Should Audiences Even Care About The Final Season of Stranger Things?

It’s time we — and three hundred thirty-five million other people — admitted that we are in a toxic relationship with Stranger Things. Every time we think the show will commit, it ghosts us.  

Seriously, there’s “playing hard to get” with a season, and then there’s just straight-up torturing fans simply because Netflix can.  

Coming in as the most frustratingly anticipated season of the series, Stranger Things Season 5 has taken three years to premiere. THREE. FREAKING. YEARS.  

The audacity is astounding — it truly is. And we’ve been putting up with this for years. In case anyone has forgotten, Stranger Things Season 1 aired in 2016, almost a decade ago.  

So, why should we even care about the final season of Stranger Things when the Earth has rotated around the Sun three times since the last season premiere?  

In The Beginning, Everything Was Great with Stranger Things, and Then Netflix Saw How Good We Had It

On July 15, 2016, the world was introduced to a new kind of show: a show that combines ’80s nostalgia, incredible sci-fi visuals, and coming-of-age stories in one intense story.  

Stranger Things was one of Netflix’s first big boons. The streamer had been slowly rising for years, but the show’s popularity catapulted its success.  

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Of course, Netflix wasted no time putting together Stranger Things Season 2 and had it on every fan’s screen in just a little over a year, on October 17, 2017.  

Things were on the up. The cast was making the usual media round of interviews and appearances.  

The world was also reintroduced to Winona Ryder (Friends), who had been struggling for quite some time before becoming Joyce Byers. This role revitalized her career.  

Those first two seasons swept the award circuit. During those years, they won accolade after accolade — you name it, they won it.  

Then Netflix pulled the rug out from under viewers, and we had no idea it was the start of something horrible.  

It’s Mind-Blowing to Think of How Much Has Happened Between the Last Season of Stranger Things and the Upcoming One  

It’s 2017, and you’ve just finished binge-watching Season 2 of Stranger Things. What are you going to do now?  

If you’re like this TV Fanatic, you rewatch the first two seasons over and over again until you can wait a whole year till the next one.  

Cut to a year later, and what’s not on your TV screen? The following season of Stranger Things. If only we had known then how lucky we were.  

Two years? That would be a dream at this point. The hiatus between seasons only grew from there.   

It took two years for Stranger Things Season 2 to come out, and we thought that would be the worst of it — that The Duffer Brothers wouldn’t possibly put us through something like that again. Wrong.  

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We went through an entire pandemic with mandated quarantines between Seasons 3 and 4.  

By the time Stranger Things Season 4 came out, the world was a completely different place. We’re on our second president since Season 4 and our fourth since the show started.  

Audiences Are Fed Up with Having to Rewatch the Entire Stranger Things Series Just to Remember Everything That Happened  

And here we are. The show has been running for almost a decade, and we are only in the fifth season. Millie Bobby Brown was a child when it started.  

And this isn’t like Modern Family, where all the kids grew up because the show lasted twenty years. FIVE SEASONS, that’s it. Not even five full seasons. It’s just 8-9 episodes every three years.  

Is it a great show? Of course. Does it stand out against every single other show in existence? Absolutely. Do you have to rewatch the entire series every time a new season comes out? Unfortunately.  

It’s one thing to rewatch Stranger Things Season 4 just to refresh yourself. However, my brain does not have Cloud storage.  

I can’t rewatch the last season because so much time has passed, I have to rewatch the season before that one to understand anything.  

Kudos to you if you have a working library of every Stranger Things episode running through your noggin, but the rest of us are working with a shed’s worth of memory.  

Not to mention, the cast has all moved on to other shows and movies what with becoming adults and whatnot. It feels like they are only still doing the show because of contractual obligations.  

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Netflix has taken too long between Stranger Things releases, and it shows in the frustrated way people are talking about the series.  

We’re fed up. Stranger Things Season 4 was terrific, but everyone checked out as soon as it was over because we were already expecting to wait years for the next one.  

In turning off our anticipation, we also turned off our interest. I’m sure Netflix will throw everything, including the kitchen sink, at Stranger Things Season 5. I’m just not sure I’ll be watching it.  

How funny would it be if every Netflix subscriber simultaneously decided to wait three years before watching Stranger Things Season 5?  

Unlikely as it is, it’s still fun to think about, but I’m petty like that.  

Either way, at least this will be the last season of Stranger Things that the streaming juggernaut can lord over our heads to keep our subscriptions.  

Have you been watching Stranger Things since it started?  

Do you plan to give Stranger Things Season 5 a watch? 

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It’s like yelling into the void sometimes — so if you’re out there, holler back. 

Comments, shares, and good vibes all keep this little ship afloat. Thanks for reading.

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