Beware, contains minor spoilers.
Today I will be talking to you about Stranger Things which is a Netflix show that was released in July of 2016. I will be going in depth about why I feel like this show is important to others; I will also be going in depth about the background of the show and what it is based off of.
Stranger Things takes place in the fictional town of Hawkins, Indiana in the year 1983 which is based on a place in Montauk, New York, where there were rumours that government spies were doing human experiments to help them win the cold war. Eleven, who is one of the protagonists in the show, is a victim of these sort of experiments which gave her telekinetic powers and she uses these powers to her advantage and escapes from her experimenters. Lets keep in mind that at this point in the show, she does not have full control over her powers. She runs away from Hawkins Laboratory, which is the lab she was tested in, because she accidentally opened a gateway to an alternate dimension known as the upside down. The upside down is a dimension that is parallel to our world; but it is not populated by any human life. At least, none that we know of. But instead of being populated by billions of people, it is populated by millions of supernatural creatures, named after mythical creatures from the game Dungeons and Dragons, who try to breach into our world and assert dominance and it’s up to the protagonists to prevent that from happening. These protagonists are Eleven, Mike Wheeler, Lucas Sinclair, Dustin Henderson and Will Byers.
As of when I am writing this review for you all, the only known creatures that inhabit the upside down are Demogorgons, which are humanoid creatures with a petal mouth that opens up to several rows of teeth that are about 8 or 9 feet tall, and the Mind Flayer; the Mind Flayer is like the queen or king of the upside down, a shadow like creature with unknown abilities the stands at about 40 feet in height.
So as I mentioned previously, Stranger Things is based on a true story; Stranger Things is based on a conspiracy theory called the Montauk project which was said to have taken place in Camp Hero which is what Hawkins Lab is based off. The Montauk project alleges that there were a series of secret US government projects and experiments at Camp Hero for the purpose of developing psychological warfare techniques and exotic research including time travel and mind control; it was similar exotic experiments to this that gave Eleven her telekinetic powers. There were rumours that children were disappearing from the towns around Camp Hero due to the government conducting these experiments to make these kidnapped children spies loyal to the US under the influence of mind control to give them the upper hand in the cold war; these children are who Eleven is based off of in the show. There were also rumours the Camp Hero radar tower had managed to communicate with other dimensions like the upside down.
I feel like this show has a huge, positive impact on its viewers. It’s this impact that the show influences that I feel like is important in terms of the show because of how much people in the Stranger Things community can relate to the characters because even though they go on unusual adventures hopping between different dimensions, they all have regular backgrounds which some people can relate to and they can understand what the characters are going through. For example: Lucas was being bullied in season 1 because of the colour of his skin, Will was experiencing a type of ptsd in season 2 due to him being in the upside down for all of season 1, Max was being abused and thrown around by her older step brother Billy in season 2, and we find out in season 3 that Billy became the bully that he was because an abusive childhood with his father. These are very real situations in our everyday life that people experience: racism, ptsd, abusive relationships and I think that it is really helpful to the community to show that no one has a perfect life and that anyone can be affected by these situations at any point in life and I just feel like that is a really important message to get behind and I feel like as well as most of the show, this message was executed really well.
The only negative thing I have to say about this show is that I didn’t really enjoy the episode: The Lost Sister. I disliked this episode because of how out of place it felt compared to the rest of the show; I just felt like this episode didn’t have the same sort of vibe as the other episodes give. This episode is about Eleven finding out that she wasn’t the only one who escaped Hawkins Lab and that she wasn’t the only one with telekinetic powers. I felt like this episode was out of place because of how rushed this part of Eleven’s story felt. It was more filler than anything else, just to keep Eleven out of Hawkins long enough for something bad to happen. I would say the only good thing about this episode is that Eleven properly managed to control her powers in time for the final battle.
Personally, I think that this problem could have been solved if they had expanded this story arc over 1 or 2 more episodes just to clear up any questions that may have been asked, instead of everything being crammed into an hour long episode; I really enjoyed the concept of this episode, but the execution wasn’t that great.
I am looking forward to watching the upcoming seasons 4 and 5 of Stranger Things and I hope they are as enjoyable as these past three seasons have been. I went into this show not knowing anything about it; normally I would watch the trailers before I watch the shows or films, but I went into this show blindfolded and it delivered.
By Trey Mitchell-Andrews
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