Stranger Things Review: Volume Two
Image from Netflix.
Well, a full circle moment has come to me this New Year’s in the form of ending the show Stranger Things. I started my Stranger Things journey on New Year’s Eve 2020, catching up on the first three seasons instead of watching the ball drop on live television. I didn’t realize until recently that the finale was to be released exactly five years after I started watching one of the best shows of this generation. The amazing plot, acting, and dialogue of this show will forever be special to me, and I know for a fact that I will rewatch it time and time again.
In order to understand Volume Two and the series finale, it is very important to look at what has led us up to this point.
Spoilers starting here, mostly in order of the episodes.
As I recapped in my first review, all of the seasons have led up to this moment, where everything will be explained for the audience. This season, it is revealed that Vecna is bringing two worlds together through the Upside Down, a wormhole between the two worlds.
Volume One was full of action, excitement, and danger. It was a very important addition to the series, save for a couple of the longer scenes with speeches and unnecessary plot lines. Volume One showed us the main catalyst of this season, with Holly and the other fifth graders going missing, and also introduced the idea of Will tapping into Vecna’s powers to defeat Vecna. The first part ended leaving fans confused about what was happening, building suspense for the second volume. Lots of theories circulated during the month, but none guessed what happened during Volume Two and the finale.
Volume Two consisted of three episodes, all lacking fight scenes and the Stranger Things flare. The plot holes throughout Volume Two were speculated to be from very large amounts of scene cuts from what the original runtimes were “supposed” to be. The directors and writers of the show, the Duffer Brothers, debunked this, saying the runtimes were always the same and that no scenes were cut.
I felt as though Volume Two was not as the Duffer Brothers described it, previously saying that it was “going to be a dark Christmas.” The plot severely lacked in Volume Two, and the only major thing was finding out Vecna’s plan for the children and what the Upside Down really is. There was no major action in Volume Two, almost as if it wasn’t even a part of this season’s plot. Many plot holes formed in Volume Two, whether it was how Max wasn’t surprised about Hopper being alive or the lack of monsters in the Upside Down. I don’t even know where to begin with reviewing this volume, so here are some main ideas that I want to point out.
Even in Volume One, we can see that the Upside Down’s hive mind doesn't seem active like how it was in Season Four. The demodogs, bats, and Demogorgons all disappeared without a trace this season, leaving the group with a huge advantage over Vecna. I also don’t understand how Vecna didn’t attack the groups as they ventured through the Upside Down unprotected, especially given Season 4, where characters couldn’t even touch the vines without fear of Vecna attacking? This is a very major plot hole that the writers didn’t consider, purely because of all of the plot armor the characters had.
If Hawkins Lab is the same in the Upside Down as normal Hawkins, how did the group not discover Brenner’s studies earlier, as they went into the lab many, many times? Following this, when Dustin discovers the shield that has been holding the Upside Down together, Nancy shoots it and destabilizes the wormhole, causing the melting of the lab to resume. If the exotic matter hasn’t been accessed before, how has the lab already melted so much? Without destabilizing the exotic matter, the melting of the building couldn’t happen, but if nobody has accessed the Upside Down before, then how has the exotic matter been destabilized? All through Seasons One and Two, the hive mind kills the scientists as soon as they step foot in the gate, so how did the now dead bodies in the Upside Down lab get there? This, again, is another plot hole that could be solved with some simple context or foreshadowing in previous seasons.
When Kali talks about the pregnant women used to create more super children, she says that room after room was filled with these pregnant women. How did Hopper and Eleven not see this as they were going through the base? This would be something that they would most likely run into as they have never been to this Upside Down base before. The distrust that Hopper has for Kali is not misplaced, because she actively tried to get Eleven to kill herself over something that only Kali has seen.
I love how Max and Holly go through the memories; it truly shows the level of creativity that the directors have. The first memory that they go into is from Halloween (before Holly knew Henry), which if the day they went in was November 4, Henry had only introduced himself to Holly a couple days before he took her. This doesn’t seem accurate to the first volume, which made it seem like Holly had known Henry for a long time, telling her mom about him and knowing specific details about him.
In Season Two when Will is connected to the Hive Mind, whenever it gets hurt, he gets hurt. Notice how that doesn’t happen in Season Five? This happens on multiple occasions: When he kills the Demogorgons, he doesn’t feel their bones break, he doesn’t feel their pain. This again happens when they shock a Demogorgon back to life in episode five so Will can access Vecna’s mind. When they fry the Demogorgon, Will doesn’t feel it, but he feels the attack that Henry gives him inside of his mind. Since he’s still connected to the hive mind, he also should’ve felt the Demogorgon being electrocuted. In the finale when they are killing Vecna and the Mind Flayer’s physical form, Will doesn’t feel all of the pain they’re both experiencing as he’s tapped into the hive mind. This is a massive plot hole that seems to be forgotten, even though it was a really big thing in Season Two. This could be because he didn’t have the black particles inside of him like he did in Season Two, but he’s still connected to the hive mind, and this would’ve needed to be explained if this is the case.
Will’s plot armor this season doesn’t make sense to me because even though he was essential to beating Vecna, when Vecna is first seen this season, he could’ve easily killed Will since he wasn’t important anymore. Vecna knows that Will has spied on him from the Hive Mind before, just like he did in past seasons, so why wouldn’t he use this to his advantage and kill him? Some would say it’s because Vecna needed him to spy “one last time”, but he doesn’t reveal that until the second volume, and even then his spying wasn’t used clearly, and Vecna still ended up dead.
How did Eleven, Kali, and Hopper get back into Hawkins from the Upside Down? The only gate that we know that is big enough for cars is in the MAC-Z, which is being heavily guarded by Dr. Kay and the military when Kali escapes. This is a bit more detailed observation that not many picked up on, so it’s not as important for the directors to include, but I can see where they had to make cuts in order to save time, but still make the storyline make sense.
When Nancy and Jonathan are stuck in the melting room, they have the very confusing scene of Jonathan (not) proposing to Nancy. This dialogue was not straight forward and confused the audience. Honestly, I’m glad that it didn’t work out between them because just hearing about how much they don’t like certain parts of each other really showed how they were never really good for each other.
I would like to say, I’m so glad that Max made it out of Henry’s mind, but seriously. Can she move any slower? Lucas is out in the real world fighting for his life and hers, and she can’t even manage a full sprint to her portal. Also, why was Mas not surprised to see that Hopper was alive, or even that everyone was okay after how things ended for her in Season Four? Although this isn’t very important to the Season Five plot, it still would’ve been nice to see some reaction out of her.
I love the friendship that starts to grow between Mr. Clarke and Murray. I feel like Mr. Clarke has been indirectly involved for multiple seasons, so it’s good to see his big break into the truth of what’s going on in Hawkins. I also feel like Murray has needed some companionship since Alexei died in Season 3, which he can’t seek from Joyce or Hopper because of their constant fighting. Although this is just something to note on the side, it was a nice added bonus to the Jonathan/Nancy breakup.
The best moment of this season is hands-down when the entire group comes together to figure out how to take Vecna down. Although I thought that they could’ve dove deeper into why Vecna wanted to merge the worlds more in the finale, the group’s inference skills are really top tier.
I love that they included Will’s coming out scene in this season because it shows how much he’s grown up throughout the show. I know that this was probably very stressful to shoot in order to get the emotions right for it to be accurate, but the amount of buildup behind this scene was unneeded and unfortunately took away from the important part of the plot, defeating Vecna. Will says that Vecna showed him this as his greatest fear and how nobody would accept him, but we weren’t able to see this as the audience, so why would we trust what he says about what Vecna showed him? There were lots of theories circulating this moment, saying how the memories were wrong, etc, but nobody covered how the audience wasn’t shown what happened between Will and Vecna. Once the finale was released, these theories were laid to rest, but I can’t get over the fact that it doesn’t seem like the audience is being told the full story.
Although Volume Two wasn’t my favorite part of this season, I feel like it had a lot of good moments that were important to the plot, even if it was overshadowed by lots of plot armor and massive plot holes.
Stay tuned for Part 3: The Finale review!
