Stranger Things Season 2 Discussion

I was curious on what you Duders felt about the new season of Stranger Things. I personally really enjoyed it. The only thing I didn't care for was the whole Dart arc. It felt really dumb.

As someone that didn't watch the first season, I liked it.

@imgrifter: Dumb question by would you not watch the first season?

I liked it too I thought the show was going to pull a Twin Peaks and not be able to pull off a good second season. I want my own Dart if I wasn't afraid it would pull an ALF and eat my cats.

I thought it was great, but not quite as good as the first season. I agree that the Dart arc was kind of... weird? I don't know. It just didn't feel like it added anything to me. The only thing I flat out disliked was episode 7 and the whole Eleven/Jane and Kali arc. I thought the episode was awful as a standalone, but after all was said and done and Kali wasn't even mentioned again, it seemed even worse to me. It made an entire episode of the season feel like a total throwaway.

@bartok: Lol it wasn't what I thought it was going to be so I lost interest pretty fast. My sister asked me to watch the 2nd season with her, so now I might go back and give the 1st a fair chance

I thought it was pretty rough, and I loved season 1. It gets worse the more I think about it. So much of it felt contrived, like they didn't have anything for most of the characters to do, and no real way to connect it to the central plot. Season 1 was structured really well, with all the personal stories and plots interacting with the core premise in interesting ways. This spread itself too thin, and took too long to really get going. Stranger Things has always been super derivative, but season 1 was great because it was so well structured and paced, tonally perfect, and arguably better than most of what it is emulating. Unoriginal, but perfectly executed. Without that strong pace and structure, this season felt more like a hollow bunch of references and glaring fan service. A poor copy in the shadow of it's inspirations rather than one that surpasses it's inspirations. It's not as bad, but the dip in quality reminds me of True Detective, and I suspect the fast turnaround on this season meant they also had to rush the writing.

Will was fantastic though, definitely the highlight of the season. Kid can act. The acting in general is still fantastic. I am seriously concerned that the Duffer Brothers just didn't know what to do past the first season, and I'm definitely skeptical of season 3. It wasn't bad, don't get me wrong, it's just so mediocre.

I felt like a very reluctant fan of the first series and this season just felt a whole lot better in every regard to me.
The Chicago episode was a weak point but I didn't even hate that.

So I guess I'm all aboard for whatever happens next.

(I will admit that the Dustin/Dart arc at the beginning was way dumb but I honestly think that the movies this show riffs off of has a lot of characters doing dumb shit that people look past, so I'm kinda willing to give it a pass)

This season will probably be looked back on as the calm before the storm from all the not so subtle X-men references. Despite everyone's lives being hunky dory at the moment, shit's likely about to hit the fan....and there's still one major sci-fi trope of the 80's they haven't touched on yet which would work really well with concept of the Upside Down.

Get ready for...

Dark Phoenix meets Days of Future Past/Terminator

Yeah they had no idea what to do to with 11 this season. I like the idea of there being other psychic kids and Matthew Modine possibly still being alive but ultimately it all went nowhere. Maybe they can develop it more for season 3 but who knows?

Also did everyone else assume Paul Reiser was going to be evil because he played such a prick in Aliens? Glad they didn't go with the obvious.

So far this season feels rote and rehashing. And things are being dragged out and no one's doing anything. And obvious baby Demogorgon and idiot Dustin. And shoehorned in random girl. Granted I'm only on episode 4 so they'll pull things together. Feel they're putting Will through some shit for no reason. Winona has to play hand waving traumatized mother yet again *sigh*

Also I may be forgetting how hard they leaned on it in the first season but hoooo boy they're leaning on nostalgia something heavy this season. Yeah Ghostbusters WHOO.

It should have just stuck to one contained standalone season

I also must be lost on the plot but Hopper seems to be in cahoots with Paul Reiser's character Dr Owens (sorry bad w/ character names) pretty strongly, like he's helping him out but on on the condition that he doesn't fuck with his town? Supposedly their job now is to try to CONTAIN the upside down dimension? I'll admit being lost on a simple plot and being an idiot so this probably renders every single one of my critiques moot. Meh.

By the end I quite liked it more than the first season. There are great things I prefer about the first season (the kids investigating and Hopper coming around), but the last two episodes are higher highs for me.

Also, motherufuckin Steve. Best character this season. What a great turrnout for what seemed like the obvious douchebag character, both by the end of the last season and here when he happens to be on babysitting/monter hunting duty. For the record, Hopper was my "best character" of last season.

Such a cute ending too.

I could see whatever came out of Will making its way into racist stepbrother, and him being the villain of season 3, before his dad becomes the real villain alongside that trace of the mind flayer.

I disagree, 11's arc felt the most fleshed out this season and it absolutely did go somewhere, it served as set up for not one, but two probable storylines.

Eight was clearly inspired by Mastermind of the Hellfire Club and the channeling of El's anger implies she's gonna go apeshit sooner or later in yet another reference to Dark Phoenix which began back in the first episode of the series with the mention of X-men #134. The Upside Down is going to be unleashed on Hawkins and her rage will be the cause....most likely after Hopper is killed somehow. Not to mention the expected road trip she went on this season after discovering her mother's whereabouts, and the revelation she too seemed to possess telepathic powers which might lead to a way out of the mess that's about to drop on them if they keep on with the X-men influences. That second part's a huge maybe though.

Also, Modine's most likely dead. Remember when we saw him in episode seven it was just Eight messing with El's head. I think they'll bring some form of time travel in near the end however so I doubt we've seen the last of him.

I loved it, but I totally agree that they kinda dropped the ball with Eleven and especially the episode focusing on her and Kal. I didn't hate it, but I was glad it was over. I guess the immediate goal of that little arc was to give her a power up? But they couldn't think of anything else? I dunno, it was definitely awkward.

My only other gripes are pretty minor. The 'demidogs' was never funny but ooooh boy did they stretch the life out of it. Also, as much as I appreciated that one guy getting Nancy and Jon together, it felt more than a little forced in like the worst way possible.

That's about it though. Everything else, I loved. All the new characters were great additions. Was kinda worried Will wouldn't be able to hang with the others in terms of acting ability simply because we got so little of him in season 1, but he fuckin killed it. I don't really think we needed Steve Harrington 2.0, but he did great with what he was given. Speaking of Steve, I love what they did what the character. It would have been so easy to make him the jealous asshole, but he keeps getting more and more likable. His and Dustin's big brother/little brother relationship by the end is charming as all hell and easily one of my favorite aspects of this new season. Sean Astin was another standout for me too. Thought he was just gonna be the butt of every joke, but that lasts like maybe the first episode, then he quickly becomes impossible not to love as the genuine nice guy.

I was worried at first that it wouldn't be able to live up to season 1, but ultimately I think it did. Season 1 was more...magical, I guess? Because it was fresh and new, but season 2 was a fine addition.

The 2nd season reminds me of the writing in new game of thrones. A lot of unnecessary stuff going. Talking for the sake of talking. Season 1 was pretty great. Im only on episode 6 or 7, i binge watched up to that point but broke away from it for days now.

Loved the 2nd season. Thought it built more meaningful relationships than anything season 1 did.

Outside of the episode with 11 in Chicago I thought the show felt a lot more focused. Steve quickly became one of my favorite characters this season especially with the Stand by Me moment on the train tracks with Dustin.

However Bob the Brain is the true hero this season. Nothing good ever happens to the guy who turns the power back on.

I really dig the second season as I felt the show turning into Resident Evil. I just want the show to delve into more weirdness and Cthuluian horror. Man, I am playing too much Arkham Horror right now.

I think the second season was a bit of a letdown compared to the first. The first season was a great original scifi/horror/mystery; while the second season was more of a campy 80's scary movie for kids that was more filler content than anything.

I liked season 1 a lot, but season 2 felt like more of the same, more heavily reliant on nostalgia. I only watched episode 1 before giving up, because for me bad writing=bad writing and getting "hooked" by plot points is nonsense. Hope to be proven wrong but for now don't plan to watch the rest.

It was alright. I really loved season 1 and some parts of this season, especially in the early going, hit those same marks for me. I enjoyed all the scenes between Eleven and Hopper a lot, just two great actors and characters feeding off each other in a really compelling way. It really blows my mind sometimes how good these kids are as actors. I'm someone who's pretty sensitive to bad child actors but every kid in this series is so good. I was a little skeptical of Will since he wasn't in season 1 much at all but he had maybe the best performance of the whole season.

However, the last few episodes lost my interest a bit and started to feel like a retread of season 1. On top of that, as other people have pointed out, the Dustin/Dart storyline was frustratingly stupid and made no sense. And episode 7 was one of the worst episodes of an otherwise good show that I've ever seen. I have no idea what they were thinking there but none of it worked at all. The show is at its best when it's just the kids in Hawkins. When it expands its scope too much, it starts to fall apart and I definitely don't want this show to turn into some superhero shit.

I don't know how to feel about a season 3 (or a season 4, which is apparently also planned). It seems like the series would have been better off as an anthology because two seasons in, the ideas are already clearly wearing thin.

The show's all about 80's nostalgia/references, the Dustin/Dart bits were tapping in on Gremlins and all of the goofy pet monster stories back in the day, and there needed to be a stark contrast with episode seven given it was set in the city rather than small town America, it brought a dark welcome to the jungle vibe a lot of stuff from that era did when moving away from a rural or suburban setting. Since it was such a huge shift that's probably why this season had an extra chapter, but just think of it as an issue of Wolverine you needed to read between installments of Uncanny which had a pretty different tone.

Thought it was a little worse than the first season, but I still really enjoyed it. For a show with an already large cast, introducing so many new players felt like a strange choice; not only did we not get to see much of some of the first seasons minor characters (the science teacher, for one), but I felt like the main cast didn't get as much time either. Spread a little too thin, I think. I liked some of the new folks (RIP Bob, although honestly, who didn't see that coming from a mile away), but I think I just would have preferred getting to see more of the main cast interacting with each other, like the arcs between Dustin and Steve, or Eleven and Hopper.

I was a little frustrated with the Chicago episode, but I think that's mainly because the interaction Eleven had with Kali didn't feel necessary, at least in this season. Their arc is clearly going to be an important part of the next season, but I just don't think it needed to happen here. I think season 2 would have been better off if Eleven was...you know, in it. Taking her so completely out of the picture for a whole episode felt like a bad choice, and I think whatever was gained in that episode doesn't come close to making up for what was lost with Eleven's absence.

And yes, they need to give Ryder something else to do. For the love of all that is holy, don't let Will be in trouble again next season. Give that woman something to play other than the distraught mother.

I liked it a lot. Fell asleep during the Chicago episode for about half of it and didn't regret it or feel like I missed anything at all. Girlfriend explained what happened to me during the episode. First season was still better, but it was fresh and magical then. I thought the ending of this season was great. Bob the Brain was great, but what happened with him was horribly contrived. You're telling me that there was a dog in that room the whole time, and it only attacked after Bob had shut the door on the one that was chasing him? When there were other people in that room the whole time? Okay, suuuuuure. Pardon me while I roll my eyes at his fate.

Regarding episode 7, I really, truly think netflix should swap it's place with episode 8. It doesn't fix it, but it fits the pacing of the show better.

Did anyone else think it was super lame that (episode 8 spoilers) the demodogs were just dog monsters? They never dimension hop, which was the creepiest thing about the demogorgon, and they end up just being super generic as a result. Not to mention they die so easily that the greater numbers just don't make them as scary as a single demogorgon. A bunch of demodogs jumping between dimensions to take out the facility would have been much more tense and interesting than what we got. Also the hive mind/all the demodogs dying with the gate destroyed is kinda lame.

Another great season looking forward to see what they do with the next one. The nostalgia is strong especially if you lived through the 80's it's almost painful I long for the 80's and 90's badly.

It was alright, not great. The thing that intrigued me in the first season was the mystery, you take that away and you just have the characters, which are likable. (with the exception of the super bro, who may or may not be racist, but that's okay he's got daddy issues!) But I just dont find them that interesting.

They should have done it anthology style, or even just a whole new thing with the same characters, nearly all of the weakness in this came from trying to extend the 1st series plot. It just seemed loose unfocused and aimless until the last episodes, they also went back on a lot of the realistic relationship stuff that was refreshing about the first series, especially with the Nancy/Jonathon/Steve stuff.

I enjoyed it but I do think it was weaker than season 1. It felt like everything was a little too convenient and undeserved. No one was ever in any real danger, someone would suddenly think up an obscure solution to their current problem and it would miraculously work perfectly. I also thought it was a little predictable this time around.

Episode 7 was embarrassingly bad though. I don’t even care that it was a standalone episode and took us away from the action, I actually like all the Eleven backstory and the scenes with the mother were fine. My problem with it were the god awful lame cartoon character punks they shoehorned into the show. A group of wacky outcasts who go around hunting down and killing bad guys is something I would expect from a shitty comic book. I don’t hate the idea of more superpowered kids and Eight’s ability is cool but the character itself was terrible. I seriously hope they never mention them again.

The first season I liked, had the atmosphere and took a little. The second season is terrible boredom, predictable situations and a lot of boredom. Boredom, boredom and boredom again

I loved the Steve/Dustin stories the most. The whole Dart thing was really stupid, but I think Dustin is probably the best of the child actors on the show and a fan favorite, so they probably just had to shoehorn more of him in there this season.

Its dumb, but honestly my biggest issue with the season was the "feud" between Billy and Steve. Who in gods name told Billy that Steve was "King Steve"? I mean so far in two years, Steve has gotten his ass kicked brutally twice, seems to be afraid of his freckled, idiot former best friend, has been basically cheated on, sucks at sports, and his only friends are 12 year olds. Who went to a high school where this guy would have been "King"?

I didn't like the punks, either, but the episode at least sharpened El's character in the sense that she's damaged, not broken, and not willing use her powers to kill. And it helps her realize who her true "family" is, and it's not a bunch of stereotypical 80s punks.

Steve's popularity and the "King" moniker was likely built on the foundation of his family being wealthy, also just because he had a falling out with his jerk friends doesn't mean he lost his status at school because I'm sure it was clear to a lot of folks that the people he was hanging out with were jerks. In fact, him dating Nancy probably improved his reputation even with the nasty rumors spread about her last season. As far as "his only friends being 12 year olds", he didn't fall into the "babysitter" role until l midway though this season and it wasn't apparent to Billy until the very end.

@shiftygism: I get ya, but imo the show NEVER showed him as being particularly cool. He had a party at his house, and four people showed up. He was never shown with any friends other than Tommy, who threatened him to submission and is still mocking him a year later. I know that I went to a VERY clique-ish high school, but if half the stuff that happened to Steve happened to the "king" where I came from, there would have been no coming back for his reputation. Also let it be said, Steve may be my favorite character.

Finished it today and came off disappointed. I like the way it started with a lot of character moments and what felt like more of a deliberate pacing but there wasn't momentum leading up to the end of the season and I just didn't care about anything that was happening by the end. I liked Max, Lucas, Dustin and Steve this season but wished Will was still missing. lol Eleven annoyed me too and Mike wasn't much better. Billy really sucked too.

There are a lot good shows out there I want to get into and I'm ready and happy to drop shows I'm not feeling so consider this show dropped by me.

Good season overall, but lacking the sense of mystery that made the first so good (by necessity really, as we already have some idea what is going on with the Upside Down etc.)

I'd've excised Billy though - he was just a one-dimension antagonist who added nothing to the series (you could probably just straight cut all of his scenes, change nothing else, and still have a better show). I'd also have dropped the standalone episode - the new characters were dumb caricatures that weren't interesting, it killed the pacing and momentum that had been built up, and the arc of Eleven finding her true place in life could have been done without it. Trimming the run time down by one and a half to two episodes probably would have helped the pacing too.

I'm also not sure about the Dustin/Dart story - it felt out of character for Dustin when it was so obvious to what Dart was connected.

Be interesting to see if Bob comes up again in the next season. Definitely played as being a friendly face, but I felt like he was deliberately trying to be TOO nice, and that he suddenly seemed to know too much in the lab. Didn't come to pass, but I was expecting him to be revealed as a plant to monitor Joyce/Will (then again, I also felt the same about Eleven's mother's friend -- that she was there to keep an eye on her -- so maybe I'm just overly suspicious :p).

Love what they did with Steve though - the way he just rolls with what Dustin tells him, and how he morphs into a sort of pseudo-babysitter role is pretty great.

I really liked it. I know that most people are complaining about episode seven, but I felt that Eleven did need her own episode and some character growth, plus it could be setting up stuff for Season 3.

I think you're trying to make people buy clothes from you?

edit: nice to see him being removed :)

Billy might've not had much to do this season, but just like Eight and her crew, their introduction laid the groundwork of what's to come. You need to have characters brought into the mix organically and not just when the plot requires it.

I was kinda surprised when I saw the reaction to the sister episode after I finished watching the season. I thought that episode was great because it was so different and added some new characters.

I kinda feel that some of the negative reaction to episode 7 is because people don't want to acknowledge that the 80s wasn't a simpler time, full of idyllic suburban life. That golden age ever only existed in movies and tv.

Showing a darker side to the 80s is perfectly fine with me. The only complaint I have is that it disrupted the flow of the show. I would rather have had eleven remain MIA until next season and move the lost sister episode to the beginning of season 3.

That way you could have all the other characters solve season 2's problems without relying on eleven's superpowers(again). Which would set season 3 up to bring eleven back to confront the giant shadow monster.

@qrowdyy: I felt like people mostly cricitized that episode because it felt like an episode solely meant to 'power up' eleven. Also, when the season opens with a shot of all these characters, you expect them to be a vital part of the season, but instead only Kali was effectively used for 1 episode. They give her crew all these traits (the big kind one, the on-edge punk, the near-crazy lady) and then do nothing with them. To be fair, season 3 can use that eventually.

I initially thought that we were going to meet #1 till 11 in this season or something, and that Max & Billy were all related to Eleven in that way. Especially as Billy said that they were stuck in Hawkins and that Max wasn't his sister.

Really enjoyed this season, not as much as the first one but it's still really solid despite it's flaws. My two biggest problems with this one were the Demodogs and the Episode 7.

Don't get me wrong, I like the Demodogs, it made for some great intense moments on the last episodes, the whole part when they were escaping the lab had some bits reminiscent of old school horror movies but the problem is that they were just dogs. There was nothing special about them, they were the most generic "horde-of-small-enemies-that-are-tough-but-only-smart-when-convinient-and-can-be-outrunned-or-shot-down" made to kill a bunch of random people and one or two relevant characters. I know the show is full of clichés but this was the most blatant one. In the end it was disappointing that there was nothing more for them and the actual "real deal" was teased for another season. But other than that they were still somewhat nice as I said previously.

[episode seven rant]

Now, my biggest problem, the one others already mentioned, was Episode 7. Oh boy, I really hated episode 7 and everything the episode implied. It was bad in so many ways. It seemed like a lost episode from a completely different show. Even the soundtrack and the cinematography didn't have the 80s style and they completely missed the opportunity to make a grimy 80s city. The whole thing also feels like a cheap Marvel knock-off instead of feeling like something inspired by Spielberg and Stephen King like the rest of the show. Apparently the episode was in charge of a different person, instead of the people who directed the other episodes, so I guess that's part of the reason. Overall this episode feels like if they decided to do a pilot for a spin-off in the worst timing possible.

The thing is, the actual concept of episode seven is not that bad. The idea of Eleven discovering the real world outside of Hawkins is interesting. The part of other children with powers I think it's extremely dumb but it could work if it was better developed. To me it would make way more sense for the show if all of the other children prior to Eleven died since they were failed experiments. But even though it has a somewhat good concept, it has an horrible conception. Besides the things I already mentioned, there's also the irrelevant caricature/one-sided/cliché characters and the most basic plot that contributes nothing to the overall story of the season or even for Eleven's arc.

They could completely remove this episode from the show and remove the related flashbacks at the end and the story would stay exactly the same, because literally nothing changed. They could've made Eleven find her mom and what happened to her and then she would use her powers to spy on Mike (it was already established that she spies on Mike constantly) and once she saw Mike and the Hopper were in danger, she would leave her mom and return to Hawkins. She doesn't need a sister to tell her that feelings make her more powerful, just let that happen naturally like in the first season. Make the ending have Hopper in danger next to her on that cave, she gets reminded of how he was like a good father to her, using those feelings to protect him and close the portal.

[end of episode seven rant]

Regarding some other minor things, I think Billy was annoying, but I have to acknowledge that he was written so everyone would dislike him, so I guess they did their job right? He wasn't really that important other than to establish Max as a character and to make Steve more relatable, but since this is a show that likes to grab tropes from 80s cinema I think it kinda makes sense to have him since a lot of movies from that era had that annoying jock always wanting to pick fights. He was kinda like Steve was on the first season but taken to an extreme, less relevant and more one-dimensional.

Speaking of Steve, he went from being one of my least favorite characters to one of my favorites. Every scene with him and Dustin were great.

Also, the whole Barb sub-plot felt like it was written only to please to the annoying "Justice For Barb" fandom;

I felt like the whole Kali thing was completely throwaway, and I hope they don't revisit it in season 3. A cast of kids each with their own unique abilities is not what I want from this show. It's fine just the way it is with Elle being the only special one and her relationship within the group. Perhaps that alone can't sustain itself so maybe they should think about wrapping it up.

They are wrapping it up, it's supposedly only gonna be four seasons (for this story at least), they know where its headed, so I'm sure Kali, Billy, and the whole standalone episode will prove important when it's all said and done.

I thought this season was great.

A little surprised at some of the comments about episode 7. Cool not to like it but saying that it does nothing for 11's character seems strange to me. I think that episode firmly establishes who 11 is morally and solidify's the nature and character of her relationships with other characters. Kal is who she could have been under different circumstances and the audience needed to see what 11 would do give the chance (a real chance) to live out that revenge.

It was pretty good, could have been amazing if a couple of episodes were shaved off. I also felt that the 4 lead boys were less likeable this time round, or maybe it's just that the limelight was stolen by the side characters like Steve or Hopper.

Oh and does Jonathan Byers remind anyone else of the grinch?

I can see that.

He reminds me of Stephen Geoffreys of Fright Night fame though.