Love it or hate it, I’m here to share my thoughts on Netflix’s Stranger Things.

First off, though I was a toddler the year season one is set, I adored the ’80s-era setting and the show allowed me to experience a time that was simpler, less distracted, and filled with wonder—something I don’t think any of us have truly experienced since the mid-’90s. But on to the show itself.

The opening scene delivers that fantastic ’80s horror-film vibe that hasn’t been successfully captured since A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Child in ‘89. (Also, how cool was that cameo…and was I the only one getting serious Silence of the Lambs vibes when Nancy and Robin visit Victor Creel in Pennhurst Psychiatric Hospital?)

After the brief glimpse of what the monster stalking Hawkins Lab is capable of, the scene shifts to the kids: Mike, Will, Lucas, and Dustin playing Dungeons & Dragons. I know from personal experience how much the game can mean to those who play. It’s never about winning; it’s about friendship, connection, storytelling, theatrical flair, and sometimes having a place to belong when you don’t quite fit anywhere else. The fact that the Duffer Brothers didn’t just include the game but wove it directly into the story, using it as a narrative framework, was incredibly meaningful for long-time players.

But just as we’re settling into that simplicity, there’s the Vanishing of Will Byers. And without a doubt, you can feel the inexperienced small-town being rocked to its core. It’s not hard to imagine Will Byers on lunchroom milk cartons or featured on America’s Most Wanted. It happened repeatedly and was often misattributed to the occult, feeding right into satanic panic… but I digress.

Winona Ryder…there could not be a more perfect choice to play Joyce Byers, and she brought exactly the right mix of fear, anger, and hysteria to the role, making the character completely believable. Alongside her is Charlie Heaton as Jonathan, Will’s brother, a character clearly inspired by John Connor. (And Linda Hamilton’s cameo in season five…absolute perfection.)

With Will still missing and no real leads, we’re introduced to Eleven—a strange little girl at the very least, a genetically altered superhuman at most. The Duffer Brothers did an excellent job keeping us guessing from the start, building the idea that the boys’ new friend might be a science experiment, a monster, a key, an answer…

Every character introduced filled their role and nailed the era, whether you liked them or not. They felt real. Hopper’s self-loathing, Nancy’s restless ambition, Mike’s fear of losing Eleven, Billy’s displaced aggression—it was all painfully real, and we’ve all known at least one of those people.

But the icing on the cake, the cherry on top…Jamie Campbell Bower as Henry Creel, Vecna, and Mr. Watsit. He embodied every single character he was asked to perform, and he did it with utter perfection. First, I believe the Duffer brothers gave him the framework of a marvelous villain, a misunderstood child, and eventual BBEG (big bad evil guy in the D&D world) who has no clue he’s evil. While Bower had many amazing lines, my absolute favorite is when he tells Eleven he didn’t trick her…he saved her. Bower’s confusion and stance, and voice thrust that scene to perfection. But alas, this isn’t a love letter to the acting skill of one Jamie Campbell Bower, but instead a review of the show as a whole.

You see, humans are a unique type of pest, multiplying and poisoning our world, all while enforcing a structure of their own. A deeply unnatural structure. Where others saw order, I saw a straitjacket. A cruel, oppressive world dictated by made-up rules. Seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, decades. Each life a faded, lesser copy of the one before. Wake up, eat, work, sleep, reproduce, and die. Everyone is just waiting. Waiting for it all to be over.–Henry Creel 001

As the seasons of Stranger Things progress, we begin to see the connection between what’s special to the kids (Dungeons & Dragons) and Mr. Clarke’s science lessons, to what’s happening in the Hawkins Lab, Will, Eleven, and the Upside Down. Slowly, it becomes clear that the narrative is far bigger than we ever imagined, and in the end, I’ll admit, it made my nerdy little heart happy to see science underpinning it all.

With just five seasons spread over a decade, the Duffer Brothers opened the door not only to Dungeons & Dragons but to theoretical physics itself. How many kids and teens finished the final season and immediately Googled exotic matter, wormholes, alternate dimensions, and the Einstein–Rosen bridge?

There’s a clear divide between those who love the show and those who hate it or even just that final season. If you’ve been following, you know all the theories, you’ve read all the hate, but for me, it tapped into everything that we Gen Xers and Millennials are missing: simplicity, lazy summers, and boundless freedom, and I can’t help but love it.

Stranger Things is a Netflix sci-fi horror series by the Duffer Brothers, set in the 1980s small town of Hawkins, Indiana, focusing on kids and teens battling supernatural forces from a parallel dimension called the “Upside Down,” featuring 80s nostalgia, government conspiracies, and creatures like the Demogorgon. Stranger Things is rated TV-14 for intense violence, frightening scenes, strong language, and mature themes.

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