Stranger Things returns for another great season
The hit series “Stranger Things” was released last year, recently returning for another great season. Fans were left guessing at the end of the last year but all questions were elaborately answered by the end of season two.
The storyline features four young children, Will (Noah Schnapp), Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin), Mike (Finn Wolfhard) and Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo) who have recently lost their friend, Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown). Stranger Things is centered around supernatural occurrences in the town of Hawkins. The group of children and others who knew what the occurrences were, had been told to keep quiet.
Eleven has disappeared at the end of the first season, but of course the favorite character of most fans could not be gone for long. Gradually, the story in season two is pieced together from beginning to end.
Many characters undergo a drastic change from the first to the second season. Steve Herrington (Joe Keery), the “bad-boy” of the first season, turned into a babysitter for the children. He joins them on their supernatural endeavors and protects them from the larger dangers along the way. Police Chief Hopper (David Harbour) becomes an unlikely father figure to Eleven, the young girl with supernatural powers. The two seemed like an incompatible match but developed a heartwarming relationship throughout the show.
The characters were developed very well, but some of the decisions the characters make seem very unrealistic. Many can forget that the main characters are only in middle school. They embark on dangerous tasks and take on the supernatural, while all the adults and professional soldiers are massacred in an instant. But that is quite characteristic of horror movies or thrillers: the villain will kill everyone but the main characters and then advance slowly and is miraculously stopped during his approach. But the plot is riveting enough to look past this logical flaw.
Comparatively to the first season, season two focuses more on the plot line and developing characters than the horror aspect at first. There is a noticeable lack of scenes that spike your heart rate. Towards the end of the season, there are some thrilling and suspenseful scenes incorporated into the show, but those thrilling scenes should have occurred right from the beginning.
This season elaborates on the events of the first season but goes much further in-depth around the supernatural aspects. Many of the mysteries surrounding origins of Eleven as well as the monsters related to her are answered. Eleven gradually undergoes a character change throughout the show. She starts off as a timid young girl who can barely control her powers and doesn’t know English in the first season. Eventually she turns into a strong, confident girl who can move a freight train just by thinking about it.
To end the season, all the characters enjoyed a truly happy ending together, besides Steve who lost his girlfriend to a nerd, but nobody really likes him anyways. This was a nice change from the first season where even when the main conflict was solved, everyone dove headfirst into another. All the traumatic problems that have plagued them since the beginning of the first season seemed to be finally over.
