Remember when Stranger Things first landed and completely took over your brain. That perfect mix of Amblin kids on bikes, nasty monsters, and just enough heartfelt drama to make you care still sticks in people’s heads.

Nearly a decade later, we’re back in Hawkins one last time. The road to this final season has been bumpy. Season 1 was lightning in a bottle, and season 2 was solid but felt like a safer remix. Season 3 pretty much tripped over its own neon laces, and season 4 pulled things back with a darker tone, a great villain, and some real emotional punches.

Now we’ve got Season 5, Volume 1. Four episodes, big promises, and a single question hanging over the whole thing about whether the show can actually finish strong. After watching Volume 1, my honest answer is maybe. It’s entertaining, messy, emotional, and overstuffed. It manages to be all of those things at once.

Hawkins Under Lockdown

We pick up in fall 1987, which is already pretty funny, because half this cast looks like they have mortgages and back pain. The show doesn’t time jump to match that, so you sort of have to ignore the fact that these “teens” now look like they’re creeping into their mid 30s.

Hawkins itself has changed on paper, but not quite as much as the season 4 finale suggested.

The town has been sealed off by the military, the giant cracks in the earth have been covered with steel plates, and civilians are trapped inside like it is one giant, cursed cul-de-sac.

On the surface, it sounds like full apocalypse mode. In practice, it feels surprisingly “business as usual.” The world ending vibes from season 4 have been dialed back into something closer to an extreme containment incident.

Also, the idea that you can just slap metal over interdimensional tears and call it a day is optimistic at best. You would expect a full evacuation for miles, not people grabbing groceries next to a reality leak, but Stranger Things has always played fast and loose with how the government works, so here we are.

The Hunt For Vecna

Despite the military presence, our Hawkins crew has spent the last year doing what they do best, which is sticking their noses into things they absolutely shouldn’t.

They’ve figured out ways to sneak into the Upside Down, kept searching for Vecna in the hope of finishing him off once and for all, and watched as the US military built a research outpost inside the Upside Down that feels about as smart as building condos on top of an active volcano.

The season splits the cast into multiple mission groups, and the broad strokes are easy enough to follow. Hopper is in the Upside Down hunting for signs of Vecna. The gang back in Hawkins is building a rough tracking system to help him locate their favorite skinless wizard. Eleven is training for the final battle and trying to level up for the inevitable showdown. Lucas is still shattered over Max, who has been in a coma since Vecna wrecked her body. The military is experimenting on a mysterious test subject, and Will has started getting that creepy “Spidey-sense” tingling whenever a demogorgon is near.

Things escalate when Vecna kidnaps Holly, Mike’s little sister, and that forces the kids to cook up a very Hawkins-style plan. They decide to lure a demogorgon by using another kid as bait, and tag it with a tracking device. Then they’d follow it into the Upside Down, and hope it leads them straight to Vecna. Hope they can kill him even though the only real threat to him, Eleven, is not with them. Try to rescue Holly and somehow get out alive while all of this chaos unfolds around them.

It’s a plan held together by optimism, adrenaline, and zero risk assessment, which, to be fair, is kind of the show’s whole brand.

Meanwhile, Hopper and Eleven infiltrate the military research outpost in the Upside Down, convinced Vecna is being held there and hidden from everyone else.

On top of that, Holly starts getting contacted by Max’s disembodied consciousness, which has been stuck inside Vecna’s hive mind this whole time, and Will and the rest of the “other half” of the gang break into a separate military base in the real world, trying to free the other kids being held in “protective custody” before Vecna can get to them.

Predictably, everything goes sideways and monsters show up. No one in this town has ever had a plan go smoothly.

A Good Story Buried Under Too Much Stuff

The idea of a final hunt for Vecna, with Hawkins literally sitting on the fault line between realities, is a great foundation. There are moments where the show really leans into the horror and tension again, and you can feel flashes of what made season 4 so compelling.

Stranger Things has always been sentimental about its cast, but by this point the show is clearly afraid to let characters go. A few of them obviously hit the natural end of their arcs in season 4, Max especially. Her death would’ve been a brutal, meaningful choice. Instead, she survives in a half-life, her mind trapped inside Vecna, and the story has to bend over backwards to justify her continued presence.

There are plenty of characters who simply aren’t essential anymore but still hang around, waiting for something to do. Lucas is still pining for Max. Jonathan drifts through scenes like he is half asleep. Robin keeps cracking anxious jokes that feel more like a bit than a person. And Steve remains stuck in the same love triangle with Nancy and Jonathan that should’ve been resolved seasons ago.

The writers keep them all on the board, so they have to manufacture busy work to keep everyone occupied and toss in missions, arguments, and emotional loops we’ve already seen before. It gives the season a padded feeling, even when you’re enjoying individual scenes.

On top of that, new or previously minor characters keep getting bumped up. Sometimes it works. Holly is a strong addition, and Will finally gets more to do than look sad and cry, which is long overdue. But every new face still has to be serviced in the plot, which adds more weight on an already overloaded story.

You can feel the strain. The show wants to deliver a big, epic finale, but it’s dragging a mountain of unresolved arcs behind it.

Performances: The Good, The Grating, The Just Plain Weird

One thing Stranger Things still does well is casting strong, expressive performers and letting them cook. When the show hits a good emotional beat, it still works. Hopper, Eleven, and Will all get moments that feel grounded and real, even in the middle of absolute nonsense.

At the same time, the performances are all over the place tonally. Some actors are playing grounded horror, some are in a quirky teen comedy, and some are performing like they’re in an improv sketch.

Robin is a good example. The idea of a socially awkward, fast-talking character is fine, but the way she’s written and played this season leans so hard into “quirky” that it starts to feel forced. The show spends a lot of time on her without giving her much that’s truly new or necessary to the core story.

Then you’ve got Erica. Every time she shows up, the energy of the scene shifts, and not in a good way. The character is written to be loud, smug, and abrasive, and the performance matches that. It’s a combo that can tip from funny into grating pretty quickly.

None of this ruins the season, but it does add to that uneven feeling. You go from a tense Upside Down sequence to an overcooked comedy bit, and the whiplash hits hard.

Monsters, Power Creep, And Moving Goalposts

The demogorgons used to feel like real threats. Now their power level changes from scene to scene depending on what the script wants.

In one moment, a single demogorgon can tear through a heavily armed squad and soak up more bullets than a kaiju. In another, it gets taken out or stalled by one normal, panicked human with a broken wine bottle. Those things can’t both be true without breaking the illusion.

That same slippery logic applies to the human characters too. Power creep has definitely set in. Eleven keeps getting stronger, Vecna keeps getting scarier, and the stakes keep getting described as bigger than ever. After a while, you stop feeling the escalation and experience it more as noise.

When everything is described as the biggest it has ever been, nothing actually feels that big.

So It Is Still Worth Watching

I watched all four episodes of Volume 1 without checking out, and that alone says something. The show still knows how to grab your attention, and when it leans into atmosphere and dread, it’s still pretty great television.

The season is messy, overloaded with characters and subplots, and full of emotional beats that are recycled from earlier seasons.

Even with all of that, I still care what happens. I still want to know how this story ends. Stranger Things has earned at least that much loyalty from a lot of people.

This might be the last real “TV event” show we get for a while, the kind of series that arrives, breaks your social feeds for a weekend, and sends everyone scrambling to catch up before they get spoiled. Fans who’ve stuck with it for nearly ten years are going to see it through, no matter what critics say and no matter how wobbly the landing might be.

Volume 1 suggests that the landing could be rough but not impossible.

If the Duffer Brothers can trim the fat, pay off the right arcs, and stop protecting every character like they are made of glass, there’s still a real chance for Stranger Things to bow out with something that feels satisfying. Not perfect. Not clean. Just honest to what the show used to be.