Random question—why did Derek seem so obsessed with Mike as they were riding out of the upside down? Like he’s staring at Mike with a goofy smile on his face and then waves at him. Only thing I remember is him telling Holly that him and Mike are basically best friends now or whatever but I can’t remember another interaction between the two. Was it just a silly thing? Or was there another line somewhere I forgot suggesting Derek thinks Mike is like the coolest guy ever or something? Lol
Some of those tears on the rooftop good buy scene seemed real to me. Especially Steve's. Chance it was their last scene shot together so it was prob a twofold sendoff for them and their characters. They have been through so much and now, its just.... over. Got me a little in the feels there. Damn do I want to rewatch the entire series again?
I loved that the final fight vs the Mind Flayer was straight out of a DnD campaign. A whole party having to work together within their limited means to get the HP down for the final blows.
Engagement farming but I’m still getting a laugh at all the minor characters and extras that commented (folks like Vicki, Max’s mom, Mrs. Turnbow, some soldier extras, etc)
My wife’s joke: The military just letting everyone go after Eleven dies is like in college when you get all A’s cause your roommate killed themself
I loved the Spider and the final fight and a lot of the wrapping up moments. It’s still silly that the military half acted as a threat but also just let them go. I wanted more Vecna, he was so good going through his trauma. Loved Max in the mindscape, MVP of the show IMO. Needed a few more deaths, Murray didn’t get a wrap up, just explode him with the helicopter, why not. I counted like 10 momentum stopping heart to hearts? Some were good, some just kept going and going… so yeah I had fun, good finale, but the shows gotten so overstuffed that I’m really glad it’s over.
with the finale being like two hours long, the full season's runtime is like 600min across eight episodes. since it's on streaming, episode length feels arbitrary, whatever flows goes i guess. but if this were on network, it would be closer to like ten or eleven evenly divided episodes, right? can you imagine seeing the vecna/mind flayer fight and then waiting a week for the epilogue? can you imagine watching this with ad breaks??? Stranger Things was the first big streaming show, but despite all its influence, episodes are still being released weekly on most streaming platforms. and there are so many streaming platforms. it's like we've circled back into paying for cable.
Wouldn’t say it was really the first, house of cards predated it on the same platform by three years Maybe the first designed for all ages though
very satisfying finale. Really enjoyed it in the moment. Going to be thinking about it and processing for a while. I’m glad I did the rewatch. Got emotional thinking of when this show came out and everything that’s happened since. Fun marker in time with an original IP that pretty boldly did its own thing during the height of marvel, Star Wars, remakes, and reboots. I also loved the release around the holidays. I think people griped a lot about it but they will be nostalgic for how fun and special it was later.
I was glad the epilogue pretty much dropped the weaker plot/character threads (the military, Murray, Vicki, Erica, and Holly) because it brought me full circle with the characters that mattered most to me. It cleaned up some of my criticisms of the season as a whole. Only real criticism is I could have used a bit more Henry and Max pre-epilogue.
lol my first thought reading that. Once they do though good luck trying to get together once every 4 years. And might as well count Steve out with his six little nuggets
I think Nancy calls it out in s1 - he was older, had money, and let her live the "perfect nuclear family", to which Jonathan said was bullshit lol
I think I liked the latter half more than the battle stuff. The Mindflayer, CGI desert stuff just reminded of the climax to “Spider-Man: No Way Home” where it has that gross sepia filter to it. I did like a lot of the emotional stuff. Flashbacks are almost corny, but there’s no way they weren’t gonna do it here. My big gripe is the Will and Eleven reunion because Will was basically a background character this season and, I could be wrong and misremembering, but I feel like Will and Eleven spent all of 10 minutes together over the past 2-3 seasons, so to pretend that this was the great love story of the series fell flat for me. That said, for a show with no restraint, I’m glad we got no force ghost appearances by Barb, Eddie and/or Billy. Feel like maybe a network show would have crowbarred that in. And the D&D ending was very sweet.