“Stranger Things”, a long-running masterpiece of a show, has been producing episodes since 2016. Its final episode was recently released on New Year’s Eve, and the ratings are heavily mixed.

A quick recap

Throughout season one, the show introduces the Upside Down, a world accessible when a portal forms due to extreme energy, and one of the characters, Will Byers, is kidnapped into the Upside Down world.

The show then introduces the party of the original four: Mike, Lucas, Will, and Dustin, who work through various issues and situations that happen in the show.

As the story progresses into season two, all the characters begin working together full-time to stop young Demogorgons, which are humanoid monsters, from entering the Upside Down.

This happens while Will tries to recover from the effects of the Mind Flayer, an entity from the Upside Down that takes over people’s minds and uses their flesh to make itself bigger.

In season three, the same cast, aside from Bob, try again to find out what is going on with the Upside Down and what it is doing when people are being possessed by the Mind Flayer.

After all that context and description, season five was released in its entirety on New Year’s Eve after initially releasing in three parts.

Reactions thus far

So far in reviews, people have shown mostly positive but somewhat mixed reactions to episodes 1-4 and their story of Hopper and Eleven in the Upside Down, trying to find Vecna, a humanoid entity with mind powers, with the assistance of the other cast members on the radio.

Meanwhile, the military is holding children who they are trying to keep away from Vecna. In episodes 5-7, Vecna, a.k.a. Henry Creel, kidnaps these children.

People reacted mostly positively to the newer episodes from the other seasons, and season five’s first release segment. Reviews have been pretty mixed about the final season, with viewers expressing feelings about how some storylines, like Doctor Kay and Vecna (who was Henry Creel when he lived in society), seemed incomplete or confusing.

On a more positive note for the season’s reviews, many viewers enjoyed the emotional stories with Will and Eleven, who had disappeared after being a member of the group almost from the beginning.

The new season is not generally regarded as bad, but lacking in certain aspects, with some stories that did not really seem complete.

The story was in the right direction, but the little details that were put in did not fit the progressing plot and association with the characters.

Very underwhelming

My opinion is that the final season was very underwhelming, and after all the limited action in the end, after some context, it was kind of repetitive.

In the end, when Vecna and the Mind Flayer were defeated, it seemed rushed, and the fight could have had more meaning and depth, rather than just the party showing up and doing everything in like 10 minutes.

Some episodes felt kind of clunky when some moments were really hyped, but then nothing happened after all the suspense, which sort-of took away from the progressing emotional feeling of the show.

The first four episodes were not a bad story with the relationship between Eleven and Hopper, and they served as a good introduction to the season, but things just went steadily downhill from there.

I still think, however, that the show was excellent overall, and it had a semi-decent conclusion for what they had to work with.