it is in fact bad so you know to avoid it. I don’t know who to blame for this book, because I really want to give the author the benefit of the doubt and put it on whatever publishing company got the license for Stranger Things novels. But, in all fairness I think there is plenty of blame to go around, and even I can probably be held to fault for thinking this might actually be an entertaining book. Books about shows tend to be pretty bad, and I should have known this. This book for me, and my recommendation for you, is a hard pass. It isn’t worth a buy, even cheap as an ebook, and it isn’t even worth checking out from a library. If you want something with the same feel, go with Firestarter, a book that I find entertaining, but isn’t even one of Stephen King’s best books.

Let me know what your thoughts are on the book if you’ve read it. Did you like it better than I did, did you know that it was ripping of Stephen King?

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