
‘Time to get excited!' Why Stranger Things could be back to its best for its final episodes ever
It began as a fun piece of fluff, a one-and-done collection of overt 1980s film references, designed as the first part of an unconnected anthology. But then it exceeded expectations, so the Duffer brothers found themselves having to pull an entire mythology out of thin air. And a bloated one at that, full of (at best) bottle episodes about punky young superheroes and (at worst) self-indulgent episodes that grind on for hours and hours.
And because the episodes were so gargantuan, they took years to make. This is why you shouldn't be excited about the return of Stranger Things. Whatever happened in the last batch of episodes has long since receded from memory and they were so long that you cannot possibly build up the enthusiasm to watch them all again. It is less a series and more a Man v Food challenge, served up long after you've forgotten what your last meal tasted of.
And yet the first trailer for the final batch of Stranger Things episodes has dropped and goddamn it if I'm not suddenly really excited about it.
What happens in the trailer? It's hard to say. Joe Keery turns a wheel in a van. A bunch of lights flicker. There are flamethrowers. Someone jumps between trees during a lightning storm, pursued by a demon. A bunch of four-legged monsters prowl around a kitchen like raptors in Jurassic Park. There are machine guns and fast cars, and crying and flying and Vecna throwing a sort of burning tornado at the sky, all accompanied by Deep Purple's Child in Time.
Does it make sense? Not really. Is it so overloaded with mythology and superfluous characters that you felt you needed a diagram to remind you who everyone was? Almost certainly. But could I feel my heart start to race as it went on? Yes. The Stranger Things trailer isn't the best trailer I've ever seen, but it might qualify as the most trailer I've ever seen, and sometimes that does the trick.
More than anything, it reinforces the direction that Stranger Things has been heading for the past nine years. There will be not a single atom of subtlety in these episodes. Any nuance will be forced out by a powerhouse of spectacle. Things will explode. There will be CGI by the gallon. Characters will operate exclusively in emotional red zones. For better or worse, you will end this series exhausted.
However, there is one small hint that – despite the heavy metal frenzy that whirls around it – Stranger Things knows how it will stick the landing. It comes in the form of a snatch of dialogue between Hopper and Eleven. It isn't much ('Let's end this, kid') but it's a sign the key relationship of the entire series is back on track.
Despite all the excess – the monsters, the nostalgia – Stranger Things was always a show about parenthood. It's the story of a man who finds a weird little girl with nowhere to go, who helps him rebuild himself after experiencing the most devastating bereavement. Any time it has leant into the found-family dynamic between Hopper and Eleven, Stranger Things has found an emotional wallop that cannot be overwhelmed by the whiz-bang chicanery of the rest of the show. This is where Stranger Things began and I pray this is where it will end.
That's the pull of this trailer. The final season of Stranger Things will surely be too long. There will be too many storylines. There will be children riding bicycles even though they are visibly so old they should really have been driving their own children to school for the past decade. But if it remembers to focus on its heart – on the dynamic between a man and a girl who saved each other – then it might be worth getting excited about Stranger Things after all.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Daily Mail
13 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
How Gwyneth's perfectionism caused a 'noxious' atmosphere at her controversial lifestyle brand Goop: Final extract from new book reveals how she came up with THAT candle and fell out with Anna Wintour's team
Gwyneth Paltrow may not have known as she headed into Goop's weekly staff meeting one January morning in 2017 that the company was about to be hit by one of its biggest controversies. Goop, which Gwyneth had started as a lifestyle newsletter nearly ten years earlier, sometimes promoted wacky products that attracted headlines and boosted sales.


Daily Mail
13 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Jamie Lee Curtis on why her mother Janet Leigh would've 'been incredibly upset' about her Oscar-winning role
Jamie Lee Curtis calls herself the 'OG nepo baby ' having had a leg up in showbusiness thanks to her famous parents Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis. But the outspoken 66-year-old doesn't think the late Psycho scream queen would've approved of her grittier, unflattering characters like IRS revenue agent Deirdre Beaubeirdre in Everything Everywhere All at Once. 'Today I have a freedom to be myself that my mother's generation would never have allowed,' Jamie revealed in her People cover story Sunday. 'My mother would've been incredibly upset at Everything Everywhere All at Once and how I looked. My mother would have loathed [how I looked].' Curtis continued: 'Her generation was so much about your body and what you look like. And the beauty. The beauty is just who she was. That's what her life was. My mother was literally jaw dropping. But I think that would've been very hard for her to see me with my tummy sticking out.' The Bear actress famously won an Oscar for her performance in Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert's critically-acclaimed multiverse dramedy, which went on to amass $143.4M from a $25M budget in 2022. Jamie also looked rough as Shelly's (Pamela Anderson) hard-living gal pal Annette, a cocktail waitress living in her car, in Gia Coppola's critically-acclaimed 2024 drama The Last Showgirl, which earned $7.1M from a $2M budget. 'Or in Last Showgirl, for [Janet] to see me in that dressing room at 66 years old. That really would've upset her,' Curtis noted. 'I know her very well. I have accepted myself in a much bigger way than I think she felt she was allowed to, through her generation.' The Borderlands actress added: 'I know that my mother was so proud of me and and what I've achieved, that she respected my husband's work and was thrilled to be a grandma.' Leigh passed away, at age 77, in 2004 after a protracted battle with vasculitis while her famous father died, at age 85, in 2010 of cardiac arrest. On Saturday, Jamie - who regrets undergoing a lower blepharoplasty at age 25 - called out the 'genocide of a generation of women by the cosmeceutical industrial complex, who've disfigured themselves.' 'I believe that we have wiped out a generation or two of natural human [appearance],' Curtis told The Guardian. 'The concept that you can alter the way you look through chemicals, surgical procedures, fillers – there's a disfigurement of generations of predominantly women who are altering their appearances. And it is aided and abetted by AI, because now the filter face is what people want. 'I'm not filtered right now. The minute I lay a filter on and you see the before and after, it's hard not to go: "Oh, well that looks better." But what's better? Better is fake.' Curtis continued: 'Her generation was so much about your body and what you look like. And the beauty. The beauty is just who she was. That's what her life was. My mother was literally jaw dropping. But I think that would've been very hard for her to see me with my tummy sticking out' (pictured last Tuesday) The Bear actress also looked rough as Shelly's (R, Pamela Anderson) hard-living gal pal Annette, a cocktail waitress living in her car, in Gia Coppola's critically-acclaimed 2024 drama The Last Showgirl The Borderlands actress told The Guardian: 'I believe that we have wiped out a generation or two of natural human [appearance]. The concept that you can alter the way you look through chemicals, surgical procedures, fillers – there's a disfigurement of generations of predominantly women who are altering their appearances. And it is aided and abetted by AI, because now the filter face is what people want' However, the Halloween alum 'minds her business' when it comes to advising her Freakier Friday onscreen daughter Lindsay Lohan, whose facial features are noticeably more taut than they were seven years ago. Jamie noted: 'I'm bossy, very bossy, but I try to mind my own business. She doesn't need my advice. She's a fully functioning, smart woman, creative person. Privately, she's asked me questions, but nothing that's more than an older friend you might ask.' Curtis and the 39-year-old former child star executive produced and reprised their roles in Nisha Ganatra's mother-daughter swap sequel Freakier Friday, which hits US/UK theaters August 8. It's hard to believe it's been 22 years since the Emmy/Grammy nominee and Lindsay portrayed Tess and Anna Coleman in Mark Waters' critically-acclaimed remake of Freaky Friday, which amassed $160.8M at the global box office. Last Tuesday, Jamie confirmed she'll play mystery novelist Jessica Fletcher in Universal's upcoming reboot of the CBS hit series Murder, She Wrote - which aired for 12 seasons spanning 1984-96. 'Oh, it's… happening,' Curtis told ET. 'We're a minute away, but yeah, [I'm] very excited. Very excited. But I'm tamping down my enthusiasm until we start shooting. I have a couple of other things to hustle, but then I'll get to enjoy that work.' The LA native's other upcoming projects include James L. Brooks' political dramedy Ella McCray for 20th Century Studios, Liz Sarnoff's eight-episode series Scarpetta for Amazon Prime Video, and Russell Goldman's scam psychological horror Sender.


Telegraph
13 minutes ago
- Telegraph
The 30 best films on Disney+ to watch now
With Disney+, the clue is very much in the name: there's a lot more on there than just the classic catalogue we'd usually call Disney. Following their acquisitions of Pixar (2006), Marvel (2009), Lucasfilm (2012), and – biggest of all – 20th Century Fox (2019), the service went live with all of those separate coffers jam-packed. Many families own it chiefly for animated favourites old and new, so I've devoted about half of this list to cherry-picking those. Every Star Wars sequel (plus the TV spin-offs) is available, of course; ditto every entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I've only picked one favourite apiece in those canons, but franchise devotees will doubtless know their way around that content already. What's less foregrounded is some of the more adult-targeted Fox content, from a pretty broad range of genres, so this dominates the back end of my list. Yes, Avatar and its sequel are streamable, too, but there's a lot more to the studio's back catalogue than effects blockbusters. It would be a real blessing if Disney would license Fox's golden oldies – couldn't we have Laura (1944) or My Darling Clementine (1946) or All About Eve (1950)? For the time being, though, there's some splendid rummaging to be done in the past half-century. Skip to: Animation Musicals Comedy/Drama Fantasy and Sci-fi War Animation Moana (2016)