Stranger Things returned to Netflix this June with its highly anticipated fourth season. The season feels longer than the wait we had between this and the last one. I don’t care, I love it and the entry is one of, if not my favourite season that we’ve ever had.
One of the last genuine mega-hits that Netflix has yet to cancel, the execs have changed up their binge model and they’ve given us the first seven episodes with the latter two dropping on July 1st.
In season 4 we have several storylines going on such as Eleven taking a trip down memory lane, Dustin and Co attempting to get to the bottom of a murder mystery, Joyce and Murray attempting to save Hopper, and Hopper trying to survive the harsh prison that is Kamchatka. The first two threads in this connect together as do the last two and there’s a lot that we learn about in this first volume that perfectly sets things up for Volume 2.
Throughout this video we’re gonna be turning it up to eleven, and full spoilers ahead!
Intro to the Big Bad?
Noooow this is the story all about how Vecnas life got flip turned upside down – cut that, cut that…
One of the most terrifying aspects of the new season is Vecna, a humanoid creature from The Upside Down who traps his prey in a fantasy before he brutally murders them in an eye-popping fashion. In the build-up to this, the characters become entranced and they start to see vivid hallucinations that appear similar to a nightmare that they can’t escape from. I definitely got lots of Nightmare on Elm Street vibes from this and we get not only a mention of Freddie Krueger but also a cameo by Robert Englund at one point.
Given the name by the Hellfire Club, he’s assigned this because, in Dungeons and Dragons, Vecna was a powerful wizard that became a lich aka an undead creature.
This actually turns out to be true as we discover his backstory through Eleven.
Eleven – Past and Present
The season opens with El as a child apparently murdering all the other subjects in Brenner’s experiment. But, as the season goes on, we discover this isn’t the truth. There’s even a hint towards the eventual reveal at this moment as we can see a tear on the wall behind her which we learn is where she sent Vecna into The Upside Down.
Early on, Eleven really struggles to fit in at high school and after being publicly humiliated she ends up losing her cool and attacking her high school bully. This allows Dr Owens to come to her as a friend and after he tricks her into working with Brenner once more, she eventually agrees to go into a machine he’s crafted called Nina.
This will apparently give her back her powers but I think Brenner also clearly wants to know what really happened on the day that she wiped out all of his subjects. Now though Nina isn’t explained in full, the way it works is that it allows Eleven to somewhat travel into her subconscious and she can revisit her childhood. Going through the steps in which she gained her powers there will also revitalise them in the future and allow her to possess her abilities once more. Their disappearance is likely psychosomatic and just like how Peter Parker lost his Spider-man abilities for a bit, she likely lost hers through stress too.
Now in Nina, we discover how a friendly, totally not evil orderly helped her with her bullies. The bullies here of course reflect the ones she has in high school and ey, maybe he’s a nice guy. Well, he’s not, and by the end of episode 7, we discover that he’s actually the son of Victor Creel, the apparent killer that butchered his family in an Amityville-esque night of terror.
Creel moved to Hawkins with his family and as his powers started to develop he slowly shut himself off from the world. He found kinship with black widow spiders, potentially even setting up his future relationship with the spider-like Mind Flayer.
Clock Meaning
Now Creel disliked societal constructs and the basic nature of life. He believed that people were stuck in a constant monotonous cycle, trapped reliving the same day over and over until they died.
This explains why the clocks kept being seen by the other victims and why time becomes such a big motif in this entry. Creel couldn’t pretend to live a normal life and his true powers started to form. He learned he could see into people’s minds and after seeing what his parents got up to he decided that enough was enough and that he’d never forgive them for lying about Santa.
I’ll never forget.
Also, we get the music used in Watchmen for Doctor Manhatten’s origin story to tell his one which was a nice touch.
Now though we don’t learn all the ins and outs of this I think we will probably discover this more as we get into the second volume or they could potentially just leave it up in the air. We do know that his father had just come back from the second world war so there might have been things that he did or witnessed over there and his mother…well f**k knows if I’ll ever understand what goes on in a woman’s head.
Am I right fellas, am I right ey?
Creel Becomes Number One
Anyway, one fateful night he murdered his mother and sister, however his powers overloaded before he could finish the job. His father had the crimes pinned on him and Creel was taken in by Brenner which is when he started up his programme. Creel is officially Number One and he’s where it all Hawkins back to.
Now Brenner was unable to control him but he wanted to duplicate his abilities and thus he started his programme to create 2 through to 11. Brenner placed an inhibitor chip on him that made it so he couldn’t use his powers and he was enlisted as an orderly, unable to leave the lab.
His goal was simply to have this ripped out of his neck and thus he somewhat manipulated Eleven into taking out what he called a ‘tracking device’ so that the pair could both escape. However, upon doing this, he started murdering the other test subjects and though he wanted Eleven to join him she turned this offer down. His and Eleven’s arc culminated with her sending him through a tear and into The Upside Down which is where he’s transformed into Vecna. This links back to Season 1 and we learn that the entire landscape of the upside is exactly the same as how it was on the day that Will was pulled into it. Time doesn’t actually progress in this dark dimension and everything there is exactly the same as how it was on that fateful day.
Now I see this ending as not only being the supervillain origin story for him but it’s also very much the tale of Eleven getting her powers back. This is, of course, setting up a massive showdown between the pair at the second volume but she’s beat him once and she can beat him again. I think that this will end up leading her back to Hawkins and she’ll be reunited with her friends once more and Joyce will possibly decide to remain there so that she can protect the area from other threats like that. However, whether Brenner is willing to give her up is another story altogether and I hope she says Papa don’t preach and that she also takes him out as he’s still a bad guy, even though this season doesn’t paint him out in a slightly better light.
Now though Eleven probably has her powers back, should Vecna prove more than a match for her, there are other ways to take him down.
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Max’s Mission
Early on in the season, Max is put under Vecna’s spell and her friends tried to figure out a way to save her before it was too late. There was even one point where I thought the theories about Billy being Vecna were true but these turned out to be just the creators playing with us as it was revealed he was an illusion. Still, she tried everything that she could to clear her conscious over his death but it wasn’t enough.
She’s taken to The Upside Down and we even see a grave with Myers written on it, a nod to Halloween and the serial killer that Max also dressed up as. Offtopic I also thought the name Byers was a twist on Myers but I digress. Now it seems like it’s curtains for her but due to the magic of friendship, yay, her pals figure out that something you love can be used to tether you back to reality. In this volume, it’s Running up that Hill by Kate Bush which she constantly listens to so that Vecna can’t get a hold of her.
However, should this be destroyed I also think that Lucas might end up being the one to bring her back in Volume 2. In this season he’s a far cry from what he was in the others and at the start of it, he’s not really in their friendship group anymore. Lucas is now a team member of the Hawkins Tigers and he ends up choosing their big championship game over the Hellfire Club’s Dungeons and Dragons campaign. He gets replaced by his sister who continues to be one of the funniest characters in the entire show.
Now the song by Kate Bush that allows her to leave the upside down matches the problems that Lucas and Max said.
As Kate said: “I was trying to say that, really, a man and a woman can’t understand each other because we are a man and a woman. And if we could actually swap each other’s roles, if we could actually be in each other’s place for a while, I think we’d both be very surprised!”
Now Lucas slowly starts to drift back to them and I think that he’s gonna be a pivotal person in helping to defeat Vecna. He might end up showing his love for Dungeons and Dragons which could be used as a weapon. There’s the idea that love will save the day when it comes to him and we have several relationships in the season that could end up being used to defeat the bad guy.
New and Old Characters
There are the couples, Lucas and Max, Joyce and Hopper who we’ll talk about later on. Steve and potentially Nancy, Eleven and Mike, Dustin and his girlfriend and yeah, just a lot of characters. We do learn that Dustin is still with his girlfriend and we get several war games references during the hacking scenes. Still bangs as well War Games.
There are also the new additions of Eddie and Argyle who both feel like love letters to 80s movies. Eddie shares the name of the Iron Maiden Mascot and Argyle reminds me a lot of Spicoli in Fast Times At Ridgemont High. In the trailer, we actually get a moment where Eddie can be seen thrashing his guitar in The Upside Down and he may use this as a method to help defeat Vecna later on.
Finding the Upside Down
The party gets split as we have one side hunting Eddie who’s framed for one of Vecna’s murders and the other side trying to prove it wasn’t him.
Eventually, they discover how to locate gates to The Upside Down and Steve, Robin, Nancy and Eddie break on through to the other side which is where they find out more about it. On the other side of this, Dustin and his pals find a way to communicate with them and they launch an attempt to get them out.
However as Nancy climbs through she’s taken by Vecna and not only does she discover Barbara’s body, but she also learns about the bad guy’s past.
Now we don’t actually see what happens to her and by the end of the season, she’s likely trapped down there with Vecna. The Creel Home is often referred to as the boiler room and this could be a further nod to Nightmare on Elm Street. Vecna actually takes Eleven to one as well and as I’ve been saying it’s either like poetry they rhyme or it’s all connected. You can pick whatever punchline makes you hate yourself slightly less there.
I think that next episode we’re gonna get Vecna filling in more of the gaps as he keeps her prisoner. He’s also gonna torment her over the death of Barbara.
Could it, could it finally be JusticeForBarb, probably not but we will see.
Now they might riff on Elm Street even more and have Vecna pulled into the real world. In the films, Freddy was his most vulnerable in the real world and it is also where Eleven defeated Vecna first time.
I do think that Vecna will end up in the right side up as we know he can make tears anywhere in Hawkins and this could be used to launch his invasion. I think once Eleven is reunited with Hopper whose story I wanna tackle for the next part of the video before we move into our review and then I’ll let you guys go home.
Hopping to Hopper
Now for the second time in less than a year, we catch David Harbour in a Russian Prison and we discover that he jumped down to a walkway during the Starcourt Mall explosion. Captured and taken to Kamchatka, there he meets a friendly guard called Enzo, a man who likes America and does not care about his country. Relaying a message to Joyce and Murray they travel to Russia and try to aid in Hopper’s great escape. They even give nods to that movie and Enzo refers to Hop as Steve Mcqueen at one point which is riffed on with his escape on a snowmobile that ends in a capture.
As we learned in the post-credits scene of Season 3, The Prisoners are often fed to the Demogorgon and there are even sadistic Gladiator Games that they throw the prisoners into. After Enzo is found to have betrayed the Russians he’s locked up alongside Hopper and it’s easily the dourest story in the entire Season. Before getting to this entry I was expecting Hopper to get out early on but he remains in the prison for the entire run time with us only getting his reunion with Joyce at the close of his arc in episode 7.
This was a pretty standard affair story-wise but I loved the last supper that the Russians had made them believe that they were getting the treat of a life…sentence. It was really just fattening them up so that they’d be better meals and to keep the Demogorgon entertained so that it didn’t become bored and stop hunting. The beast is still alive and potentially it might even be unleashed next time if it manages to make it out of the prison. It was such a brutal battle and watching the Demogorgon take out scores of people showed how powerful it was. At one point Hopper used a spear that he’d set on fire, harkening back to ancient battles with beasts from myths and legends. Dustin also has a spear at one point in the trailer, teasing at this motif potentially showing up again for Volume 2.
Now I really hope that they don’t waste too much time with him getting back to America and with there being two episodes left I can imagine they’ll move things along quickly. I know those episodes are gonna be as long as feature-length films but I think that come the finale he’ll be back in the good Ol’ US of Strange.
Hopper is also another element that I think is gonna massively play into Eleven’s abilities and she’s basically got these two father figures in her life. Brenner and Hopper could both be used to strengthen her but one wants what’s best for her whereas the other wants what’s best for him. Who knows, we might even get a Hopper Brenner showdown but I think his reunion with Eleven is gonna be a major aspect for the next volume. Her becoming a teen and him becoming a quote-unquote father to her caused a lot of issues last season but now they’ve been through a lot together and will likely realise how much they mean to each other.
Unanswered Questions
Now there is a wide, wide range of unanswered questions that this volume culminates in.
After venturing into The Upside Down, Max managed to draw what she saw which turned out to be the Kreel house. Will was also mentioned to have been withdrawn and weird by Eleven in the opening possibly linking into this. He clutched a painting at one point but we never saw what this was.
It might have been nothing but it could also be significant as his drawings have been major plot points in the previous seasons. The Upside Down also seems to be tied to him quite a lot as it’s been stuck in 1983 like Sunderland. Haha got you punks. I bloody got ya.
It all feels like it’s kinda tied to both Creel and Will and though the latter took a bit of a back seat this season he is still really connected to the dimension.
The lights are also a mystery as they’ve played a key role in Will communicating with Joyce in season 1 and we see how light or more specifically electricity is different in the Upside Down.
Lastly, the California lot was able to acquire the program of the NINA machine and this story felt a bit lost amongst the rest of the storylines running but it will no doubt dovetail into Eleven’s story.
I’m also interested to see if they keep up the coke narrative. They have Coca-Cola classic and she used New Coke in the last season and before that just the regular one.
I do really wanna see the full gang back together and I think that they’re all going to have to reunite to stop this new threat in Vecna. This first volume feels like it’s pulling all the characters back together as you have Lucas and the Hellfire club joining up. Joyce and Hopper, Eleven and Brenner and come next time I think we will get an endgame-esque battle where they all unite. As mentioned earlier that releases in July and it’s gonna be interesting to see what they do with it.
Season (so far) review
Now as for my thoughts on the season, I really really enjoyed this one and I think that they massively stepped up in terms of quality, storytelling, effects, acting and the overall production of the show. The series feels very cinematic throughout and it’s constantly awash with incredible visuals and moments that rank up there as being some of the best in the entire series. Now the season is very long with almost all of the episodes being over an hour. I didn’t really mind it that much but I do think that they could’ve cut some things down like the basketball team story and a lot of the earlier sections that didn’t really go anywhere.
I also really wish that Netflix had released these episodes weekly as I think at this point that’s probably the best way to go about things judging off the strategies that the other streaming services have. Disney Plus, Amazon, and HBO Max shows all remain bigger talking points for months and months because they give us a slow burn and with almost all of these episodes ending on cliffhangers I think that that would’ve worked way better.
It’s just weird to me that Netflix replaced Blockbuster because they refused to alter their business model and now Netflix is losing subscribers and their audience because they refuse to do the same too. Totally off-topic and I know people hate weekly releases but for me, this show would’ve hit harder if I was sitting from Saturday to Thursday wondering what we were gonna get next. Still, though I can’t really fault this first volume and it’s got me so hyped up for what’s around the corner.
Overall this was brilliant and it gets a 9/10
I’d of course love to hear your thoughts so make sure you comment below and let me know over on Twitter.
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