Stranger Things, a disturbing ending and Netflix’s tireless search to seduce users

“This is just the beginning, the beginning of the end,” he tells her. neighborthe villain of the fourth season of stranger things to Eleven, her heroine, in one of the most intense passages of the last two episodes of the series that Netflix premiered on Friday. The poster phrase refers to the plot of the chapters full of terror, pain, misunderstandings and emotions as turbulent as the feelings of its adolescent protagonists.

Although after seeing the 225 minutes of the last episodes it is evident that the phrase also says a lot about the impact of the series created by the Duffer brothers that goes far beyond its narration. In fact, with nostalgia and the juvenile story as a standard -with its fourth complete season-, stranger things became the most complete representative of the present on the platform. Ten years after the premiere of his first original fiction, the little remembered lillyhammeralready nine of his first great success, House of Cards –that because of his relationship with Kevin Spacey many on the platform prefer to forget-, Today Netflix is ​​closer to the ambitions of broadcast TV and Hollywood tank movies than to the high-flying creative series that, emulating HBO, it attempted in its beginnings as a producer of its own content.

With the film industry hit by the pandemic and besieged by shrinking windows between showings in theaters and releases on streaming platforms, stranger things exemplifies the alternative path the service chose to follow even after the loss of subscribers it recently experienced. The success of the new season of the series -according to the Nielsen ratings meter, during its opening weekend the first seven episodes exceeded 66 million minutes of viewing in the United States alone-, confirmed that path. Increasingly further away from niche content or hyper-segmentation of the public, Netflix points to success by consensus. And hand in hand with the Duffer brothers and their creatures they achieved it although, as in their fiction, that triumph comes with some sacrifices.

With an extension of almost four hours, the eighth and ninth episodes favor some repetitive sequences that, although they are in line with the attempt to make everything explicit so that the public does not miss anything of the plot, at the same time they weaken it, leaving little for the imagination of the spectators. When everything is explained in excess, the story loses the brilliance and freshness that its characters do sustain tooth and nail. In some cases, literally. The rhythm of the episodes, in fact, drives the emotions of the many battles that they must face separately, a narrative tool that this time opened three lines of the story with different degrees of success.

On the one hand, there is the action that takes place in Hawkins driven by the experiences of Max (Sadie Sink), Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin), Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo), Nancy (Natalia Dyer), Steve (Joe Keery) and Robin (Maya Hawke). , which is joined by Eddie (Joseph Quinn), the unexpected hero of the season. Between the traumas of the past, violent and inexplicable deaths and the typical experiences of adolescence, this narrative line manages to capture the viewer’s interest at all times. Sink’s performance as the disturbed and lonely Max and the bonds of friendship formed by the characters of Keery, Hawke, Quinn and Matarazzo set the stage for the best moments of the season. Some pillars that wobble a bit when the plot moves to the lost prison in the Soviet tundra in which Hopper (David Harbour) barely survives with the help of a guard who expects a financial reward for his efforts. When Joyce (Winona Ryder) and Murray (Brett Gelman) come to the rescue, fans will finally get their long-awaited romantic moment in the midst of an escape plan that goes as wrong as could be expected.

And in sentimental terms, as the story focuses on Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown), Mike (Finn Wolfhard), Will (Noah Schnapp) and Jonathan (Charlie Heaton), the season finds its heart.. The struggle of the super-powerful young woman to break with the bonds of her past typed by the sinister doctor Brenner (Matthew Modine) and the acceptance of her essence are moving, but where the script rises beyond what is expected is in the scenes in which Will he must deal with his feelings for Mike, his bond with Eleven and that feeling of “being a mistake”, that line that he slips in his confession/ask for help/loving sacrifice.

With their homage to 1980s horror movies and careful construction of their own narrative universe, this season the Duffers indulged in suspense-building by putting all of their central characters in jeopardy. As was the case with game of Thronesthe followers of stranger things They already know that no character is safe, especially if they are relatively new to the story or do not belong to the founding core of Mike, Eleven, Dustin, Will and Lucas. Thus, as the plot of the last two episodes unfolds, the tension grows each time one of the characters makes a statement that sounds like a goodbye, asserts that “this time things might not work out” or is too good to continue. live. That level of expectation and intrigue provide the impetus that the story needs to move forward and towards the fifth and final season, which, in addition to closing the story, will be a new hinge for the progress of the entire platform.