#Btw jancy are so cute in the background

[bequeerbehappy]

Mike hugging his mom at the end of sad episodes is something personal to me

[jancys-blue-bayou]

Well, for how I feel about the Jancy of s4 and the gross and unnecessary Stancy shipteasing, see previous post (ask response). For s4 in general I’ll say... vol 2 was better than vol 1. S4 was better than s3. But it’s really not good, I think.

There’s just way too many locations and characters. It sidelines a bunch of characters which I ranted about here before. The Cali crew (sans El) barely got do anything at all to do with the plot. We got some nice character moments, esp between Jonathan and Will in vol 2. But plot wise they had nothing to do. Jonathan just got to drive for 9 episodes. Mike got to “be the heart” aka yell encouragement to El. Will got to... tell Mike to do that. And together they got to do a rehash of the sensory deprivation tank in s1. And at the end Will got to have a little UD tingle moment. It’s ridiculous that main characters who were at the heart and center of the show before was reduced to this in s4 while walking Russian memes and new mains like Eddie got more to do.

The bigness in terms of abundance of characters and locations also throws the pacing off. Especially in ep 9 when there’s so much stuff that’s supposed to happen simultaneously but bc they go from Nancy/Robin/Steve to El/Max vs Vecna to Cali crew to Russia gang to Lucas fighting the jock to Eddie and Dustin with the odd sprinkle of Erica too, there’s like at least a half hour between Nancy/Robin/Steve getting choked by vines to us seeing them again... still being choked. I get they’re very proud of their big action sequence and in theory I think them all fighting the Hive Mind on different fronts is a neat idea but the execution is lacking, I’m just like how are the guys in the Creel house not dead yet El is taking her sweet time doing anything in the Mind Scape etc.

There’s other pacing problems too but this was where it most jumped out to me. I think it worked way better in s1 and s2 when they also had simultaneous plans going into action but not to this scale and it worked better then I feel.

There’s some interesting UD and Vecna stuff though idk if it makes sense really but hey, maybe they’ll pull it all together in s5. But right now I still have a lot of questions about why Henry is who he is, why he had powers and why he decided “i’mma be super evil” like are we gonna get more of a motivation than “I hate 9 to 5 eat work die lifestyle” lol? Also why did he tell Nancy everything? I suppose they’re saving that for s5 but. The border between the real world and the UD disappearing is a neat concept, I think that can be really cool. On the other hand I’m having trouble wrapping my head around the logic of one dimension overtaking another but I’m willing to run with it.

As an aside, I’m not wild about turning to using another test subject as the big bad, just on principle I always thought the test subjects would be innocent victims. But how they changed up all that background about the Lab and retconned a bunch of stuff in s4 turned into... yeah. Idk. On the other hand I totally see the appeal of Vecna as a villain, I’m just torn.

Also I don’t see the point in the Russia stuff. Yeah I get it, the Cold War was going on. But I think they could’ve just used Russia as a looming but unseen threat, it’s enough with the supernatural threats + the US government as a threat.

Speaking of, the portrayal of the US government from s2 and on is really weird. How they humanize it with Owens and now have turned into internal conflicts, Owens vs Brenner vs Sullivan, it’s really weird. Esp Owens part of it, why is there randomly this super friendly uncle in the shady covert government operations and why is he so completely selfless and willing to sacrifice and save El and her friends, why does he care so much?

Btw goddamn what a choke hold Coca Cola has Stranger Things in, that product placement at the end with El spinning the bottle. I don’t get why she had to spin a bottle at all was it just to get a prominent COKE logo in there?

Positives uh... aside from cute Jancy reunion:

Jonathan and Will talking and hugging and Jonathan clearly knowing Will is gay and seemingly Will knows Jonathan knows, that was all nice but eh couldn’t they have let Will say it please?

Nancy being a fucking badass.

The little Nancy and Max scenes we got in s4 was great, why couldn’t we get more of that instead of all the needless Stancy shipteasing moments? Stancy is long dead, you could’ve just focus on Nancy and Steve both having a lot of nice bonding with everyone else in their plot (and be completely fine, platonic and not weird with each other).

Joyce got to hug both her sons this time lol. Still can’t believe Winona asked the Duffers if she could hug Jonathan too at the end of s3 but got “there’s no time for that” as answer. There was time for the most overlong, unnecessary, excruciating musical moment in tv history, but not for Joyce Byers to hug both her sons.

Lucas and Max was great this season both individually and together. I’m never into kid ships but Lumax might be an exception to the rule, they’re very sweet together.