The first season of the television show Stranger Things became a surprise hit last year, catapulting a craze surrounding the 1980s-set sci-fi show. Stranger Things focuses on the unusual disappearance of a young boy and how his friends and their families cope with loss, friendship and love while trying to find him. Also, there’s a little girl with psychic powers thrown into the mix.
The plot of Stranger Things works because of its captivating characters and engaging story. Even when the show dips fully into the supernatural, the directors, the Duffer Brothers, never lost track of its characters and their relationships. As a big fan of the series, I was apprehensive at the idea of a second season. Some shows aren’t made to be continued, and I was afraid that the hype and culture around the first season would translate poorly into the second. I am pleased to say that Season Two is a worthy successor to the first season, even though it may stumble sometimes along the way.
Here’s your spoiler alert. Season Two begins a year after Season One ends. Will Byers (Noah Schnapp), the boy who spent most of the previous season in the terrifying Upside-Down, an alternate dimension that’s a grim reflection of our world, is reunited with his friends, but still feels a haunting connection to the dark world he was trapped in. Will constantly shifts into visions of the Upside-Down, but this time, he’s in the middle of a raging storm. A shadowy figure dominates the sky, and Will knows that he isn’t safe. At the same time, the other characters grapple with the events of the first season. Mike Wheeler (Finn Wolfhard) is still trying to make contact with Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown), the psychic girl who sacrificed herself at the end of the last season, while Jim Hopper (David Harbour) the police chief is concealing a dangerous secret.
For the most part, the second season builds upon the framework of the first one. Characters don’t ignore what they went through in the first season and are still trying to come to grips with it. Will Byers walks the school halls, ridiculed as “zombie boy,” but only he and his friends know the truth about the traumatic events that he experienced the previous year. Nancy Wheeler (Natalia Dyer) is a drunken mess in one scene, proclaiming that she inadvertently killed her best friend. There were real consequences of what happened in the first season, which allow the stakes this time around to be raised.
What the new season does exceptionally well is pacing. Each episode slowly builds upon the one before it, ramping up the tension gradually. Halfway through the season, the tension exploded in a scene where Will Byers confronts the shadow monster. The scene was exceptionally done, rendering me disturbed, sick, and uncomfortably engrossed at the same time. From that point on, the main plot kicks into full overdrive and hardly ever slows.
The main problem that plagues the second season is how disconnected each story feels. The first season of the show works so well because even though it focused on many different characters and storylines, the main thread that connected them-the demogorgon, the monster from the Upside-Down-posed a real threat to all the characters. In season two, the main storylines feel too separated. There were some side plots with the older characters that felt sloppily crammed into the story that had me wishing for the show to go back to the far more interesting main plot with the kids.
The biggest offender of disconnected storylines was an entire episode that was completely irrelevant to the main plot, shoehorned into the last three episodes with the purpose to expand the show for a third season. The episode on the surface should work, it focuses on a fan-favorite character, and in the process the audience learns more about their backstory, and they grow as a person by the time the episode ends. However the episode feels like an entirely different show, with questionable acting and a boring plot. The episode is sure to leave lots of people confused on its inclusion, and the show’s creators have since said that they debated removing it. The episode isn’t horrible but it sure is the weakest episode of the show by far. Afterwards, when all the characters inevitably come together through a series of coincidences, it feels unnatural, and seems like the directors were saying “okay, we have only one episode left, got to tie up all the loose ends.”
Despite its shortcomings, Season 2 has some of the best moments of the whole series. Noah Schnapp, who was sidelined most of last season playing Will Byers, is finally given the focus, and he is incredible. He is so utterly enthralling, able to portray so much natural emotion and physicality. His role is the backbone of the whole season and is one of the best performances I’ve seen all year. In addition, the threat of this season is a welcome improvement over the last season. The dark, ominous shadow that stalks Will is as mysterious as it is terrifying. While it may lurk in the background, I, like the characters had a knot in my stomach anytime it was or wasn’t on screen. The season also gives way to two surprise team-ups of characters that never met during the first season of the show. I never imagined these characters would work well together, but happen to due in part to the great character writing. I won’t spoil them, but they are loads of fun.
There are a couple new characters this time around. Sean Astin is a delight playing Joyce Byers’s bumbling new boyfriend Bob, and Paul Reiser plays Dr. Owens, the new head of Hawkins Lab with loads of depth to his character and motivations. In addition, Sadie Sink is great as Max, the new girl at school who befriends Will and Mike’s friends, Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo) and Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin). Dacre Montgomery plays Max’s brother Billy, giving a fun and intense performance that has undertones of Jack Nicholson in The Shining. These characters give lots of new depth and excitement to the season.
The second season of Stranger Things might be a bit of a mess at times and some things might not always work, but the great characters and the thrilling story more than make up for it. The story had me on the edge of my seat in anticipation for the next crazy thing that would happen. I am fully onboard for a third season, and I look forward to seeing how the Duffer Brothers will make things even stranger for Hawkins and its inhabitants.
