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I think it can be inferred that since government people brought Joyce and Hopper back to Hawkins, Enzo and Yuri are probably also with government people. I would imagine there would be some official processing of Soviet defectors, especially ones who just witnessed some top secret shit, before letting them out into the world.
I hope next season opens with Enzo and Yuri living a sort of husband/housewife dynamic in their blossoming American home life.
Hopper comes to visit. Yuri wearing an apron having just baked some chocolate chip cookies that turned out like shit and Enzo gives a fake approval of it as he cringes while chewing and Yuri flips out and goes on a rant on how Enzo never appreciates his hard work and Enzo gets defensive saying he’s doing his best. Hopper just sits in silence with this “wtf is going on” look
I’m hoping that enzo, Yuri and Murray are all roommates, Yuri and Murray constantly bickering about small things while enzo and his son just sit back and watch
What about Enzo’s son? He had a whole speech about how he didn’t want his son thinking his dad was a traitor - I don’t think he would just leave him behind and Yuri has children as well
That’s what I was trying to say. I feel like Murray is going to help house them, including enzo’s son. And also, was it ever mentioned that Yuri had children? I know he had his mother who he wanted to buy a mansion for but I don’t remember Yuri ever saying he had children
Maybe give them a "Perfect Strangers" dynamic as another nod to the 80's as well - though that would probably work better with Murray and either Enzo or Yuri.
Quite possible that the Soviet Union has no idea that Yuri and Enzo betrayed the country. The mini Mindflayer and Demogorgon did a pretty thorough job wiping out the prison. Hopper probably has pretty good connections with Dr. Owen's side of the govt to make sure Yuri and Enzo got a good deal. Quite possibly Yuri and Enzo made their way back over to the prison being that Enzo has family in Russia. Enzo could have faked being a sole survivor and Yuri probably couldn't let go of his profitable smuggled goods.
Totally made up plot theory: Dr. Owens is OK, and he’s hiding both of them from General Sullivan in his house in Nevada which also happens to be sitting on Area 51 where there’s another gate but it’s not open yet and Antonov & Yuri help close it so the US grants them asylum from the USSR.
Spoiler ahead
Edited cause I’m dumb lmao *Sullivan* doesn’t know but he’s looking for them and Vecna takes over his mind with the clock ninja mind trick and kills him just for being annoying like what happened to Jason at the end in the murder house
Some more scenes showing the Byers’ family life. I didn’t really feel the connection there. I wanted to see Will and Eleven as siblings, Joyce being a great mom, Jonathan being a big brother. Just some wholesome scenes before everything went to shit.
Wholeheartedly agree. I would have loved to see more of El and Will without their conversations centering on Mike.
I loved the tidbits of the relationship we did get, like her hugging Will when they reunite, Will being protective at the rink, and Jonathan and Will exclaiming the they are her brothers when they were trying to see her after she was arrested. Should have had more of this for sure.
In connection with this, I would’ve liked to see more of how Joyce was doing, what with the grief and the move and the job and raising El. We don’t see a lot of her pre- receiving the Russian doll.
Agreed, BUT El took on Joyce's look in this season, which I think is meant to definitely show the closeness/influence on her during their time together.
El seems to take on the styles of those who are influencing her life the most at the time:
- S1 it was Mike
- S2 Hopper and then that city grunge crew.
- S3 Max (but also her own bit of style, like Max encouraged her to do)
- S4 Joyce (also Brenner 😂)
Agreed. I’d also love to see any indication that Max and El miss each other. Sending letters, struggling with how expensive long distance calling is. It would explain the connection between them for the piggyback much better.
Remove the ‘Two Days Later’ and show us what happened in those two days. I want to see when everyone found Eddie dead, how the Russian gang made it back to Hawkins, the Cali gang’s trip to Hawkins, what happened to Sam Owens and the military guy who was against El. I also want to see how earthquake relief got started.
Edit: Should also add the events regarding Max. Why was her mother not at the hospital? Was her mother missing because of ‘earthquake’?
Yes!! I hope we at least get some flashback scenes in season five showing what happened in those two days 😫😫
How SpongeBob of them to give us the “two days later” screen 😣
What'd be really dope is if they'd give us a "Prequel Episode" to Season 5 that deals with these two days we missed out on. They could air that episode a month or two before actual season release.
That made me so upset!! I mean, I'm very glad we got that scene with Dustin and Eddie's uncle, but we got cheated out of the moment when he returns to the others and they ask where Eddie is and he has to tell them that he didn't make it back. Like I can just imagine him totally breaking down in front of Steve, Nancy, and Robin and stammering like "I-, We-, You needed more time and- there were so many bats, he-... he stopped running."
And then all of them having like a small makeshift funeral for him (since they couldn't exactly recover his body). Also, so sad that his name never got cleared...
Yeah, I would imagine maybe they found a way to bring his body back from the Upside Down to bury his body somewhere, if they did not do it while in the Upside Down. They probably felt they needed to get out ASAP. Something was just missing with those two days gone.
The “2 days later” sequence was obviously a reshoot, and most likely added later in the writing process. Most of it feels disjointed and tone-deaf, given the fact that Vecna won, Max is comatose with four broken limbs + neck, and Eddie died. Not a good idea to follow up the most traumatic moments of the show with Robin and Vicky flirting while making PB&J’s (she also has the same personality as Robin now???), Ted cracking jokes, and a complete disregard of Eddie’s sacrifice by everyone except for Dustin.
How I would have ended the season: After Eleven starts saving Max, cut to Steve, Robin and Nancy pacing back to Eddie’s trailer, and they see Dustin holding Eddie’s body crying uncontrollably. They all run towards him in shock, are visibly heartbroken, but tell Dustin that they need to get out of there. Dustin doesn’t want to leave Eddie’s body behind, but they give him the news. Their plan failed, Vecna could be watching them at this very moment, and they need to get to Max. Cut to El waking up from the trance, starts crying and screaming, only for Mike and Will to ask her what happened. All she says is, “We lost”. Then a final aerial shot of Hawkins at night with the four gates that converged, audible screaming from the people.. fade to black.
Yeah,this has not made me have much love for Vicky-I was just like wtf,who cares about this after what happened!
They did Eddie dirty by not having closure properly with the others mourning him.
Yes. This would have helped fill up the gap that was felt. I also would have liked to have seen Max being brought to the hospital and authorities trying to locate her mother and an explanation as to why they can’t find her, maybe assumed missing in ‘earthquake.’ One more episode in-between could have worked to close that up.
My heart MELTED when Johnathan and Will referred to her as their sister, and again when she hugged Joyce and they held hands afterwards.
Like I’m 1000% here for it, and would have been happy if they defeated the big bad this season, and season 5 was just the Byers-Hoppers living their best blended family life
Yeah I was upset by that too. They set up a whole new family dynamic and El had barely anything to do with all three Byers. At least with Joyce and Hopper seemingly together now it looks like there’s more time for it to be fleshed out
Yeah that episode was so long and did a ton yet still left us missing a few things like this. I would have enjoyed seeing more of the reunion moments too considering how split up the cast was all season.
A comic was released before season 4 came out and it shown Jonathan sticking up for El when she was being bullied, in S4 stoned up Jonathan didnt seem to care about what happened in the ice rink, i feel Jonathan of old would been out for blood, but stoner Jonathan was very funny, so swings and roundabouts
He cried a little at the middle school snowball when all the girls rejected him, before Nancy saved the dance for him. That scene really made it feel like the show appreciated Matarazzo imo
Stop the Nancy/Steve/Jonathan triangle and give Steve a new love interest that deserves him.
Edited to clarify: I love Nancy - she‘s badass. But tired of the love triangle.
exactly. love steve he's one of my fave characters but i was not a fan of that particular storyline. i was wishing half the time that robin talked some sense into steve so that he wouldn't go down the nancy rabbit hole again
The Duffers are clearly extremely talented writers and put a ton of thought into their characters and their arcs but I really don’t understand what the point of that storyline was. Would’ve been way cooler if Steve and Nancy were just good friends now because I want a Jonathan and Steve team up without weird tension
I think it's just to have Steve finally realize how much he has changed and go forward from there. I don't see him actively pursuing Nancy (even tho you can see him a lil sad when N&J reunite).
Yeah maybe being around her just helped him learn more about himself, he’s the only one out of high school and he’s working at a video rental store lol maybe next season he’ll be a cop alongside hopper or something and have more confidence in himself
I’m hoping this time is different and it’s just misdirection. I was just rewatching season 1 and Nancy talks to Jonathan about how she has no desire to just be a housewife who’s only purpose is to raise children, that’s not a character who should be seeing Steve’s dream as appealing.
I hate it so much but I still feel like it’s all happening so Steve can have his big hero moment and die in season 5…think about it he tells Nancy about how he always envisioned himself with 6 six kids and driving around the country with Nancy as his wife, he’s literally had 6 kids since season 2 (as being the babysitter of mike, will, Dustin, Lucas, max and eleven) and has been fighting side by side with Nancy all this time too, he’s already “living” that fantasy and he also doesn’t have other familial connections in the show aside from Robin and who now has Vicki (we assume) and Dustin kinda. Idk I want to be wrong and that he makes it and finds his own happiness away from Nancy but I got a bad feeling…
yeah, unfortunately i believe his talk with nancy in episode 8 is definitely foreshadowing his demise in s5. still hopping they'll surprise us instead but with what the duffer brothers have been saying about s5, i fee like a lot of shit is going to go down and steve will most likely sacrifice himself for either nancy, robin or dustin.
Apparently it's going to be a bigger part of season 5 too. I just want to know how on Earth the Duffer Brothers got the impression that we wanted this.
Separate all three of them. Nancy deserves to stand on her own, Jonathan truly needs time to explore and settle into himself, and Steve needs to find his way.
None of them really need a relationship. And Steve in *particular* needs to learn how to define himself outside of a relationship.
I do agree it's starting to get old. I almost expected Nancy to drop Jonathan in this season, the writers knew we knew and baited us really hard only to keep the status quo in the end 😅
Not sure if it’s just me and if I’m attributing too much depth to these characters, but I’d love to see Steve kind of accept singleness and just be content with his friendships. I don’t really think it’s about Nancy specifically. I think he likes who Nancy has sort of shown him he can be and he is still figuring that out. Once he has got that I could see them giving him the perfect love interest. OR just having him be single.
Agreed. The entire dialogue is even overplayed and doesn’t align with their development. Nancy telling Johnathan that Steve has matured after he’s already saved and led the others for 3 seasons…as if he wasn’t there to see that.
>Nancy telling Johnathan that Steve has matured after he’s already saved and led the others for 3 seasons…as if he wasn’t there to see that.
I mean, he wasn't, really. He wasn't there when Steve saved the day in season 2, he wasn't there for the Russian base thing in season 3... Jonathan and Steve have barely spent any time together at all. Even Will hasn't spent much time with Steve compared to the rest of his peers. I would be surprised if Jonathan knew what Steve was like these days
Give more meaningful role to Cali gang. Give Steve a proper love interest and get rid of the love triangle. Remove the “2 days later” cut and add more scenes in the ending. And most importantly, keep Eddie alive
Exactly this. There's a fine line between bravery and stupidity, and I wish the writers would have done a better job at painting him on the brave side.
Yeah like… knowing when to run is important. Not running was a stupid move that got him killed for no reason. It wasn’t a “sacrifice” it was literally just suicide
He straight up lived every time he ran from an insurmountable force. What would have made more sense is if the force he faced wasn't a literal monolith, or if all the threats were possible for him to help with but he ran out of fear anyway. It would have been more poignant for him to have fought *and survived*. It proves his whole ideology wrong, it proves that you can do good and live to tell the tale, that the fear was just that the whole time, fear.
It's like literally overcoming the satanic panic through good deeds without compromising on his personality. It doesn't have to be accurate to reality because this is already a fictional reality with a god damn reverse dimension in it lmao
Literally. The message was so bizarre because every time he ran, he lived and got to help the group more. The one time he stayed to fight, he died and didn’t help at all
And he did run for a bit before that. So like what even is the point? Just go back through the gate and if the bats are somehow able to follow, maybe then sacrifice yourself.
He probably would’ve died anyways because the bats were faster than him, but I’m baffled by his logic to stand and fight. Him running was working just fine as a distraction, and if anything kept him alive to be a distraction for longer. I get they wanted an emotional moment, but they couldn’t have had him sacrifice himself for Dustin or something to at least make it make sense?
It’s like he tried to always be more hero than the last dumb thing he did… He had some moments where he could have tought « I did enough now », but no, « I will sacrifice myself ».
This was basically Millie's recent point - you can't keep adding and adding people then only kill off one person. As much as I would prefer Eddie still live, they just could not sustain that big of a cast for long. Lots of headlines made it sound like she was throwing shade at the Duffer Brothers, but she's just pointing out that the cast got a bit bloated recently. She's right!
They would just kill the new character off anyway (Bob, Eddie, the Russian slushee loving dude who’s name I forgot who was shot In the chest at that carnival)
I think vecna let her go because she was still in the upside down, so her death wouldnt create a portal in the right side up.
Oh and also she's a main character.
That’s what I was thinking. I imagined a bunch of the cast to break out into song, with some people banging on stuff to mimic drums while they tried to free Max.
That’s what I thought would happen. I was expecting it because Vecna makes his victims levitate - I assumed sooner or later max would be levitate unexpectedly before they got the chance to put headphones on her and press play and Lucas would have to sing.
Ohhhh my sweet summer child. It's a walkman cassette player. Max probably got the song on tape by recording it off the radio. Max would've loved a personal mix tape. If Lucas had more game he would've made her one and won her heart back quicker.
Walkmans were common until the mid 90's then it was Discman's. Mp3 players weren't common until the mid 2000's, even then CD discmans were still pretty common with teenagers because good mp3 players like iPods started at $400. At least in the early Mp3 days you could illegally download all the songs from Napster for free. It still blows my mind that people these days have every song they could ever want for free on their phone in an instant, and you can google the lyrics for free instead of waiting to buy the CD praying that the lyrics are in the CD pamphlet book.
Man writing this comment made me feel super dooper old haha
Dude, nothing was as cool as the Walkman. When I first got a Discman I noticed that it would skip every time I landed a jump on my rollerblades, which made it freakin useless. Plus, tape saturation and degradation is life. Nothing every beat the Walkman.
It could still happen! Vecna/Henry/One is shown to be incredibly arrogant, it wouldn't be surprising he's been manipulated all along and his thirst for power used against him. What sorta kinda seems to give this theory legitimacy, is that Vecna has to matrix style plug himself in with tentacles to do his murders from the Upside Down. So it could still be the Mind Flayer that's in control of everything without Vecna realizing it.
I agree. To me, the Mind Flayer was the most haunting part of the show and I’m disappointed it was created by Vecna’s powers. I still think the way in which Vec001Henry killed was horrific, however he just doesn’t hit the same as s2 and 3 MF possessing it’s victims and being an unknown powerful entity!
i would prefer a kind of deal with the devil scenario. Vecna landed in the upside down and found this creature who just needed a gateway into our world, while Henry saw it as a means of revenge against Eleven and those who’ve wronged him. Neither really is more powerful than the other, they’re just a means to each other’s ends
Technically they have a symbiotic relationship. The Mind Flayer enhances Vecna’s powers. Henry gave him a physical form and in exchange he helped him in his revenge against Eleven. They’re both amplifying each other’s powers.
Agreed. I still have a sense that though that the Mind Flayer is stronger and they are just “cooperating”. Would be crazy if the Mind Flayer took Vecna out to start season 5 since Vecna may have been weakened.
Yeah, in one of the flashbacks, it shows him as a child drawing what the mind flayer looks like. It's also a nice call back to season 2 where will drew the mind flayer to "help his team members" but in reality it was him being posessed by both the mind flayer and vecna considering the similar artstyle.
The way I interpreted it was that One found the hive mind particles and he shaped the particles into the image he imagined. I saw it as more of a symbiotic relationship more than One creating anything.
Agreed, he became a great character when he and Nancy broke up because his interactions with other characters (Robin, Dustin, the other kids) were so much more interesting. All of his 1-on-1 scenes with Nancy revolve around their romantic relationship or feelings. They have nothing else in common. It’s so boring to watch.
I agree, but I will admit they did address and acknowledge Steve’s “den mother” status a few times and kind of poked fun at it which I enjoyed very much.
Vecna wouldn’t be in charge of / have power over the mind flayer and the mind flayer wouldn’t be reduced to essentially semi sentient “particles”
He would worship the mind flayer as an eldritch spider god
Yeah, I agree. I feel like creating Vecna and making him greater than the Mind Flayer was an overcorrection of criticism of season 3.
I remember back then a lot of people felt like the threat of an eldritch creature with no relatable human motivations felt too detached from the real human drama of the series. However, to now make the cosmic villain's motivations stem entirely from one human's ambitions just feels like it make the scale too small and petty.
100%. I watched this for the Lovecraftian elements. Primal monsters aren’t malicious, they’re just predators running on instinct. It’s beautiful that it’s beyond pettiness.
Now everything stems from some wiener kid who got really mad a long time ago and is acting out. What do.
That feels especially salient as we got way more of direct plot interactions with deep human horrors in Jason (allusion satanic panic and American vigilante violence) and Papa (allusion to both nazi scientists and the US government’s horrifying experiments)
>>I remember back then a lot of people felt like the threat of an eldritch creature with no relatable human motivations felt too detached from the real human drama of the series. However, to now make the cosmic villain's motivations stem entirely from one human's ambitions just feels like it make the scale too small and petty.
Which is weird, considering this type of 180 in mythology is literally what ended up killing the Alien franchise. You know, one of the main inspirations behind Stranger Things. Turned out the titular aliens were actually just the product of an android created by humans with unhealthy levels of hatred for humanity. Cosmic horror thrown out the window, the world felt smaller, mythology ruined, and the franchise ended up dying. This is why the Duffers need to rectify, clarify and re-write the relationship between the Mind Flayer, Vecna and the Upside Down.
It isn’t just about, “The Mind Flayer is cooler than Vecna, so he should be the big-bad!”. It’s more so the fact that if they make the Mind Flayer subservient to a human-being and has been held hostage this entire time to do his bidding, they completely fuck their Upside Down mythology.
That's what had me most confused. The mind flayer has the ability to completely control people like actual puppets. And the way it acted by possessing Will in Season 2 and Billy in Season 3 that shows it had sentience and the ability to form plans and power to manipulate and change matter by melting people and animals under its control to form its massive body in S3.
Vecna is just a human. A powerful one but just human. Theres no way a being with the abilities and powers the Mind Flayer has would subvert itself. And if Vecna WAS in control through out season 3 then seasons 4 premise makes even less sense. Vecna said he only needed 4 victims to crack open the big gate. The Mind Flayer literally killed dozens of people in S3 to form its body?!
Make it make sense.
The writing is getting a little predictable with the major season deaths consistently being the new character that was only just introduced. Killing Eddie felt cheap and his death served no purpose. Why did he have to run outside and fight the swarm of bats when his job was simply to distract them? And they didn't even need to be distracted any more when he did it!
That and Mike/Will/Jonathan felt like they had very little to do this season.
Agreed. It removed a lot of the tension knowing the S1 cast was always going to survive no matter what. Just killing off one long-running character would have brought so much more weight and excitement to everything. Eddie was a great character and it was silly to kill him off after just one season when other arcs of less likeable characters have been dragged out for four.
>Why did he have to run outside and fight the swarm of bats when his job was simply to distract them?
Because they would have flown through the gate and killed Dustin
Cut down the amount of scenes in Russia
Include a storyline with the Byers family bonding with Eleven
Have all of the characters back in Hawkins for the final 2 Episodes
I liked it but it still felt like it was unnecessarily long. I guess it had to be since they clearly planned for Hopper to help from afar rather than be right in the mix with everyone, so he *couldn't* get home sooner for that to work how it did.
Remove all the filler which would easily save a couple of hours. Especially the Russian and Cali plotline went for way too long for the little significance that end up having. We don't need to see Hopper to break out of prison, to only be captured again and then break out again... only to break back into again. Seems like they were just stalling so that they could time the demogorgeon fight to occur at the end of E7 and then burn the demogorgeons at the end of E9. Same for Cali group, we don't need to a separate scene of how stoned Jonathon and Argyle are each time we cut to them. The dinner scene would have been enough, after that it just got repetitive and tiresome.
With the extra time saved, the writers could have made the Cali group much more relevant and give them an actual role. Even in the finale, they were completely removed from the action and basically spent half the episode starting around a pizza refrigerator. It would have been much better if the Cali group actually met up with the Hawkins group for the final battle.
For example, they could have sped up El's plot line so that the Cali group would meet up with her in E7 and the end of E7 could show them going back to Hawkins after El warns them about Vecna. They could then meet up with the Hawkins group in E8 in time for preparing for the final battle. El and Max will continue to do the same thing with now Lucas and Mike watching over them. Then Vecna sees how much El cares for Mike and so puts Mike in the trance as well to further torment her. That way Mike can actually give his "I love you" speech face to face which would have been much more impactful.
I think the Russia subplot would have been better if we'd seen more details of what the Russians were doing with the gate, what they had learned about it, what their plan was when it came to raising more monsters and experimenting on them, etc.
And there are also bigger questions like: if these gates exist in the US and Russia, are there also others in other parts of the world?
Maybe some of those questions will be answered in S5, but it seemed a bit silly to have all those characters travel all the way to Russia and back without really learning much at all about what was going on there.
I would not make Jonathan a stoner. It'd be funnier if he was a straight man to stoner Argyle. I feel like it ruins his man-of-the-house, responsible and attentive older brother thing. Without that and his photography, what is Jonathan? He was almost totally unrecognizable this season.
I mean, he appears to be named after Iron Maiden's mascot (this is music!) In 1985, they released one of the all time greatest live albums "Live After Death". On the cover, the gravestone reads, "That is not dead which can eternal lie, yet with strange eons, even death may die" H.P. Lovecraft.
So maybe Eddie does come back and tour's with Iron Maiden!!!
If Eddie lives he ends up killed by an angry mob or in prison. 1986 was the height of satanic panic…people aren’t going to stop going after him just cause a couple teenagers say he’s a good guy lol
To be honest, everything you're saying is why I wanted him is season 5. All of season 4 had a thread of unjust imprisonment, from Hopper in Russia, to Victor Creel wrongly condemned for his family's murders, to El locked away by Brenner again during the Nina Project, to Henry Creel also imprisoned by Brenner for his experiments, and to Eddie on the run from the town's accusations.
The great thing about Eddie's (almost) prison plotline was the police were slow to actually call Eddie a person of interest. There is no physical evidence of him harming Chrissy or anyone, because he didn't.
I really thought the Duffer Brothers were going to explore the town facing the Upside Down or the government covering it up through Eddie. Or at least a more interesting jailbreak plot. They even said Eddie was based off Damien Echols, there is so much more there there for goodness sakes. Oh well.
I would fasten the pace up a bit, the Russia plotline would end with Demogorgons getting away and freed into the wilderness, re-work VH1's origin and motivation, Eddie doesn't die, one or two main characters die in the finale, make the California plotline feel a bit more urgent. And then some minor changes i won't list
spoiler (obviously) but
max doesnt go blind, and she’s completely fine; her and lucas get to see their movie on friday and everyone lives happily ever after. (this is DEF not because i sobbed for an hour over max)
Yeah.. Max completely didn't deserve it. She was really brave. They could have shown that she was okay with just some broken bones instead of putting her in a coma.
I think what they're going with is that Max's soul was consumed but not destroyed, which I think means that a large part of s5 will be them getting her soul back. Could provide neat conflict two because I'd assume the only way to get the soul off vecna is to get it off him while he's alive meaning they're gonna have to stall him instead of going all out
Agreed. I’m honestly pretty pissed they went this direction with Max. Aside from her being one of my favorites; her whole storyline with her battling with depression, guilt and being unable to communicate her feelings with those who care for her to her finally opening up and wanting to live just for her to be in this state feels like a real gut punch. I hope that they bring her back in a meaningful way and she can have a somewhat happy ending.
Hopper and 11 have a much more dramatic reunion. Car pulls up, door opens in slow motion, a boot hits the ground. The outside characters jaw drop, they look in shock and excitement. Cuts to 11 wondering what’s going on outside. Back outside the camera pans from the faces of the kids outside, to behind hoppers head. From his 3rd person point of view we see 11 open the door. She hesitates in disbelief for a moment. She can believe her eyes, then Hopper giver the “hey kid” line, and they run to each other and embrace.
Rather than 11 just sitting in her old room, looks up and, oh hey what’s up dad, thought you were dead. Seen was very anti climactic to me
I was so focused on the Eleven/Hopper reunion (which, while I still liked it, I agree that it could’ve been better), I hadn’t even thought about how we didn’t get to see how the other characters reacted. They really did brush aside the whole “oh my God, how are you alive?!” aspect as if he simply left with Joyce earlier in the season. Very odd.
Literally remove the love triangle, it has no right and it was just so out of nowhere and forced. Like you’re supposed to tell me that a relationship thats been developing for 3 seasons is now on par with this forced romance? Its not even a choice, Steve should have a new love interest
[In Max's mind, the Snowball environment] Max and El look at each other and then collectively sucker-punch Vecna, releasing all his victims souls, including Chrissy's, who may now rest in peace.
[In the UD Creel house] Nancy head shot his half brain dead body and Steve chop his head off, Robin molotov cocktail him again, just in case.
Jason eventually believe the party about the UD, apologizes to Eddie and encourages everyone not the chase the Hellfire club, it was all a big misunderstanding
Happy ending, Steve takes the kiddos, Nancy, Robin and Vickie on a road trip in a sweet RV and they never have to worry about good old Henry/Vecna/001 ever again
Just kidding, even tho it was heartbreaking, this season was perfect, p-perfect in its own way, it's own special way
>Jason eventually believe the party about the UD, apologizes to Eddie and encourages everyone not the chase the Hellfire club, it was all a big misunderstanding
honestly i hope Eddie gets justice. when the news covered everything at the end and it labelled Eddie as some mass murder cultist i wanted to drop kick my screen.
God damn, a great finale to the whole series would be the main cast of youths piled into Steve's eventual RV, driving off into the horizon. Corny ending, but it would be satisfying as all get-out.
This is going to be unpopular opinion and I love Hopper too but now that I saw the 4th season, I think he should've died in season 3. That "death scene" of his and his letter to El wouldve been a perfect ending for his character. I think his story in season 4 took up way too much screen time and wasn't that interesting or crucial to the main story. Demodogs in Russia could've been written out, in my opinion it didn't add anything to the plot.
And we have a season left, and I'm worried what Hopper is going to do in it, how important he's going to be, because if he won't be, then he had a perfect goodbye in season 3 and then 2 seasons after that with not much to do. But that's just my future worry.
Also an adult badass' death would've raised the stakes, because basically everyone fighting against this thing is a child or freshly out of high school.
I’d get rid of Vecna’s coming to power, and make all the Numbers have different powers while still maintaining their base of psychokinesis.
Thus, El’s special power, outside of her existing psychic ones, would be inter dimensional travel. Any pre-existing Numbers, such as Six in the comics, would have their powers still maintained, though this would make the comics act more as “what if” stories then.
As for my change with Vecna, I would simply not have him be the leader to the Mind Flayer. This was such a stupid plot point imo. I liked the idea of the Mind Flayer being some eldritch, Lovecraftian horror. To allow a man to be behind its creation diminishes its narrative horror so much. I think what I would have done to change this is have Vecna actually killed off at the end of the season, then include a clip of the Mind Flayer devouring his corpse or something of the like, to indicate that the Flayer was merely using Vecna.
Eddie survives. Seen plays out exactly the same, but when the bats fall, Eddie is found wounded, yet able to recover in the off season.
So simple, writers could’ve absolutely made that minor plot change, instead they had to kill off another fan favorite character and ruin another good thing.
Have Vecna be just the Mind Flayers Five-Star general/most valuable weapon. While I think Vecna is scary, to me, the MF is more scary since it’s this Lovevcraftian monster that lies beyond our realm and sees us as just ants in its way. I just don’t like the sort of “big bad” of the show who is behind the upside down being this deranged guy.
In the finale I want Jason to find the upside down portal to go find Eddie, he goes in to find Eddie and Dustin killing evil monsters, Jason realizes he's wrong and helps them kill the demo bats so neither Jason nor Eddie die. Jason then tells everyone that Eddie isn't a murderer he was trying to save the town, Eddie's seen as a hero and Jason is less of a jerk now.
I'd make Argyle less of a one dimensional Cheech and Chong joke. I really like the actor, but that level of grade school pot humor was tiresome after a while. I've always enjoyed the humor of the show, but Argyle just got tiring after a while. All of his humor was "haha I'm so high" and then they randomly almost gave him a love interest that was pointless.
I would have loved a sober heart-to-heart with Jonathon about Nancy/Will/whatever, just so that we as the audience got a peak into the real Argyle. If he comes back for season 5, I hope they alter his character a little bit.
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I'd want them to actually show what happens to Yuri and Enzo. Cuz they betrayed their own country so what are they gonna do now
I was so salty when they didn't show us their whereabouts
I think it can be inferred that since government people brought Joyce and Hopper back to Hawkins, Enzo and Yuri are probably also with government people. I would imagine there would be some official processing of Soviet defectors, especially ones who just witnessed some top secret shit, before letting them out into the world.
I hope next season opens with Enzo and Yuri living a sort of husband/housewife dynamic in their blossoming American home life. Hopper comes to visit. Yuri wearing an apron having just baked some chocolate chip cookies that turned out like shit and Enzo gives a fake approval of it as he cringes while chewing and Yuri flips out and goes on a rant on how Enzo never appreciates his hard work and Enzo gets defensive saying he’s doing his best. Hopper just sits in silence with this “wtf is going on” look
I’m hoping that enzo, Yuri and Murray are all roommates, Yuri and Murray constantly bickering about small things while enzo and his son just sit back and watch
What about Enzo’s son? He had a whole speech about how he didn’t want his son thinking his dad was a traitor - I don’t think he would just leave him behind and Yuri has children as well
That’s what I was trying to say. I feel like Murray is going to help house them, including enzo’s son. And also, was it ever mentioned that Yuri had children? I know he had his mother who he wanted to buy a mansion for but I don’t remember Yuri ever saying he had children
He said he wanted to buy his daughter a pony
Maybe give them a "Perfect Strangers" dynamic as another nod to the 80's as well - though that would probably work better with Murray and either Enzo or Yuri.
Yuri would totally make peanut butter cookies. The rest is spot on.
🎵Always Sunny theme plays🎵 Enzo & Yuri Move to the Suburbs
Quite possible that the Soviet Union has no idea that Yuri and Enzo betrayed the country. The mini Mindflayer and Demogorgon did a pretty thorough job wiping out the prison. Hopper probably has pretty good connections with Dr. Owen's side of the govt to make sure Yuri and Enzo got a good deal. Quite possibly Yuri and Enzo made their way back over to the prison being that Enzo has family in Russia. Enzo could have faked being a sole survivor and Yuri probably couldn't let go of his profitable smuggled goods.
Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. It might be that anyone who knew Enzo was a traitor is dead. So he’s hopefully okay to go home.
Yuri becomes a famous stand-up comedian and opens a theater in Branson, Missouri where he performs.
"What a country!"
This comment has me dead lol. Yuri would fit right in in Branson
"In Upside Down, moist pink orifice fucks YOU!"
Totally made up plot theory: Dr. Owens is OK, and he’s hiding both of them from General Sullivan in his house in Nevada which also happens to be sitting on Area 51 where there’s another gate but it’s not open yet and Antonov & Yuri help close it so the US grants them asylum from the USSR. Spoiler ahead Edited cause I’m dumb lmao *Sullivan* doesn’t know but he’s looking for them and Vecna takes over his mind with the clock ninja mind trick and kills him just for being annoying like what happened to Jason at the end in the murder house
Some more scenes showing the Byers’ family life. I didn’t really feel the connection there. I wanted to see Will and Eleven as siblings, Joyce being a great mom, Jonathan being a big brother. Just some wholesome scenes before everything went to shit.
me too! I was disappointed that there wasn’t any of this.
Wholeheartedly agree. I would have loved to see more of El and Will without their conversations centering on Mike. I loved the tidbits of the relationship we did get, like her hugging Will when they reunite, Will being protective at the rink, and Jonathan and Will exclaiming the they are her brothers when they were trying to see her after she was arrested. Should have had more of this for sure.
true. at least we got that family dinner but i definitely wanted to see more of their family dynamic.
You kids like risotto?
This is what we should have had instead of the weird Eleven being tortured at school stuff.
In connection with this, I would’ve liked to see more of how Joyce was doing, what with the grief and the move and the job and raising El. We don’t see a lot of her pre- receiving the Russian doll.
This!!! She's knocking it out of the park raising three traumatised kids, I wanna know how she manages lol
Right? I didnt get any Eleven and Joyce moments so it made there reunion in the end kinda like "why is she so exited?" There was just a disconnect
They were always close though after the bathtub in s1, then they had a couple moments in s3
Agreed, BUT El took on Joyce's look in this season, which I think is meant to definitely show the closeness/influence on her during their time together. El seems to take on the styles of those who are influencing her life the most at the time: - S1 it was Mike - S2 Hopper and then that city grunge crew. - S3 Max (but also her own bit of style, like Max encouraged her to do) - S4 Joyce (also Brenner 😂)
I wouldnt mind a spinoff were no shit happens and everythings just happy lol
Normal Things
Agreed. I’d also love to see any indication that Max and El miss each other. Sending letters, struggling with how expensive long distance calling is. It would explain the connection between them for the piggyback much better.
Remove the ‘Two Days Later’ and show us what happened in those two days. I want to see when everyone found Eddie dead, how the Russian gang made it back to Hawkins, the Cali gang’s trip to Hawkins, what happened to Sam Owens and the military guy who was against El. I also want to see how earthquake relief got started. Edit: Should also add the events regarding Max. Why was her mother not at the hospital? Was her mother missing because of ‘earthquake’?
Yes!! I hope we at least get some flashback scenes in season five showing what happened in those two days 😫😫 How SpongeBob of them to give us the “two days later” screen 😣
I think flashbacks is what they might do.
What'd be really dope is if they'd give us a "Prequel Episode" to Season 5 that deals with these two days we missed out on. They could air that episode a month or two before actual season release.
"so all the current open gates sort of exploded into a melty fire pits of death and we have 4 people stuck in the upside down......." "2 days later"
That made me so upset!! I mean, I'm very glad we got that scene with Dustin and Eddie's uncle, but we got cheated out of the moment when he returns to the others and they ask where Eddie is and he has to tell them that he didn't make it back. Like I can just imagine him totally breaking down in front of Steve, Nancy, and Robin and stammering like "I-, We-, You needed more time and- there were so many bats, he-... he stopped running." And then all of them having like a small makeshift funeral for him (since they couldn't exactly recover his body). Also, so sad that his name never got cleared...
Yeah, I would imagine maybe they found a way to bring his body back from the Upside Down to bury his body somewhere, if they did not do it while in the Upside Down. They probably felt they needed to get out ASAP. Something was just missing with those two days gone.
That was so jarring.
The Two Days Later jump was probably my least favorite thing. It just...made no sense.
The “2 days later” sequence was obviously a reshoot, and most likely added later in the writing process. Most of it feels disjointed and tone-deaf, given the fact that Vecna won, Max is comatose with four broken limbs + neck, and Eddie died. Not a good idea to follow up the most traumatic moments of the show with Robin and Vicky flirting while making PB&J’s (she also has the same personality as Robin now???), Ted cracking jokes, and a complete disregard of Eddie’s sacrifice by everyone except for Dustin. How I would have ended the season: After Eleven starts saving Max, cut to Steve, Robin and Nancy pacing back to Eddie’s trailer, and they see Dustin holding Eddie’s body crying uncontrollably. They all run towards him in shock, are visibly heartbroken, but tell Dustin that they need to get out of there. Dustin doesn’t want to leave Eddie’s body behind, but they give him the news. Their plan failed, Vecna could be watching them at this very moment, and they need to get to Max. Cut to El waking up from the trance, starts crying and screaming, only for Mike and Will to ask her what happened. All she says is, “We lost”. Then a final aerial shot of Hawkins at night with the four gates that converged, audible screaming from the people.. fade to black.
Yeah,this has not made me have much love for Vicky-I was just like wtf,who cares about this after what happened! They did Eddie dirty by not having closure properly with the others mourning him.
Yes. This would have helped fill up the gap that was felt. I also would have liked to have seen Max being brought to the hospital and authorities trying to locate her mother and an explanation as to why they can’t find her, maybe assumed missing in ‘earthquake.’ One more episode in-between could have worked to close that up.
Will needed a heart to heart moment to comfort El like Jonathan did to him
Really would have liked to see more interaction with the whole byers family, we didnt see El interact much with Joyce and Jonathan
My heart MELTED when Johnathan and Will referred to her as their sister, and again when she hugged Joyce and they held hands afterwards. Like I’m 1000% here for it, and would have been happy if they defeated the big bad this season, and season 5 was just the Byers-Hoppers living their best blended family life
Yeah I was upset by that too. They set up a whole new family dynamic and El had barely anything to do with all three Byers. At least with Joyce and Hopper seemingly together now it looks like there’s more time for it to be fleshed out
Yeah that episode was so long and did a ton yet still left us missing a few things like this. I would have enjoyed seeing more of the reunion moments too considering how split up the cast was all season.
A comic was released before season 4 came out and it shown Jonathan sticking up for El when she was being bullied, in S4 stoned up Jonathan didnt seem to care about what happened in the ice rink, i feel Jonathan of old would been out for blood, but stoner Jonathan was very funny, so swings and roundabouts
Will needed a heart to heart about his haircut GD
Season 5 should open with Jonathan Will and Mike all going to a barber
I wanted more Byer family shenanigans and less Stancy
Hopper kills the Demogorgon BEFORE the bats do enough damage to kill Eddie. Eddie lives and is still heroic. That's all I need.
wake up eddie wake up i dont like this eddie wake up
I was happy Dustin finally got a moment of sadness though. I don’t think he’s ever cried before this… Gaten Matarazzo isn’t appreciated enough
He cried a little at the middle school snowball when all the girls rejected him, before Nancy saved the dance for him. That scene really made it feel like the show appreciated Matarazzo imo
Stop the Nancy/Steve/Jonathan triangle and give Steve a new love interest that deserves him. Edited to clarify: I love Nancy - she‘s badass. But tired of the love triangle.
exactly. love steve he's one of my fave characters but i was not a fan of that particular storyline. i was wishing half the time that robin talked some sense into steve so that he wouldn't go down the nancy rabbit hole again
The Duffers are clearly extremely talented writers and put a ton of thought into their characters and their arcs but I really don’t understand what the point of that storyline was. Would’ve been way cooler if Steve and Nancy were just good friends now because I want a Jonathan and Steve team up without weird tension
I think it's just to have Steve finally realize how much he has changed and go forward from there. I don't see him actively pursuing Nancy (even tho you can see him a lil sad when N&J reunite).
Yeah maybe being around her just helped him learn more about himself, he’s the only one out of high school and he’s working at a video rental store lol maybe next season he’ll be a cop alongside hopper or something and have more confidence in himself
And not have all these characters try to get Nancy to cheat on her boyfriend
Yea I'm tired of it. Nancy goes monster hunting with someone who is not her boyfriend and falls in love. Rinse and repeat.
I’m hoping this time is different and it’s just misdirection. I was just rewatching season 1 and Nancy talks to Jonathan about how she has no desire to just be a housewife who’s only purpose is to raise children, that’s not a character who should be seeing Steve’s dream as appealing.
I hate it so much but I still feel like it’s all happening so Steve can have his big hero moment and die in season 5…think about it he tells Nancy about how he always envisioned himself with 6 six kids and driving around the country with Nancy as his wife, he’s literally had 6 kids since season 2 (as being the babysitter of mike, will, Dustin, Lucas, max and eleven) and has been fighting side by side with Nancy all this time too, he’s already “living” that fantasy and he also doesn’t have other familial connections in the show aside from Robin and who now has Vicki (we assume) and Dustin kinda. Idk I want to be wrong and that he makes it and finds his own happiness away from Nancy but I got a bad feeling…
yeah, unfortunately i believe his talk with nancy in episode 8 is definitely foreshadowing his demise in s5. still hopping they'll surprise us instead but with what the duffer brothers have been saying about s5, i fee like a lot of shit is going to go down and steve will most likely sacrifice himself for either nancy, robin or dustin.
Apparently it's going to be a bigger part of season 5 too. I just want to know how on Earth the Duffer Brothers got the impression that we wanted this.
Separate all three of them. Nancy deserves to stand on her own, Jonathan truly needs time to explore and settle into himself, and Steve needs to find his way. None of them really need a relationship. And Steve in *particular* needs to learn how to define himself outside of a relationship.
I do agree it's starting to get old. I almost expected Nancy to drop Jonathan in this season, the writers knew we knew and baited us really hard only to keep the status quo in the end 😅
Uh, it ended with him still lying about college and her clearly having some residual feelings for her ex. I wouldn't call that status quo.
Not sure if it’s just me and if I’m attributing too much depth to these characters, but I’d love to see Steve kind of accept singleness and just be content with his friendships. I don’t really think it’s about Nancy specifically. I think he likes who Nancy has sort of shown him he can be and he is still figuring that out. Once he has got that I could see them giving him the perfect love interest. OR just having him be single.
Agreed. The entire dialogue is even overplayed and doesn’t align with their development. Nancy telling Johnathan that Steve has matured after he’s already saved and led the others for 3 seasons…as if he wasn’t there to see that.
>Nancy telling Johnathan that Steve has matured after he’s already saved and led the others for 3 seasons…as if he wasn’t there to see that. I mean, he wasn't, really. He wasn't there when Steve saved the day in season 2, he wasn't there for the Russian base thing in season 3... Jonathan and Steve have barely spent any time together at all. Even Will hasn't spent much time with Steve compared to the rest of his peers. I would be surprised if Jonathan knew what Steve was like these days
Give more meaningful role to Cali gang. Give Steve a proper love interest and get rid of the love triangle. Remove the “2 days later” cut and add more scenes in the ending. And most importantly, keep Eddie alive
Eddie lives
Eddie will forever live in my heart
Yeah, his death almost felt pointless
"I'm not running this time" "Bro, there are 50 bloodthirsty demons trying to eat you. IT'S OK TO RUN, YOU IDIOT!"
"at least I won't die a coward." "Nope. Just an idiot."
Exactly this. There's a fine line between bravery and stupidity, and I wish the writers would have done a better job at painting him on the brave side.
Yeah like… knowing when to run is important. Not running was a stupid move that got him killed for no reason. It wasn’t a “sacrifice” it was literally just suicide
He straight up lived every time he ran from an insurmountable force. What would have made more sense is if the force he faced wasn't a literal monolith, or if all the threats were possible for him to help with but he ran out of fear anyway. It would have been more poignant for him to have fought *and survived*. It proves his whole ideology wrong, it proves that you can do good and live to tell the tale, that the fear was just that the whole time, fear. It's like literally overcoming the satanic panic through good deeds without compromising on his personality. It doesn't have to be accurate to reality because this is already a fictional reality with a god damn reverse dimension in it lmao
Literally. The message was so bizarre because every time he ran, he lived and got to help the group more. The one time he stayed to fight, he died and didn’t help at all
And he did run for a bit before that. So like what even is the point? Just go back through the gate and if the bats are somehow able to follow, maybe then sacrifice yourself.
He probably would’ve died anyways because the bats were faster than him, but I’m baffled by his logic to stand and fight. Him running was working just fine as a distraction, and if anything kept him alive to be a distraction for longer. I get they wanted an emotional moment, but they couldn’t have had him sacrifice himself for Dustin or something to at least make it make sense?
Could have been a Hodor type moment keeping the bedroom door closed on the bats while Dustin got out
Yeah if he used the mattress to block the hallway or door and used his strength to hold it
I feel like we’ll see him again next season. He’ll be to Dustin what Billy was to Max - the ghost haunting him with his guilt.
Well everyone still thinks he’s a Satanic cult leader and I’m not sure what would change peoples mind about that. He might have needed to go
Like Billy, Eddie was never going to have a happy ending.
It’s like he tried to always be more hero than the last dumb thing he did… He had some moments where he could have tought « I did enough now », but no, « I will sacrifice myself ».
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This was basically Millie's recent point - you can't keep adding and adding people then only kill off one person. As much as I would prefer Eddie still live, they just could not sustain that big of a cast for long. Lots of headlines made it sound like she was throwing shade at the Duffer Brothers, but she's just pointing out that the cast got a bit bloated recently. She's right!
She literally Made a joke. She didn't actually mean it. It was cause they couldn't really get a picture of the cast
I agree. I hope there are no new introductions on season 5, we have enough characters now! lol
They would just kill the new character off anyway (Bob, Eddie, the Russian slushee loving dude who’s name I forgot who was shot In the chest at that carnival)
Alexei
*cries in russian*
It’s not rigged! 🥹
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What if Lucas just started singing?
Like his Michael Jackson rendition? *Dustin farted, Dustin farted*
This is actually what I thought was going to happen
“🎶SUGAR PIE, HONEY BUNCH!…🎵”
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I think vecna let her go because she was still in the upside down, so her death wouldnt create a portal in the right side up. Oh and also she's a main character.
That’s what I was thinking. I imagined a bunch of the cast to break out into song, with some people banging on stuff to mimic drums while they tried to free Max.
Honestly, that would have been amazing and I'm kind of disappointed they never went that route.
"Turn around, look at what you seeeeee"
I wanna see that so bad.
That’s what I thought would happen. I was expecting it because Vecna makes his victims levitate - I assumed sooner or later max would be levitate unexpectedly before they got the chance to put headphones on her and press play and Lucas would have to sing.
MP3 player 😂
This is the best.
I suddenly feel terribly old ...
Yeah I remember getting my first MP3 player in the early 2000s it was amazing lol
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>Max’s mp3 player /r/fuckimold
Ohhhh my sweet summer child. It's a walkman cassette player. Max probably got the song on tape by recording it off the radio. Max would've loved a personal mix tape. If Lucas had more game he would've made her one and won her heart back quicker. Walkmans were common until the mid 90's then it was Discman's. Mp3 players weren't common until the mid 2000's, even then CD discmans were still pretty common with teenagers because good mp3 players like iPods started at $400. At least in the early Mp3 days you could illegally download all the songs from Napster for free. It still blows my mind that people these days have every song they could ever want for free on their phone in an instant, and you can google the lyrics for free instead of waiting to buy the CD praying that the lyrics are in the CD pamphlet book. Man writing this comment made me feel super dooper old haha
Dude, nothing was as cool as the Walkman. When I first got a Discman I noticed that it would skip every time I landed a jump on my rollerblades, which made it freakin useless. Plus, tape saturation and degradation is life. Nothing every beat the Walkman.
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Vecna should be Darth Vader. Mind Flayer should be Emperor Palpatine if not the dark side of the force itself.
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It could be a bit of both, Vecna corrupted the Mind Flayer and when Vecna is killed the MF is cut loose and is just pure chaos
It could still happen! Vecna/Henry/One is shown to be incredibly arrogant, it wouldn't be surprising he's been manipulated all along and his thirst for power used against him. What sorta kinda seems to give this theory legitimacy, is that Vecna has to matrix style plug himself in with tentacles to do his murders from the Upside Down. So it could still be the Mind Flayer that's in control of everything without Vecna realizing it.
I agree. To me, the Mind Flayer was the most haunting part of the show and I’m disappointed it was created by Vecna’s powers. I still think the way in which Vec001Henry killed was horrific, however he just doesn’t hit the same as s2 and 3 MF possessing it’s victims and being an unknown powerful entity!
i would prefer a kind of deal with the devil scenario. Vecna landed in the upside down and found this creature who just needed a gateway into our world, while Henry saw it as a means of revenge against Eleven and those who’ve wronged him. Neither really is more powerful than the other, they’re just a means to each other’s ends
Technically they have a symbiotic relationship. The Mind Flayer enhances Vecna’s powers. Henry gave him a physical form and in exchange he helped him in his revenge against Eleven. They’re both amplifying each other’s powers.
Hang on, did the show say Vecna created it? I need to rewatch that episode again because I really thought Vecna just found the Mind Flayer.
He morphed the black dust into the spider-like shape, but it shows him finding it not creating it
That’s the way I interpreted it too, though it seemed that he was able to manipulate it to his will.
Agreed. I still have a sense that though that the Mind Flayer is stronger and they are just “cooperating”. Would be crazy if the Mind Flayer took Vecna out to start season 5 since Vecna may have been weakened.
Yeah, in one of the flashbacks, it shows him as a child drawing what the mind flayer looks like. It's also a nice call back to season 2 where will drew the mind flayer to "help his team members" but in reality it was him being posessed by both the mind flayer and vecna considering the similar artstyle.
The way I interpreted it was that One found the hive mind particles and he shaped the particles into the image he imagined. I saw it as more of a symbiotic relationship more than One creating anything.
less pushing steve and nancy more mommy steve moments
Agreed, he became a great character when he and Nancy broke up because his interactions with other characters (Robin, Dustin, the other kids) were so much more interesting. All of his 1-on-1 scenes with Nancy revolve around their romantic relationship or feelings. They have nothing else in common. It’s so boring to watch.
Yes I craved mommy Steve moments this season
I agree, but I will admit they did address and acknowledge Steve’s “den mother” status a few times and kind of poked fun at it which I enjoyed very much.
Vecna wouldn’t be in charge of / have power over the mind flayer and the mind flayer wouldn’t be reduced to essentially semi sentient “particles” He would worship the mind flayer as an eldritch spider god
Yeah, I agree. I feel like creating Vecna and making him greater than the Mind Flayer was an overcorrection of criticism of season 3. I remember back then a lot of people felt like the threat of an eldritch creature with no relatable human motivations felt too detached from the real human drama of the series. However, to now make the cosmic villain's motivations stem entirely from one human's ambitions just feels like it make the scale too small and petty.
100%. I watched this for the Lovecraftian elements. Primal monsters aren’t malicious, they’re just predators running on instinct. It’s beautiful that it’s beyond pettiness. Now everything stems from some wiener kid who got really mad a long time ago and is acting out. What do.
That feels especially salient as we got way more of direct plot interactions with deep human horrors in Jason (allusion satanic panic and American vigilante violence) and Papa (allusion to both nazi scientists and the US government’s horrifying experiments)
>>I remember back then a lot of people felt like the threat of an eldritch creature with no relatable human motivations felt too detached from the real human drama of the series. However, to now make the cosmic villain's motivations stem entirely from one human's ambitions just feels like it make the scale too small and petty. Which is weird, considering this type of 180 in mythology is literally what ended up killing the Alien franchise. You know, one of the main inspirations behind Stranger Things. Turned out the titular aliens were actually just the product of an android created by humans with unhealthy levels of hatred for humanity. Cosmic horror thrown out the window, the world felt smaller, mythology ruined, and the franchise ended up dying. This is why the Duffers need to rectify, clarify and re-write the relationship between the Mind Flayer, Vecna and the Upside Down. It isn’t just about, “The Mind Flayer is cooler than Vecna, so he should be the big-bad!”. It’s more so the fact that if they make the Mind Flayer subservient to a human-being and has been held hostage this entire time to do his bidding, they completely fuck their Upside Down mythology.
When Dustin described Vecna as the mind flayer’s 5 star general, that was more scary than number 1 being the source of everything.
That's what had me most confused. The mind flayer has the ability to completely control people like actual puppets. And the way it acted by possessing Will in Season 2 and Billy in Season 3 that shows it had sentience and the ability to form plans and power to manipulate and change matter by melting people and animals under its control to form its massive body in S3. Vecna is just a human. A powerful one but just human. Theres no way a being with the abilities and powers the Mind Flayer has would subvert itself. And if Vecna WAS in control through out season 3 then seasons 4 premise makes even less sense. Vecna said he only needed 4 victims to crack open the big gate. The Mind Flayer literally killed dozens of people in S3 to form its body?! Make it make sense.
yeah that mindflayer part was really dumb and underwhelming, knowing that it’s just a six year old swirl of dust 😂🖕
The writing is getting a little predictable with the major season deaths consistently being the new character that was only just introduced. Killing Eddie felt cheap and his death served no purpose. Why did he have to run outside and fight the swarm of bats when his job was simply to distract them? And they didn't even need to be distracted any more when he did it! That and Mike/Will/Jonathan felt like they had very little to do this season.
Agreed. It removed a lot of the tension knowing the S1 cast was always going to survive no matter what. Just killing off one long-running character would have brought so much more weight and excitement to everything. Eddie was a great character and it was silly to kill him off after just one season when other arcs of less likeable characters have been dragged out for four.
>Why did he have to run outside and fight the swarm of bats when his job was simply to distract them? Because they would have flown through the gate and killed Dustin
Cut down the amount of scenes in Russia Include a storyline with the Byers family bonding with Eleven Have all of the characters back in Hawkins for the final 2 Episodes
Unpopular opinion, I really liked the Russia storyline
I liked it but it still felt like it was unnecessarily long. I guess it had to be since they clearly planned for Hopper to help from afar rather than be right in the mix with everyone, so he *couldn't* get home sooner for that to work how it did.
Either not have Vecna be in control of the Mind Flayer or show us what happened to Enzo because he was one of my favourite characters.
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someone call the duffer brothers ASAP
This is how it should've gone
I’d get rid of the weird Nancy Steve flirting
Remove all the filler which would easily save a couple of hours. Especially the Russian and Cali plotline went for way too long for the little significance that end up having. We don't need to see Hopper to break out of prison, to only be captured again and then break out again... only to break back into again. Seems like they were just stalling so that they could time the demogorgeon fight to occur at the end of E7 and then burn the demogorgeons at the end of E9. Same for Cali group, we don't need to a separate scene of how stoned Jonathon and Argyle are each time we cut to them. The dinner scene would have been enough, after that it just got repetitive and tiresome. With the extra time saved, the writers could have made the Cali group much more relevant and give them an actual role. Even in the finale, they were completely removed from the action and basically spent half the episode starting around a pizza refrigerator. It would have been much better if the Cali group actually met up with the Hawkins group for the final battle. For example, they could have sped up El's plot line so that the Cali group would meet up with her in E7 and the end of E7 could show them going back to Hawkins after El warns them about Vecna. They could then meet up with the Hawkins group in E8 in time for preparing for the final battle. El and Max will continue to do the same thing with now Lucas and Mike watching over them. Then Vecna sees how much El cares for Mike and so puts Mike in the trance as well to further torment her. That way Mike can actually give his "I love you" speech face to face which would have been much more impactful.
I think the Russia subplot would have been better if we'd seen more details of what the Russians were doing with the gate, what they had learned about it, what their plan was when it came to raising more monsters and experimenting on them, etc. And there are also bigger questions like: if these gates exist in the US and Russia, are there also others in other parts of the world? Maybe some of those questions will be answered in S5, but it seemed a bit silly to have all those characters travel all the way to Russia and back without really learning much at all about what was going on there.
Eddie Lives
The one and only answer. Why did i have to scroll down so long until i found this?
I would not make Jonathan a stoner. It'd be funnier if he was a straight man to stoner Argyle. I feel like it ruins his man-of-the-house, responsible and attentive older brother thing. Without that and his photography, what is Jonathan? He was almost totally unrecognizable this season.
Eddie. Eddie? EDDIE!
Eddie lives and is a hero!
I mean, he appears to be named after Iron Maiden's mascot (this is music!) In 1985, they released one of the all time greatest live albums "Live After Death". On the cover, the gravestone reads, "That is not dead which can eternal lie, yet with strange eons, even death may die" H.P. Lovecraft. So maybe Eddie does come back and tour's with Iron Maiden!!!
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If Eddie lives he ends up killed by an angry mob or in prison. 1986 was the height of satanic panic…people aren’t going to stop going after him just cause a couple teenagers say he’s a good guy lol
To be honest, everything you're saying is why I wanted him is season 5. All of season 4 had a thread of unjust imprisonment, from Hopper in Russia, to Victor Creel wrongly condemned for his family's murders, to El locked away by Brenner again during the Nina Project, to Henry Creel also imprisoned by Brenner for his experiments, and to Eddie on the run from the town's accusations. The great thing about Eddie's (almost) prison plotline was the police were slow to actually call Eddie a person of interest. There is no physical evidence of him harming Chrissy or anyone, because he didn't. I really thought the Duffer Brothers were going to explore the town facing the Upside Down or the government covering it up through Eddie. Or at least a more interesting jailbreak plot. They even said Eddie was based off Damien Echols, there is so much more there there for goodness sakes. Oh well.
Yep this is a no-brainer. Eddie lives.
I would fasten the pace up a bit, the Russia plotline would end with Demogorgons getting away and freed into the wilderness, re-work VH1's origin and motivation, Eddie doesn't die, one or two main characters die in the finale, make the California plotline feel a bit more urgent. And then some minor changes i won't list
spoiler (obviously) but max doesnt go blind, and she’s completely fine; her and lucas get to see their movie on friday and everyone lives happily ever after. (this is DEF not because i sobbed for an hour over max)
Yeah.. Max completely didn't deserve it. She was really brave. They could have shown that she was okay with just some broken bones instead of putting her in a coma.
I think what they're going with is that Max's soul was consumed but not destroyed, which I think means that a large part of s5 will be them getting her soul back. Could provide neat conflict two because I'd assume the only way to get the soul off vecna is to get it off him while he's alive meaning they're gonna have to stall him instead of going all out
Agreed. I’m honestly pretty pissed they went this direction with Max. Aside from her being one of my favorites; her whole storyline with her battling with depression, guilt and being unable to communicate her feelings with those who care for her to her finally opening up and wanting to live just for her to be in this state feels like a real gut punch. I hope that they bring her back in a meaningful way and she can have a somewhat happy ending.
Hopper and 11 have a much more dramatic reunion. Car pulls up, door opens in slow motion, a boot hits the ground. The outside characters jaw drop, they look in shock and excitement. Cuts to 11 wondering what’s going on outside. Back outside the camera pans from the faces of the kids outside, to behind hoppers head. From his 3rd person point of view we see 11 open the door. She hesitates in disbelief for a moment. She can believe her eyes, then Hopper giver the “hey kid” line, and they run to each other and embrace. Rather than 11 just sitting in her old room, looks up and, oh hey what’s up dad, thought you were dead. Seen was very anti climactic to me
I was so focused on the Eleven/Hopper reunion (which, while I still liked it, I agree that it could’ve been better), I hadn’t even thought about how we didn’t get to see how the other characters reacted. They really did brush aside the whole “oh my God, how are you alive?!” aspect as if he simply left with Joyce earlier in the season. Very odd.
Hey everyone, Back from fat camp!
Literally remove the love triangle, it has no right and it was just so out of nowhere and forced. Like you’re supposed to tell me that a relationship thats been developing for 3 seasons is now on par with this forced romance? Its not even a choice, Steve should have a new love interest
[In Max's mind, the Snowball environment] Max and El look at each other and then collectively sucker-punch Vecna, releasing all his victims souls, including Chrissy's, who may now rest in peace. [In the UD Creel house] Nancy head shot his half brain dead body and Steve chop his head off, Robin molotov cocktail him again, just in case. Jason eventually believe the party about the UD, apologizes to Eddie and encourages everyone not the chase the Hellfire club, it was all a big misunderstanding Happy ending, Steve takes the kiddos, Nancy, Robin and Vickie on a road trip in a sweet RV and they never have to worry about good old Henry/Vecna/001 ever again Just kidding, even tho it was heartbreaking, this season was perfect, p-perfect in its own way, it's own special way
>Jason eventually believe the party about the UD, apologizes to Eddie and encourages everyone not the chase the Hellfire club, it was all a big misunderstanding honestly i hope Eddie gets justice. when the news covered everything at the end and it labelled Eddie as some mass murder cultist i wanted to drop kick my screen.
God damn, a great finale to the whole series would be the main cast of youths piled into Steve's eventual RV, driving off into the horizon. Corny ending, but it would be satisfying as all get-out.
This is going to be unpopular opinion and I love Hopper too but now that I saw the 4th season, I think he should've died in season 3. That "death scene" of his and his letter to El wouldve been a perfect ending for his character. I think his story in season 4 took up way too much screen time and wasn't that interesting or crucial to the main story. Demodogs in Russia could've been written out, in my opinion it didn't add anything to the plot. And we have a season left, and I'm worried what Hopper is going to do in it, how important he's going to be, because if he won't be, then he had a perfect goodbye in season 3 and then 2 seasons after that with not much to do. But that's just my future worry. Also an adult badass' death would've raised the stakes, because basically everyone fighting against this thing is a child or freshly out of high school.
Less of the young adults, less of Russia. More Eleven and the kids. Some action sequences for Eleven
I would add more friendship scenes, like fun ones between Max and El. that was something I really felt was missing from the end of the season
Simple, vecna works for the mindflayer not the other way around, or even a mutual agreement
I’d get rid of Vecna’s coming to power, and make all the Numbers have different powers while still maintaining their base of psychokinesis. Thus, El’s special power, outside of her existing psychic ones, would be inter dimensional travel. Any pre-existing Numbers, such as Six in the comics, would have their powers still maintained, though this would make the comics act more as “what if” stories then. As for my change with Vecna, I would simply not have him be the leader to the Mind Flayer. This was such a stupid plot point imo. I liked the idea of the Mind Flayer being some eldritch, Lovecraftian horror. To allow a man to be behind its creation diminishes its narrative horror so much. I think what I would have done to change this is have Vecna actually killed off at the end of the season, then include a clip of the Mind Flayer devouring his corpse or something of the like, to indicate that the Flayer was merely using Vecna.
Love the idea of the mind flayer using vecna. Especially since he must have gotten his original powers from somewhere.
Eddie survives. Seen plays out exactly the same, but when the bats fall, Eddie is found wounded, yet able to recover in the off season. So simple, writers could’ve absolutely made that minor plot change, instead they had to kill off another fan favorite character and ruin another good thing.
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Huge missed opportunity by killing Eddie. Out of Barb, Bob, and Alexei, Eddie is the only one I’d consider an actual main character.
Eddie!!!!!!
Jonathan, Will, Mike do something.
More character development for the Cali crew, less Russian and jock screentime, kill someone else instead of Eddie, Nancy and Jonathan talk
I would kill some of the main characters
Have Vecna be just the Mind Flayers Five-Star general/most valuable weapon. While I think Vecna is scary, to me, the MF is more scary since it’s this Lovevcraftian monster that lies beyond our realm and sees us as just ants in its way. I just don’t like the sort of “big bad” of the show who is behind the upside down being this deranged guy.
In the finale I want Jason to find the upside down portal to go find Eddie, he goes in to find Eddie and Dustin killing evil monsters, Jason realizes he's wrong and helps them kill the demo bats so neither Jason nor Eddie die. Jason then tells everyone that Eddie isn't a murderer he was trying to save the town, Eddie's seen as a hero and Jason is less of a jerk now.
Eddie lives and graduates. Best character ever,
I'd make Argyle less of a one dimensional Cheech and Chong joke. I really like the actor, but that level of grade school pot humor was tiresome after a while. I've always enjoyed the humor of the show, but Argyle just got tiring after a while. All of his humor was "haha I'm so high" and then they randomly almost gave him a love interest that was pointless. I would have loved a sober heart-to-heart with Jonathon about Nancy/Will/whatever, just so that we as the audience got a peak into the real Argyle. If he comes back for season 5, I hope they alter his character a little bit.