by Jake Bourgeois, Contributing Writer
Another holiday, another Stranger Things episode drop to make you abandon spending time with family.
Christmas means a three-episode drop ahead of the New Year’s Eve supersized finale. So, how are things looking?
(Before we get there, in order to talk about this drop, I’m assuming you’ve watched the first part of the season by now.)
As an overall starting point, I feel largely the way I did at the end of the last four episodes: I’m enjoying the ride as an overall experience, though it’s a bit uneven. We pick right up after the climactic conclusion of “The Sorcerer,” with characters reacting to the fact that Will (Noah Schnapp) has unlocked his power set. As a result, initially, this is where you can see the seams of having a month off between episodes. It feels like the writers thought the audience needed a recap to start, so there’s a lot of dialogue that feels like it’s trying to reset where we left things at the end of part one. As a result, it takes a minute to feel like we’re really getting into this part of the season. However, the work done with the story as a result of that revelation works much better. There’s a move-countermove tactically from the crew and Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower) as a result of Will’s new powers that tracks perfectly with what I would expect to happen with that information. The conversations around Will accepting who he is through his conversation with Robin (Maya Hawke) also led to some good followup once again giving his character the big moment of the final episode of the batch.
Though the highs and lows of the season aren’t quite broken up between action and character moments in this Part, both because there’s less spectacle here as we build toward the finale, and the fact that the emotional character moments work a bit better for me in this part, there are still storylines that illustrate the ups and downs. The Nancy (Natalia Dyer), Johnathan (Charlie Heaton), Steve (Joe Keery), and Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo) crew are perhaps the most inconsistent of the group. On one hand, the needed conversations that have been building for the respective Nancy-Jonathan, Steve-Dustin relationships are cathartic, and there are some key revelations that really work (also, it’s just nice to see Steve be able to have a lightbulb moment for once). However, they are also stuck in the same spot for this stretch, which are a source of slight frustration.
As things catapult toward the conclusion, and it’s all hands on deck for the final fight, Mr. Clarke (Randy Havens) takes on the Holly role of this part as a more background character who really gets their moment to shine. There are some fun revelations, and adding his brain to the proceedings, as well as his repartee with Murray (Brett Gelman), provide some of the best moments of this Part, adding some levity to what is a largely serious story. As a mentor to both the older crew in the earlier seasons and Erica (Priah Ferguson) currently, I love seeing Mr. Clarke get more involved. Holly (Nell Fisher) herself feels like she’s going in circles for this Part narratively. The same can be said about her classmate, and Part One standout Derek (Jake Connelly), as his storyline gets pretty quickly neutered in this Part — though he does get a notable moment early on in the season.
Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) is another character going in circles a bit, and is the weakest storyline of the season. As a story turn, I liked the decision to bring back Kali (Linnea Berthelsen) at the end of Part One. It was a bold move to not just ignore a much-maligned part of the story and pretend it never happened. However, in these episodes, the interaction between the two characters is to largely set up a conflict with what the military was really doing by holding Kali captive through exposition, and give El a quandary heading into the final battle. It also doesn’t help that the whole military storyline with Dr. Kay (Linda Hamilton) still isn’t really working for me. Though, it might be saved by the fact that I don’t know how much of a role that’s going to play in the finale with Vecna being the big bad, and, thankfully, the Vecna/Henry performance is working much better for me. Given Kay’s centrality in the narrative, the payoff here is obviously going to be one of the major story aspects to be wrapped up in the finale; it just has me wavering on the storyline a bit more than I had hoped after being so pleased with the initial decision to close the Kali loop.
Overall, this Part of the final season (perhaps) unsurprisingly feels like setup for the climactic finish. While the rough edges of the season haven’t been smoothed over yet, there’s enough character work and effective moments to keep me bought in for the final two hours upcoming.
Rating: Liked It
Stranger Things is currently streaming on Netflix
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