Stranger Things Was A Victim To Its Own Success

Ajouté : 2026-06-02

[00:00:00]Today I want to talk about a little known show that not many people have heard of. It's very niche.

[00:00:08]Not much content has been made about it.

[00:00:11]And I I I doubt you've even heard of it.

[00:00:14]It's it's a show called Stranger Things.

[00:00:23]I was around 14 years old when the first season of Stranger Things came out and I was immediately hooked. But in this video, I don't want to just talk about Stranger Things. I know so many people have made so many videos on this show.

[00:00:36]And I hope that by adding my own personal opinion into this, I'm also bringing a bit of a different perspective. So, when I talk about Stranger Things, I want to talk about what happened to it, but also why it happened because I think it tells us more about what happens when you become too successful. Season 1 of Stranger Things felt genuinely new and special.

[00:00:58]There was something rare about it. It had this ability to make you feel nostalgic for a time that you weren't even around for. I was born in the early 2000s and yet I found myself yearning for the8s. And the way to make somebody feel nostalgic over something they'd never experience is by doing it through intentionality and sincerity. And by doing so, season 1 felt like a passion project. You could see the heart in every single frame. The upside down felt genuinely unknowable and that was scary and the threat felt real. The stakes overall were fairly small. It was just one kid that went missing in a small town. But those stakes felt enormous because we came to care for every single character. A small budget forced precision. Every single frame, every single scene had to be earned. There was no room for filler or for CGI to cover up your mistakes. And those constraints is what made it feel real. And I remember being so excited for season 2.

[00:02:00]Like I remember when the thriller trailer for season 2 came out.

[00:02:08]Every everyone remembers where they were. It was like our own 9/11.

[00:02:12]>> Um, excuse me. What the actual >> Take this microphone away from me. I can't. I'm done. And I love season 2.

[00:02:18]The stakes rose just a little bit, but the realism of season 1 remained. It still had that nostalgia factor. I loved that it was around Halloween. I So many people hate on season 2, but I really loved it except for that one episode that we do not talk about. But the shift began in season 3. It was around July 4th and it was very colorful and the budget got bigger and so did the stakes.

[00:02:42]The aesthetics of season 3 were genuinely spot-on. It was colorful. It was energetic. But I can't say that I felt the same watching season 3 as I did watching seasons 1 and two because in making the stakes bigger, it paradoxically makes you feel less.

[00:03:00]Season 1 was about a missing kid, but season 3 was about how the mind flare was exploding people and creating its own meat body while the Russians worked underground in the new mall.

[00:03:20]I still loved it, but this is the first sign of the success problem that I mentioned at the beginning of this video. The show had gotten so big, it felt like it had to keep escalating, and the escalation became the point rather than the story. Season 4 felt a little bit like a course correction. We were back in Hawkins. It was fall time and it just it felt a little bit more real. But I'm struggling to find the words to explain why it felt more real because there were a lot of things about season 4 that genuinely didn't stick with me. I've heard a lot of people say that season 4 felt like it was a return to form for Stranger Things, and I can see where they're coming from, but I partially disagree because of Vecna. And don't get me wrong, I do think that Vecna is a great villain. I think Jimmy Camel Bower, who played Vecna, is a fantastic actor. I think that the character was very well written. His backstory was great. I don't have any issues with the character himself. My issue is more that Vecna should have been put in a different show. Vekna didn't really belong in a show that was about a small town where nothing really happened. It felt like Stranger Things wanted its own version of Thanos. So therefore, it had to go back and retcon everything that we knew from season 1 to be like, "Oh, it was all part of this big plan by this mastermind who was from the lab." You remember the lab from season 1 that Eleven came from? Yeah, Eleven actually knew him, but she blocked him out because of the trauma. And he actually killed a bunch of people, but everyone thought that Eleven killed them, and it was actually his plan all along. Hence, the reason why he took Will. And the reason why he took Will is because he just wanted to take Will and he's actually been around. He's actually he wants to do something to the world, but he he only wants to do it to the world because of the reason. And he wants to take over the world, but also isn't really doing anything to do it, but he has to kill four people to do it. and he's doing it now because he's ready now.

[00:05:38]Don't you get what I mean? Again, I get it. Once they had passed the threshold of season 3, they did have to introduce something new. They had to retcon a lot of things, but I don't have to like it.

[00:05:51]I don't think that it served the same purpose as the story used to be. I also got bored with Hopper's storyline in Russia. I think he should have died at the end of season 3. I really like I like Hopper as a character, but he should have died. I really didn't care.

[00:06:07]It just felt like they were trying to give him something to do because they were too chicken to kill him off and make fans mad. And I just I I still don't really get the whole Russian subplot. Like that wasn't really going to do anything. Like, okay, the Russians are bad. Cool.

[00:06:26]I don't know. I I don't know. And once again, dog, there were too many characters. Like, please just leave. I don't know. Like, and stop.

[00:06:38]Stop. I know the show has already ended, but I want you to retcon your show and just stop.

[00:06:46]And there were some good parts of season 4. I really resonated with Max's mental health struggles. That was very well done. Sadcink was great. And that was kind of one of the only things that really stuck with me about Stranger Things season 4 because again like I said Vecna was a great villain and I think what made him genuinely terrifying is that he used his victim's trauma against them and I think that that is a very interesting way to write a character. But if this show had set out to be an exploration into mental health and trauma then it would make sense that would end up coming on. The stakes at the end of season 4 were genuinely apocalyptic. I mean, the world had split open because Vecno killed four people.

[00:07:30]In season 5 is where this budget laziness really comes to fruition.

[00:07:38]Because instead of using the monstrous budget they had to create Hawkins in an apocalypse, they said, "And we also want to introduce some new characters."

[00:07:52]Instead of having the people of Hawkins dealing with their world being split in half, we're just gonna say that the government put steel plates over it. And at first I remember seeing that and kind of laughing and being like, haha, that would be what the government would do.

[00:08:10]But then I went, wait a second, the world split in half. Everyone saw there was the little dust falling from the sky. I hate it here. A show with a small budget can't afford to do any of the stuff that season 5 did because every frame needed to be intentional. Every frame needed to advance the story. They didn't have the time nor the money to put in a bunch of filler or to add a bunch of new characters and edits and CGI and all that crap. And also in season 1, I felt like I could suspend my belief a little bit because even though I knew that the stuff that was happening wasn't realistic. Like I mean like I know that there's not a secret dimension under our world where these beings called demogorgans live and they rarely come in. And I definitely know that the government has never ever done secret experiments on its own citizens and then lied about it.

[00:09:14]Like I definitely don't believe that the government would ever participate in mass surveillance and the government would never ever lie to us. So those things were just super unrealistic.

[00:09:26]But by season 5, I couldn't even suspend these little beliefs because there's Mike shooting this humongous m flesh mind flare with a flare gun. Look at how stupid that looks.

[00:09:44]And they couldn't even spend their money on making it good. like in golly, I'm getting I didn't even know I felt this passionate about this until I turned the camera on. I just You're telling me that you had so much money, but you couldn't even put one demogorgan in the base where the mind flare is and where Vecna is charging.

[00:10:15]But you could have a bunch of useless scenes with a bunch of annoying kids as they play this little oversaturated 50s life. Yeah, got it. Mhm. You would think that with all that money it would end up looking good, but you know what they say, money can't buy taste.

[00:10:33]What am I saying? This isn't really about the Duffer brothers failing or me saying that they're bad writers, bad directors, bad creatives, whatever. But what I am saying is that they are proof of what happens when success makes you lazy. When it makes you feel untouchable, like you're too big to fail. After Stranger Things became a cultural phenomenon, it stopped being able to take risks because those risks affected the brand. And brands don't kill off beloved characters because then people will stop consuming the brand.

[00:11:06]brands stop taking risks because people like to know what to expect. The visual filmmaking critique has already been wellmade elsewhere and I will link that in the description below. But that visual shift is just a symptom, not the cause. The cause is that success removed the constraints that made the story good. The constraints force intentionality. The constraints forced every choice to be deliberate. But unlimited resources make deliberate choices optional. And when deliberate choice becomes optional, unfortunately, a lot of creators just don't do it. All in all, this isn't me sitting here ranting about how bad Stranger Things is and how it's just terrible. It's just sad because I used to love the show so much. And I really hate that a very lackluster final season is kind of what it's going to be remembered for. Similar to season 8 of Game of Thrones. I like I didn't even watch Game of Thrones. And that's all I think about when I think of Game of Thrones. I'm not even interested in watching the show now because I know how bad the ending was. And unfortunately, that's just what Stranger Things is also going to be known for.

[00:12:20]And that makes me sad because it genuinely used to be such good television. success gave the Duffer brothers everything they needed to make Stranger Things bigger. And in doing so, it took away everything that made Stranger Things matter. That's not a problem that is unique to Stranger Things. It's a success problem, and it's something we should talk about more.

[00:12:43]Thank you so much for watching. I really hope you enjoyed this video. Please let me know in the comments what you think.

[00:12:48]Do you agree with me? Do you disagree with me? Do you have a favorite season of Stranger Things? Were you disappointed in the ending? Let me know all of it. Everybody who watches this video is invited to comment down below and participate in the mass discourse. I really hope you're having a great day wherever you are. And I hope you know how loved you are. God loves you. Bye.