Thanks to the demands of prestige television, I’m beginning to suspect that there’s a far bigger issue facing the denizens of Hawkins than the most recent attack from the Upside-Down and that’s the unavoidable issue of a bunch of child actors rapidly aging out of their roles. If you thought that the two year distance between the streaming of seasons 2 and 3 could prove to be a problem, there was a three year gap until the 4th season finally touched down on Netflix. This might not sound like much of an issue, but when you consider that only 8 months have only passed in the show, we’ve got the potential for some mighty fine examples of advanced aging that could start to rival Stockard Channing in Grease.
Anyway, with this issue addressed, it’s time to plough into the fourth coming of Netflix’s hit show, but while previous seasons have used the works of Spielberg, Carpenter, Cameron and King as launching points, the main focus this time seems to be upon that of Wes Craven – or to be more exact, a trip to Elm Street…
Inexplicably, only 8 months has passed since the battle of the Starcourt Mall banished the Mind Flayer for the last time and all of the main cast have either separated or are dead. In the wake of Hopper’s death, Joyce has made good on her promise and left Hawkins behind for California, taking Will, Jonathan and an adopted Eleven (now going by her real name, Jane) and each are dealing with their own issues. Eleven, still stripped of her powers, is getting bullied mercilessly at school while a perpetually sad-faced Will watches on and while she is hopeful that Mike will visit during spring break, both she and Joyce are still hurting over Hopper while Jonathan spends most of his time getting smashed on weed. Back in Hawkins, the main group has split even further. Steve and Robin are still fast friends (thank god), but Max is still having trouble processing the death of her step brother, Billy, and has cut ties with everyone. But while Mike and Dustin are still as close as ever after joining the D&D focused Hellfire Club run by manic senior, Eddie Munson, Lucas has split for the cool kids and now plays basketball with the school team.
Yep, it seems that things in Hawkins have finally stabilised after years of near-apocalyptic happenings – but on closer inspection, we find that that’s not remotely true at all. It starts with a doll sent to Joyce’s Californian address from a Russian location that causes the scrappy single mother to call old acquaintance Murray Baumam for advise and ends with the discovery of a hidden note that claims that Hopper is still alive. Back in Hawkins, sinister things are occurring around cheerleader Crissy Cunningham who is suffering terrifying visions featuring a disfigured creature. This nightmarish experience ends when the hapless girl suddenly levitates and has all her limbs break and the only one to witness this grisly occurrence is a horrified Eddie Munson.
It seems that the Duffer Brothers have learnt their lesson from starting the third season “too happy” and realising that the cast of Stranger Things are oddly annoying when they are actually content. As a result, the fourth premiere of one of the most watched shows on the planet proves to be as good an opener as the series has ever managed thus far, giving everyone either something to do or an arc to start. As per usual, things start off slow and spends the vast majority of this all-important first episode catching us up once again with virtually every character we’ve come to know thus far, but while the wounds from season three have largely healed on the surface, the toll it’s taken and the spreading gulf between the characters, both figuratively and literally, has given them all a sense of sadness that their formative years are fast coming to an end.
So let’s run through them as best we can and starting with oldest first (sorry Winona), Joyce Byers gets off to an early head start when that mysterious package from Russia clues her in to what we already figured: Jim Hopper is still alive. Not only does this set off the notorious, middle-aged live wire off on her tangents pretty early after an existence of selling encyclopedias by phone, but it also brings in Murray Baumam nice and early too, which is always a bonus. Meanwhile, Eleven is taking her new life incredibly hard as her slightly infantile demeanor and lack of powers means that school life is kicking her butt extra hard. Watching her momentarily forget that she’s a normal girl and try to attack her bullies with a telekinetic ass-whupping that no longer exists is genuinely tough to watch, but I’m amused that without Nancy around to motivate him, Jonathan has become a stoner, which somehow still puts him as being more useful than Will and his soulful stares.
However, Hawkins is a slightly different story as the status quo has shifted exponentially. Now that Lucas is officially one of the cool kids, you can sense in the air that the days of his friendship with Mike and Dustin are dangerously numbered, especially when you consider that an important night for the Hellfire Club clashes with a championship game. To be fair, it’s once again genuinely nice to be back in the company of geeks, even if Max is lying to the school counsellor about how Billy’s death has effected her, but while the banter is super strong, Steve and Robin are adorably giving each other dating advice and the terrifying Erica Sinclair is drafted into the Hellfire Club to cover for her brother, it’s a few new elements that stand out most.
While a prologue that reveals previously unknown information that there was a massacre of experimental children at the Hawkins Lab back in 1979 that Eleven may have been responsible for, the new threat to the Rightside-Up (eg. us) seems to be riffing more on Freddy Krueger than Lovecraftian space horrors. The miserable end to cheerleader Crissy Cunningham not only sees her twisted up like a pretzel while floating in the air much like the brutal death of Tina Gray in the original film, but a vision she has of a dining table filled with rotting food is an exact copy of a moment from A Nightmare On Elm Street Part 3.
However, while a more humanoid threat opens up some interesting opportunities, the real stand out of the first episode is the seismic debut of Joseph Quinn’s defiantly anti-establishment, Eddie Munson. An excitable live wire with heavy metal hair, in anyone else’s hands, Eddie would undoubtedly be quite irritating, but under Quinn’s watch he proves to be an endearingly layered character. Sure he’s loud, combative and deliberately obnoxious, but in other moments where he’s selling drugs to a visibly anxious Chrissy, he’s surprisingly gentle and genuinely sweet – or at least he is until she float a few feet in the air and her jaw breaks while her eyes pop.
Season 4 launches out of the gate with arguably the show’s strongest first episode so far, that deftly brings us up to speed with everyone while adding new characters and threats. Whether the new faces will prove to have such long lasting appeal, time will soon tell, but one things for sure – the advancing years of the kids is nicely defused by the fact that this show still kills. Roll twenty for victory.
🌟🌟🌟🌟
We Have Issues 