Stranger Things season 5 volume 1 review: “Can the Duffer brothers stick the landing? It’s sure looking like they will”

This review of Stranger Things season 5 is spoiler-free.
It has been well over three years since our favorite Dungeons & Dragons party were last seen on screen, the gang watching the terrors of the Upside Down break through to the real world, smoke rising from Hawkins, Vecna’s haunting presence looming over them. Now, finally, the end is nigh, and there’s one question running through everyone’s mind: can the Duffer brothers stick the landing?
We won’t know the answer until New Year’s Eve, but the first signs are promising. The title of Volume 1’s opening episode, ‘The Crawl’, is something of a misnomer: the season doesn’t so much crawl but sprint off the starting line. Our heroes are all back in America (no Cold War-era Russian antics) and stuck in quarantine, the military imprisoning Hawkins’ citizens in the hopes of keeping the horrors of the other dimension at bay. That, however, has not impeded the fight against Vecna too much with the Wheeler siblings, Mike and Nancy, leading the group as they map out the Upside Down, hoping to find the villain’s lair.
From there, the four episodes bounce along quickly, the character groupings – some more surprising than others – becoming clear. On the predictable side: Eleven and Hopper are a father-daughter team, struggling to understand each other, while Steve and Dustin are angsty frenemies, with Dustin still grieving the death of Eddie – the one person who truly understood his outsider ways. Nancy and Jonathan are a part of that mix, with Jonathan and Steve fighting for the affection of Nancy, who rightly just wants to get on with fighting Vecna.
Then there are the less predictable but arguably more delightful pairings: Robin acts as Will’s mentor, helping him break free of the shackles of his mother’s overbearing (and understandable) urge to keep him safe, all while Robin guides Will in the ways of love. The way these two queer characters’ sexuality comes to the fore of their storylines is touching and affectionately handled, and plays a significant role in where Will ends up this part of the season. Even more surprising is Holly Wheeler’s prominence across the four episodes, Nell Fisher having taken over the role of Nancy and Mike’s younger sister.
Teen spirit
Holly – and, eventually, her school friends – gives the show an innocence that has been missing ever since the long gaps between seasons led to the main actors ageing much faster than their characters (and the Duffers writing accommodating their maturity). The first season was very much about these youngsters becoming teenagers, the series gradually morphing into a show about teenagers becoming independent adults; bringing in a younger contingent is a lovely mirror to those earlier seasons and allows the main group to show how much they’ve grown.
While that dynamic may play on our nostalgia for the first season (and this is a show originally built on nostalgia for a Spielbergian version of the ‘80s), the new episodes expand on what made the fourth season such a colossal hit. The set-pieces continue to be gargantuan; the biggest the show has ever done takes place in the fourth episode, ‘Sorcerer’, featuring a thrilling one-shot sequence that’s as good as anything pulled off by this year’s biggest blockbusters.
The tone, too, continues on a more serious note, the second episode featuring a heartbreaking performance courtesy of a tearful Nancy, played by Natalia Dyer. In fact, many members of the cast have upped their game this season, with Dyer, Gaten Matarazzo, and David Harbour being standouts as Nancy, Dustin, and Hopper, each one boosting their scenes as much as the exquisite set production.
Turn it up to eleven
Volume 1 concludes with a series of revelations that could have felt clunky had the Duffers not so carefully made each twist feel somewhat inevitable. The brothers have spoken at length about how they planned much of the series’ lore before the release of season two, and you can tell these reveals have been brewing in their brains for that long. Each twist will have a major impact going forward, leaving this mid-season break on a mini-cliffhanger that will have the world speculating until Volume 2 arrives in December.
So, to ask another, more appropriate question: were these episodes worth the wait? There are a few elements that are less successful: poor Winona Ryder’s Joyce is pushed to the side, simply a vessel to help Will evolve as a character, while the Nancy-Jonathan-Steve triangle feels like it’s been stretched too far. Plus, there’s one near-death moment that feels like a cop-out.
Yet, Stranger Things 5 retains what makes the show so special. Even with the end in sight, the series barreling along at a rapid pace, the intimate character moments remain, the show knowing when to put the brakes on, offering moments of familiar levity that stop it from feeling like a bunch of movie set-pieces stitched together and instead like an actual TV show. Those moments are what elevate the series beyond many others – and why this first half of the new season continues the show’s track record for greatness. Can the Duffer brothers stick the landing? It’s sure looking like they will.