re: Stranger Things S5 - Volume 2

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I think expecting it to be a blood bath is probably more a symptom of having writers ruthlessly killing off characters to draw out an emotional impact. I felt like the Duffers did a pretty good job of making the final episode emotional without having to kill off a bunch of kids and young adults.

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Yea the no deaths in the finale didn’t bother me and that’s coming from someone who was to the point I wanted Vecna to win. The Wheeler parents should have died from the Demo attack though.

It was a much better finale than I was expecting given how mediocre the lead up episodes were.

I agree with those that said the battle with Vecna could have been a little longer. Paused it when he died and there was almost an hour left I think so I was fully expecting something else crazy to happen. Honestly thought it was going to come from Derek. He never spit out the black smoke and the way he waved to Mike in the moving truck I was like o snap something is up with Derek. But alas, it was just a very long epilogue.

Had numerous emotional moments that teared me up a bit. Very happy for Hop and Joyce.

I’ll have to read up on some recap episodes to see what people are saying about El being alive or dead. Showing the sirens before she disappeared was pretty obvious foreshadowing and Mikes realization at the graduation makes me think she is alive. But I don’t like the vagueness of it. Really just wish they would have given us a solid answer there. It’d be different if it was a side character but it’d be nice to not have to leave it up to our own interpretation with El. And I think as much as anybody Hop deserves to know but it’s some theory he won’t even know about. So the kids will firmly believe she’s alive and everyone else will firmly believe she’s dead.

Really liked the kids coming in at the end and playing D&D. Maybe there are better fan written ending out there , I don’t care, I never read those, but I think that was a pretty great final scene.

I would have said the season as a whole was a 6/10 but the finale definitely bumped it up to at least a 7/10 for me.

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The gays are really hating on this one because they didn’t make Mike gay. The temper tantrums on Twitter are hilarious.

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So by like two random gay people with 12 followers? Nobody with two brain cells was thinking there was any chance Mike was gay. He’s been dating a girl almost the whole series and it would kind of erase Wills whole “I’m different” story.

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WTH? Mike has been in a multi year relationship with 11. They wanted a bi character I guess. Why can’t the idea of meaningful same sex friendship just be a thing

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The gays fantasy is to turn a straight gay.

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ending solidified for me that the story strayed to much away from the core DND group in the final season. All of the Holly, Karen, Kali, Jonathan and Nancy screen time was wasted.

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Agreed - Mike and Joyce were particularly good and central in the early seasons but did almost nothing this final season. At least they gave Joyce the kill.

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- Final fight with Vecna seemed way too easy. Needed a main character death during it.

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Just climb up on those mountains lol. An experience climber, with gear, would take hours to et up there. But sure, some spunky kids can do it in 20 seconds.

The scene that really summed up how horrible and lazy the writing was this season was when everyone climbed the radio tower. Earlier in the season Jonathan and Steve raced up to the top. But this episode they made it seem like a task where rests and water breaks were needed just so they could have a scene with Mike and Will talking alone.

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The gays are really hating on this one because they didn’t make Mike gay. The temper tantrums on Twitter are hilarious.

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That's a very small segment of Twitter I can assure you.

Corinthians420 alter

Things I liked:
- After all the heinous shite he did, they didn’t let Henry off the hook. Yes he was influenced but he was complicit and embraced his role. Was worried we were going to be left with a misunderstood monster trope and they shirked that.

- leaving the end with eleven ambiguous was a good bittersweet ending. Mike in particular has to carry a lot forward as a result of what he’s been through. Won the battle but the war is ongoing for him, as it should be.

Things I didn’t like/am still questioning:
- everyone is just cool now? 18 months later and everyone is just like “we’ve established that there are existential, inter dimensional threats, half the cast has been psychically flayed/put in a coma, most of the cast suffered grueling injuries at one point or another, but it’s cool because Steve coaches little league now and may buy a house soon and Nancy dropped out of college to become a newspaper writer.”
Like, you spent your core, formative years physically and mentally battling interdimensional demons, the military, the town itself who’d demonized you, etc. But now Vecnas gone and the portal is closed so a year and a half later everyone is just… fine now. No lingering PTSD? Robin, Jonathan, Dustin all go to college, Will finds love in Milwaukee (can’t imagine this will be an impossibly difficult thing to explain to an SO), Max lost her brother violently and spent an extended period trapped in a trance but no lingering issues there?

- so the military just… left? Just shrugged their shoulders and said “oh well we tried” and is now leaving the whole cast alone despite the dozens of soldiers they killed? And all the money sunk into secret labs, everything learned by the US and the Soviets about the existence of wormholes and threats, just walking away with no reprisal or any apparent presence in the town?

- how is anyone still living in that town? How has everyone not been relocated and involved in some government program? Dozens of kids were abducted and brutally/invasively assaulted and pumped with mind flayer spores, an entire hospital witnessed demos and their destruction, a lot of the physical buildings were fricked up at the end of season 4 and there are giant tunnels now all under the infrastructure. Why is anyone still choosing to/allowed to live there at this point, let alone act like all is well?

- so… what is the rock thing that connected Henry to the abyss/flayer and where did it come from? Clearly originated from a government lab and was stolen but did it fall from space? What is it and how did it get there and why?

- so… what is the mind flayer exactly? It called to Henry to find it when he touched the rock thing but what is it actually supposed to be? An eldritch god waiting for something to find it? Did it know kids were easily manipulated before Henry made contact or did it use Henry’s experience to inform its plans to merge the worlds? How did it know that humanity was cruel and worthy of wiping out, had it made contact before or did it have a way to study us before Henry got ahold of it?

- Once Vecna/the flayer died, why would Eleven still have powers? Wouldn’t the kids have been in pain same as Will when Vecna was hurt because they were literally tethered to the hive mind?

- guess all the pregnant women that were using Kali as a blood donor for got sucked into space when the upside down was destroyed?

- where did all the meat and viscera and horns that made up the final flayer come from? In season 3 it’s a bunch of liquified townspeople (oh yeah, THAT happened at the town mall too). The Abyss appeared to be an otherwise normal oxygenated planet with a desert terrain, so… where did the vines and the final flayer come from? Is that why there were no demogorgons or dogs or bats pretty much anywhere?

- two straight volumes in the final season of Vecna sending demogorgons to frick shite up and abduct kids but in episode 8 not a single one is sent to thwart the plans of the main group or military?