The following review contains spoilers for Stranger Things season 5 episodes 1-4

  After nearly 4 years since the last season, the first 4 episodes of the final season of Stranger began streaming across millions of screens on November 26, 2025. After looking forward to this season for years, fans such as myself had big expectations for the new episodes, and despite a number of problems I had with these episodes, overall I feel the Duffer brothers delivered.

  In terms of what I felt like was done well, I thought they nailed the development of certain relationships since the last season. Though it was sad to see, the deterioration of Steve and Dustin’s bond made sense in the context of prolonged isolation in Hawkins. It’s realistic that fights would arise even with the people you’re closest to when under intense stress, grief, and confinement. My guess is that one of the two is going to end up dying in the next volume or the finale and the other will use the loss and the guilt as motivation to continue fighting. Speaking of characters I don’t think are making it to the epilogue, Will had a really neat character arc and it was extremely exciting to see him gain powers. I definitely think the creators are setting it up so that Eleven, 008, and Will will end up working together to defeat Vecna/the Mindflayer. This is a clear reference to rolling a nat20 in D&D with 11+8+1 (Will representing one as he’s channeling Vecna’s powers) and the Duffer’s history of using D&D references as foreshadowing. This also leads into the way I think Will is going to die, because he has now connected to the hivemind in order to channel Vecna’s powers which begs the question of how will the group defeat the hivemind of the Upside down without it killing Will as well? Additionally I think there’s some obvious foreshadowing with wormholes (Mr.Clark’s lessons always line up with the major events later in the season) and especially with the line that Mike says to Holly when he tells her about her D&D character “Heroic Holly” who has the power to “cast dimensional doors.” This is clearly alluding to Holly somehow being the one to open the wormhole. 

  Despite the things that I feel were done well this season, there were a number of issues I had with it as well. Firstly, the time jump from the last season was not nearly long enough. If you were to guess, you would likely assume that certain characters are years older than the age they’re supposed to be. Holly for example was played by 14 year old Nell Fisher but the character would be only seven years old if we’re following the canonical timeline, which has established that only 18 months have passed from the last season. In my opinion, it was completely pointless for them to have any kind of significant time jump if the characters’ ages are still ridiculous compared to the age of the actors. If it were up to me I would have made the time jump closer to three to four years as this would be much more believable especially with the younger actors and I don’t see how it would have significantly changed this season’s plot. Another issue I had was that characters seem to only survive for plot convenience. Both Karen and Ted get brutally attacked by a demogorgon and Joyce gets thrown from about fifteen feet onto concrete and while the Wheelers end up hospitalized, they’re all somehow alive? Overall it just seems like the demogorgons are practically invincible when the writers want them to be and other times are merely inconvenient. My biggest criticism is the message this season seems to be this idea of “I had the answers the whole time.” This message is talked about in Robin’s monologue and culminates at the end when Will is able to summon powers basically just by believing in himself. Call me crazy but I think this is a horrible message especially for a teenage audience. While it is important to have confidence in yourself, believing that you have all the answers is frankly delusional. I think the show would have been much better suited focusing on the theme of friendship and supporting each other, showing the audience that you can’t actually do everything by yourself and you need the support of your friends and to work together.