Stranger Things season 5
"Some minds, it turns out, simply do not belong in this world. They belong in mine." - Vecna
release year: 2025
genre: TV drama/sci-fi (8 episodes)
viewing setting: home streaming 12/28-31/25
synopsis: The time has come for the final battle with the evil things that lurk in the Upside Down.
impressions: And here we have it: after a three-year span, the fifth and final season has arrived. This one deals with all of the survivors' efforts to find and destroy the evil responsible for all the bad things that have happened. It kicks into high gear right away, showing how all the various people have banded together with structure and purpose and teamwork; virtually everyone contributes something. There is also a much larger government/military element which has quarantined the town, set up a base in the parallel world, and is still up to no good (not to mention being led by a truly unlikeable person.) As always with this series, the houses, cars, clothes, and music are right out of that period of the 1980s, which is fun. A gripe: several times, characters on critical missions with short timeframes waste a lot of time talking and arguing. Also of note, this entire season seems to happen within a relatively short timespan - one or two days. All in all, I thought this was a good ending to the series, with a suitably complex final battle and then all the "what happened next in the normal world?" type things.
acting: As always, I won't re-hash the returning actors. The notable new ones are Nell Fisher as Holly, a younger sister who's now old enough to walk and talk...and Linda Hamilton as the general/scientist in charge of the military element. She's as nasty and unlikeable here as she was in Terminator: Dark Fate and I didn't like her at all (which I guess means she did a good job as a villain, but really, is this how she wants to be remembered?)
final word: Good ending chapter to a 5-season series that took 10 years to make,.
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