Spoilers Stranger Things Season 5 - SPOILERS

[Reynard]

Everyone keeps saying S5E7 was "bad" but I don't think it is any worse than the rest of S5. It's not S3 bad, but it is far from the high points of S1 and S4.

 

[pukunui]

@Mercurius: The fist spin-off is going to be an animated show. I don’t know what it’s about.

The Duffer Bros have also talked about doing more shows with different characters in different places dealing with different supernatural phenomena.

The OG characters’ stories will finish with today’s finale, although there’s always the possibility of a cameo or something, I suppose.

 

[Ryujin]

I expect things like this to happen but i kinda hope they don’t.

I'm with you there. Sometimes it's best that a thing have a beginning and end, and just be its own thing.

 

[Vael]

Everyone keeps saying S5E7 was "bad" but I don't think it is any worse than the rest of S5. It's not S3 bad, but it is far from the high points of S1 and S4.

My only beef with it was it was just a setting up the finale episode. Sure, Will finally coming out was well done, but a lot felt like putting pieces into place.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

Everyone keeps saying S5E7 was "bad" but I don't think it is any worse than the rest of S5. It's not S3 bad, but it is far from the high points of S1 and S4.

Episode 7 was the victim of a release schedule that, for people rushing through and lacking patience, effectively made Will's coming out scene the climax of that "mini-season", which some found pretty disappointing, in an episode that was mostly exposition and set-up for the finale. Then, with fans divided, homophobes brigaded in to review bomb and sow discord. And lots of people had extra time to stew over it all because they had time off for the holidays.

I personally like the episode 5-7 batch well enough, but it was a terrible batch to release as a unit (especially on Christmas when people might rope less interested family members into watching), because it suffers the most from the two fundamental challenges of season 5: 1) too many characters who need to all be doing something and getting their moments in every episode, and 2) needing to finally explain all the mysteries the show is based on. Whereas "volume 1" of the season ended on some twists and mysteries, this volume was spent untwisting and explaining basically all remaining mysteries before the finale (maybe, we'll see how the finale goes), which necessarily is never going to satisfy everyone, is going to tend towards being wordy, and which leaves people with less to be excited about going forward. And while generally the show does a surprisingly good job of managing it's whole unwieldy ensemble, the desire to actually get them all together before the finale just led to awkwardly staged scenes that there was no satisfying way to write.

 

[Mercurius]

I'm with you there. Sometimes it's best that a thing have a beginning and end, and just be its own thing.

I don't disagree, but that's not how showbiz has worked over the last couple decades, for better or worse (I think we both agree that it is "generally worse"). Fewer and fewer new ideas, and every big franchise is squeezed out beyond the point of dryness.

I mean, which major franchise that was "finished" with the initial run didn't get worse when revived? I'm not talking about modern reboots of old franchises (e.g. Mission Impossible) or long extended runs (MCU), but revivals/new directions.

The only one that comes to mind as to being consistently pretty successful, or reviving it in an equally good or better way, is Star Trek. One might not like specific series, and certainly there were low points, but it always seems to find itself again - and even the lesser runs (e.g. Enterprise, Star Trek V, etc) had good moments. Contrast this with Star Wars. I know some will eat up anything with lightsabers and the Force, and certainly some later stuff is better than others. But the overall effect--imo, at least--is that of diminishment. Star Wars, as an imaginary creation, seems "less" than it was in 1990, or even 2005. Again, imo.

But yeah. As a general rule, I prefer new ideas, new stories and worlds. This goes for D&D settings, too. For me the "best" version of the Realms was Ed Greenwood's grey box. There was lots of good stuff after, but the Greenwoodian core remains definitive in terms of flavor. Greyhawk even more so.

I think the important factor is that all of these franchises started as one person's imaginative work. Star Wars was George Lucas, Star Trek was Gene Roddenberry, the Realms was Greenwood, Greyhawk was Gygax. All of them continued, and some later creators either did a good job creating content that was "in the spirit of" or altered it in a pleasing way. But some just diverged too much, or didn't get the essential and primary imaginative creation and/or weren't able to actualize it in a way that carried that spirit forward, and even ended up being a mockery of it (see, "Rings of Power").

 

[Benjamin Olson]

@Mercurius: The fist spin-off is going to be an animated show. I don’t know what it’s about.

The Duffer Bros have also talked about doing more shows with different characters in different places dealing with different supernatural phenomena.

The OG characters’ stories will finish with today’s finale, although there’s always the possibility of a cameo or something, I suppose.

The animated series is about the main characters between seasons 3 and 4.

As for other spinoffs, they've said different characters and not the 80s. The stage play established that travel directly to Dimension X/The Abyss through 1940s US military technology was possible, so my guess would be, given that the Duffers are basically blessing the project then leaving Netflix, that it will be about some sort of incursion from the Abyss in some entirely different place and time (probably after the 1940s), that some other creator can do a similar decade nostalgia pastiche around based on their own nostalgia and background.

 

[Reynard]

It's weird to me that ST is as big as it is. It's fine, I guess. But certainly not good enough to warrant It's cultural import. But I guess quality has never actually been a good measure of relevance, one way or the other.

 

[Ryujin]

It's weird to me that ST is as big as it is. It's fine, I guess. But certainly not good enough to warrant It's cultural import. But I guess quality has never actually been a good measure of relevance, one way or the other.

Having lived through the time that TOS was released, there can be no over estimating its very real cultural impact. I watched it happen.

 

[pukunui]

Well, that was a real doozy!

I think the happy endings dragged on for a bit too long maybe, but overall, I'd say the Duffer Bros stuck the landing there.


As an aside, were public school 10 year-olds really that foul-mouthed back in the 80s? I started school in 1986, but I went to a private Christian school, so maybe I just wasn't exposed to as much swearing when I was growing up? My children complained about their peers swearing at school when they were 10 years old, so it's certainly the case now!

Also, were St Markovia and Vallaki part of the Ravenloft world in 1989 or did the Duffers mess up the timeline again?