Spoilers Stranger Things Season 5 - SPOILERS

[Belen]

OK I think it’s awesome that they cast a Kiwi actress to play Holly this season. However, Nell Fisher is 14. She’s too tall and too mature to pull off a 7-year-old convincingly. Holly comes across as being more like 11 (the same age Will was when he was taken).

She is supposed to be 9-10. All the kids targeted were in that age range.

 

[The Soloist]

My main problem with the show right now is the copious amount of exposition in place of actual plot. Why show anything when you can simply explain the plot verbatim? I don’t usually care about that so much but this is laying it on thick.

I'm the opposite. exposition saves precious screen time. Why spend a full episode of Max running around in Harry's mind trying to get out, when she can tell her journey to Holly, in a few minutes. And it was interspersed with action scenes. Very well done. Max is a tertiary character, not a main character.

Knowing how much time to spend on a character, according to narrative importance, is almost a lost art these days.

 

[Deadstop]

She is supposed to be 9-10. All the kids targeted were in that age range.

They do lampshade that Holly’s age appears to have gotten a bit of a jump when Karen claims that Ted doesn’t even know how old she is. Love the actress, but weird that they recast and still went older than the character should be. Can’t really help it with the twentysomething teens by this point, but this was a fresh pick.

But yeah, as of episode 4, the military was scooping up ages 9-10 specifically (rather tight for a range). Vecna explained “why kids,” but why he would noticeably be targeting only fourth graders is unclear.

Since all the targeted kids seemed to recognize the “Mr. Whatsit” name, maybe it’s just that he started with Holly and branched out to her classmates.