No one imagined in the summer of 2019 that we were going to have to wait almost three years for the premiere of new episodes of ‘Stranger Things. Finally, it will be this coming Friday, May 27, when the essential series of Netflix return with the first seven chapters of its fourth season. The remaining two won’t arrive until July 2, including the longest in the series by far, as it will be well over two hours long.
For now I have already been able to see the first five chapters of ‘Stranger Things 4’ and I have been very satisfied with them. It is true that they are much longer than usual -not one of them is less than one hour long-, but the series of duffer brothers It continues to be a joy, as it maintains its high dose of entertainment and also enhances its most terrifying aspect.
little polka dots
The platform itself is selling this fourth season as the beginning of the end, since it is already confirmed that the fifth installment will serve to close the series. That supposes that it is necessary to begin to give answers to some of the unknowns that ‘Stranger Things’ had been leaving over the years.
Already those first eight minutes that Netflix launched to whet our appetite made us rethink what we thought until now of Eleven, something that the Duffers continue to delve into, although there is the particularity that the portrait of the character played by Millie Bobby Brown it’s more exhilarating when he focuses on his new depowered reality than on what comes next. It also doesn’t help that the initial section of ‘Fringe’ can pass through the viewer’s head and how heavy a recurrent narrative resource became that later the series of JJ Abrams, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci put aside.
All in all, it is a lesser evil in the face of what we all know will end up coming, and while the other narrative lines They enjoy each other so much that little inconvenience matters. I already anticipate that you do not expect to see all the protagonists together and that what happened at the end of the third season has left obvious consequences on all of them, so from the outset it is time to focus on how they are trying to get ahead to add things from there.
It is true that all the chapters they would have appreciated a little less duration, not to the point of talking about some scenes as filler but to the extent that their contribution is not so important that much is lost by dispensing with them. In return, the staging work is impeccable and the pace is enviable, so that small weakness also loses weight.
great entertainment
Once all the weak points have been highlighted, what remains for us is a season with very clear ideas about what he wants to tell us and how to do it, also counting on an impressive media deployment for this. Netflix was said to have spent a whopping 270 million in this fourth season and always shines on screen, also leaving us with some especially memorable scenes.
The best of all is that this does not only apply to the use of visual effects -very numerous and always convincing, although I admit that I miss a little the dirtiest, most artisanal and decadent approach of the Upside Down World from the first season-, well there is also time to embroider the use of parallel mounting or to dive headlong into a great firefight. Varied and always at a high level, because everything is done with taste and knowing what is sought with it.
In the purely narrative, ‘Stranger Things’ partially leaves aside that summer blockbuster vocation that it exhibited in the third installment to bet more on the thriller, both in relation to the investigation around Vecna, that creature that is sowing chaos, and in everything related to Hopper’s attempts to regain freedom. Of course, there is still humor, but that is also part of the DNA of the series.
all that with unbecoming moments of terror in a series for such a wide audience. For now, in that facet it impresses more than ‘Doctor Strange in the multiverse of madness’, of which there was even controversy for supposedly going a little over the line. Do not expect anything amazing compared to proposals that openly bet on chills and gore, but a generous and successful use of that resource.
Lastly, the cast is so attuned to their characters that their naturalness is beyond doubt, both in the moments when they have to play dumb a bit and when they face a life or death situation -the ending of an episode, I will not say which, is especially memorable in this last point. Of the new signings, the one with the most presence is Joseph Quinn like Eddie, but the stars of the show are still the old acquaintances.
In short
The fourth season of ‘Stranger Things’ is more than earning a place among the best Netflix series of 2022. It wasn’t until I started watching her that I realized how much I missed her.and the reunion with Hawkins has been up to the task.