Stranger Things Season 5 Volume 1 ended on one of the Netflix series’s greatest highs. After years of playing victim, spy, and fragile goods, Will Byers (Noah Schnapp) finally tapped into the power many fans speculated had been there all along. Will transformed himself into a “Sorcerer,” capable of reversing the tortured connection he shared with Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower) and the Upside Down to control and kill the same monsters who had been hunting his friends for years. Where else could the Netflix hit go after this triumphant development but up?
Stranger Things Season 5 Volume 2 boasts many extraordinary set pieces, emotional moments, and stunning reveals, but it also feels a bit like foreplay for what’s sure to be an explosive two-hour series finale. The three episodes that comprise this next chapter of the Netflix show blur the line between television and cinema in ways that aren’t always good. Each new super-sized installment feels torn between being a standalone made-for-TV movie and real episodic television. The end result is a mix of dazzling action, ridiculous deus ex machina, and some really, truly affecting scene work.
The best parts of Stranger Things Season 5 Volume 2 aren’t the many busy set pieces, but the scenes that let the cast’s incredible actors connect in deeply wrought ways. The worst part of Stranger Things Season 5 Volume 2 is how the Duffer Brothers continue to pull their punches, clearly saving the real drama for New Years Eve’s grand finale.
Stranger Things Season 5 Episode 5 “Shock Jock” picks up right where the last installment left off, with Will Byers processing his newfound powers, Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) reuniting with her sister Kali (Linnea Berthelsen), and Holly Wheeler (Nell Fisher) courageously returning to the Creel House as part of Max’s (Sadie Sink) master plan to escape Vecna’s mind prison. However, the action soon shifts to Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo), Steve (Joe Keery), Nancy (Natalia Dyer), and Jonathan’s (Charlie Heaton) exploration of the Upside Down’s version of Hawkins Lab. Dustin believes the key to destroying the “flesh wall” encompassing this eerie version of Hawkins is there, comparing it to the Death Star’s deflector shield in Return of the Jedi. (Famously Steve’s favorite Star Wars movie because of the “teddy bears.”)
What this group finds in the Hawkins Lab is not so straightforward. After a number of tense scenes grappling with the tension fragmenting the group, Nancy and Jonathan discover a strange red cosmic orb above the building just as Dustin figures out, to his horror, that he’s been proven wrong. The fallout of this mistake briefly has the potential to actually have consequences. In fact, it precipitates some of the best Nancy/Jonathan and Dustin/Steve scenes in seasons. But Stranger Things Season 5 lacks the conviction to hit us where it hurts. This is not a television show anymore, but a theme park ride that you hop on with full confidence that you’ll be safe and sound when it’s all over.
Stranger Things Season 5 Episode 6 “Escape from Camazotz” deals with Max and Holly’s continued quest to escape from Vecna, culminating with an exquisite scene where the older girl empowers the younger one with kind, empathetic words set to a haunting new arrangement of Kate Bush’s “Running Up that Hill.” Stranger Things Season 5 Episode 7 “The Bridge” crescendoes with yet another inspiring Will Byers scene, this time where he affirms who he is to his friends and family, drawing true strength from utter vulnerability.
So far, the most interesting thing about the fifth and final season of Stranger Things is the meta way in which the show’s story and scale have mirrored each other, monstrously, over time. The first season of Stranger Things became a surprise hit because it was so exquisitely grounded, so elegantly earnest in its approach to recapturing the wonder of ’80s Amblin hits. Classics like E.T. and The Goonies didn’t capture a generation’s imagination because they were full of dazzling effects or tremendous stakes, but because they were adventures set firmly against the backdrop of suburban America. The “everykid” could imagine themselves as one of the gang biking E.T. away from an oppressive military force or getting lost in caverns and stumbling upon a pirate ship full of gold. The Mike, Will, Dustin, and Lucas of Season 1 found themselves in similar straits.
As Stranger Things‘s cultural cache has exploded, the episode-lengths and SFX budgets have ballooned in tandem. Nothing about this show feels relatable anymore outside the aforementioned scenes of true emotional connection. That’s why the character-driven scenes hit harder than any of the show’s CGI-heavy spectacles. They are the moments were we can still see the humanity of these characters and not their D&D-esque “power sets.”
Stranger Things Season 5 Volume 2 continues the trend of the show’s larger trajectory, embracing spectacle over the sentimental. Thankfully there are still enough tender moments in Stranger Things to keep us plugged in for New Year’s Eve’s super-sized, two-hour-long grand finale.
Stranger Things Season 5 Volume 2 is now streaming on Netflix.