Stranger Things Season 4 Part 2 Review 🔥🧇

Since Season 5 is releasing soon in 3 parts, I thought I’d re-tackle the first 4 seasons to ride the hype.

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🎞️ Let’s start by showing y’all the trailers, shall we?

Stranger Things 4 | Volume 2 Trailer

Also here’s the iconic opening theme.

Since season 5 has officially arrived, I decided to revisit the previous 4 seasons going through each season 5 parts come out, so come with me and take this ride down nostalgia train.

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📖 Non-Spoiler Plot Overview:

The gang’s still split. Hopper (David Harbour) and Joyce (Winona Ryder) are trapped in Soviet Russia, fighting demogorgons in the most metal prison on Earth. Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) gets her powers back, but she’s hundreds of miles away and has to go full Professor X in a pizza freezer tub. Meanwhile, back in Hawkins, Max (Sadie Sink) volunteers as Vecna bait, Nancy (Natalia Dyer), Robin (Maya Hawke), and Steve (Joe Keery) gear up for war, and Eddie Munson (Joseph Quinn) gets one last chance to rewrite his legacy.

Part 2 dials everything up — the runtime, the tension, the emotional punches, the deaths. These last two episodes don’t just feel like a finale; they are a finale. And they hit hard.


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🎭 Character Rundown:

Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) – Returns to full psychic strength and battles Vecna across minds and memories.

Mike Wheeler (Finn Wolfhard) – Still trying to understand Eleven, but let’s be honest, mostly just stands there.

Will Byers (Noah Schnapp) – Finally cracks emotionally, gives the best monologue of the season.

Max Mayfield (Sadie Sink) – The real MVP. Her scenes with Vecna are absolutely heartbreaking.

Lucas Sinclair (Caleb McLaughlin) – Steps up big time. His fight with the jock is surprisingly raw.

Erica Sinclair (Priah Ferguson) – Icon. That’s it. That’s the sentence.

Eddie Munson (Joseph Quinn) – My new favorite. From dungeon master to legend.

Steve Harrington (Joe Keery) – Once again proves why he’s a fan favorite.

Robin Buckley (Maya Hawke) – Still my fave, quirky chaos and all.

Nancy Wheeler (Natalia Dyer) – Brings the fire (literally), plus shotgun justice.

Hopper (David Harbour) – Sword vs. demogorgon. Yeah, you read that right.

Joyce Byers (Winona Ryder) – Still risking everything to bring her family together.

Murray Bauman (Brett Gelman) – Flamethrower MVP.

Enzo (Tom Wlaschiha) – The Russian guard turned ally, and yes, I first saw him as Jaqen H’ghar in Game of Thrones. A man is now a hero.

Easily one of the standout new faces in Season 4, Enzo is this bizarre cocktail of absurd and likable. On paper, his arc doesn’t make much sense: five days ago he was desperate to escape the gulag, and then suddenly he’s ready to go back because Hopper and Joyce — two nutjob Americans he barely knows — told him there are monsters. Like, dude, you were all about escaping the gulag yesterday. Now five minutes after hearing “Demogorgons are real,” you’re saying, “Why didn’t you just say so? We need to go back and stop them.” It’s completely illogical, but somehow that’s what makes him fun. Enzo doesn’t drag his feet with disbelief; he just accepts the insane and runs with it. He’s brave, decisive, and oddly loyal, and that quick acceptance — even if absurd — keeps the story moving. He might be ridiculous, but he’s the kind of ridiculous that makes him instantly likable.

⭐ Where My Interest in the Characters Shifted (Season 4 Is Where It Happened) 🙃

Season 4 is officially the moment where my emotional investment completely flipped.
Up until Season 3, I was still attached to the “kids on bikes” energy of Mike, Will, Dustin, Lucas, and Eleven.
But Season 4 changed the entire DNA of the show — and honestly, it changed who I cared about.

Because here’s the truth:

I don’t care about the kids anymore.

Not the way I used to.

And before anyone comes for my throat, let me explain — because the writing is the problem, not me.


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🧃 Mike Wheeler (fell off a cliff)

Mike went from the emotional leader of the group to…
someone who just stands there and whines.
He peaked in Season 1, and somehow every season after chipped away more personality.
By Season 4 he was giving speeches like the script was taped to his forehead.


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😭 Will Byers (the human bowl-cut)

Will used to be tragic and compelling.
Now?
He just stares, cries, and says he “feels something” without ever actually saying it.
Will didn’t grow — he stagnated.


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🧢 Dustin Henderson (he’s there… that’s it)

Dustin is still likable, but the magic is gone.
He doesn’t drive anything anymore.
He’s comic relief and exposition.
Solid, but no longer special.


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🏀 Lucas Sinclair (Season 4 did him dirty)

Lucas lost the charm he had earlier.
His whole “I joined basketball now” arc didn’t add anything — it just disconnected him from the group and made him feel like a side character to his own story.


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⭐ So who DO I care about now?

Season 4 made it very clear who the show really cares about.
And those characters happen to be the ones I’m invested in:

Hopper — The emotional backbone of the entire show.

Joyce — The only person who acts like she actually sees the apocalypse happening.

Nancy — One of the only characters who grows every single season.

Steve — The accidental main character and heart of the series.

Robin — Chaotic, anxious, hilarious, and actually written like a human.

Eleven — Still compelling because she IS the mythology.

Vecna — Because I love good villains, and he’s the perfect dark mirror to Eleven.

This is the cast that carries the emotional weight now.
These are the characters with actual arcs.
These are the characters the show bothered to evolve.


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🔥 Why Vecna Works (And Why He Overshadows the Kids)

Vecna is terrifying because he’s not just a monster — he’s a character with trauma, motive, and intelligence.
He’s literally the dark counterpart to Eleven:

same lab

same powers

same upbringing

same trauma

different worldview


He embodies everything the show has been building toward.
He’s compelling in a way the kids simply… aren’t anymore.


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🎭 Season 4 Shifted the Tone Permanently

Stranger Things stopped being a story about childhood adventure and became a story about:

trauma

guilt

manipulation

psychic warfare

the birth of evil

the collapse of innocence


The show grew up —
but the kid characters didn’t.

Season 4 is where it officially clicked for me:

My investment is in Hopper, Joyce, Nancy, Robin, Steve, Vecna, and Eleven.
Not the original kid group.

And that’s not on me —
that’s on the writing.


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⏳ Pacing / Episode Flow:

Episode 8: 1 hour, 25 minutes

Episode 9: 2 hours, 30 minutes


This is not TV anymore. It’s cinema. And these two episodes waste none of that runtime.


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✅ Pros:

These final two episodes are basically movies — long, cinematic, emotionally explosive.

Robin is still my favorite, but Eddie Munson absolutely stole the show.

The action, visuals, and editing were top-tier. No expense spared.

Enzo was a surprise favorite — I was sure he was gonna die, but nope, he made it out. MVP move.

The story threads from Season 1 to now finally start to connect. The lore is wild.

That ending shot? Hawkins is literally bleeding into the Upside Down. Epic.



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❌ Cons:

I don’t care much for Episodes 1–6. The magic didn’t fully click for me until Episode 7.

Mike and Eleven’s romance still feels off, forced, and awkward.

Still no real answer to how Papa survived. I guess plot armor is back in style.

The jocks were dumb on a biblical level.

Argyle is still not my favorite.

Some effects still looks like it came from the PS3 era in scenes that deserve better.

Vecna to me isn’t scary, here’s full details on why in case u forgot from my Part 1 review.

Con – Vecna’s Voice Modulation Feels Unnecessary:
One of the biggest missed opportunities in Part 2 even Part 1 is how over-modulated Vecna’s voice is. Yes, it’s meant to sound deep and demonic — but it ends up feeling like generic monster filter #3 rather than something uniquely terrifying. What makes this even more baffling is that Jamie Campbell Bower already has an incredibly chilling natural voice. The man played young Grindelwald in the Harry Potter franchise and left a lasting impression without saying a single word. His real voice, when allowed to shine in interviews or behind-the-scenes footage, already has that eerie, calculated menace. So why bury it under layers of audio distortion? If anything, the modulation undercuts the performance. Sometimes the scariest villains are the ones that sound too human, not like they’re phoning in threats from inside a malfunctioning washing machine.

Con – Vecna’s Design Isn’t Scary (And He Talks Too Much):
Here’s the thing: I’ve seen way too many horror films, monsters, games, and practical effects to fall for this. Before Season 4 aired, Vecna was hyped up as this terrifying new villain — a return to practical horror, a nightmarish figure to rival the Demogorgon and Mind Flayer. But when I actually saw him? The guy looked like a barely-toasted burn victim with a hot glue gun’s worth of vines stuck to his body and no nose. Ooooo, spooky? He’s basically Voldermort dipped in Nickelodeon slime. His design isn’t bad per se — just not groundbreaking. It’s hard to fear something that looks like a rejected Silent Hill boss covered in roots from Home Depot.

And while we’re at it — he talks way too much. The most unsettling horror villains are usually the ones who don’t say a word (unless you’re Pennywise — then go off, king). Silence equals unpredictability. Silence equals fear. But Vecna monologues like he’s auditioning for a Shakespeare in the Upside Down festival. “You broke my mind, Eleven!” Cool, now say it with less drama club energy.

Con – Retconning the Mind Flayer Ruins the Scare Factor:
One of the eeriest motifs from the earlier seasons was how unknowable the Upside Down felt. The giant, spidery Mind Flayer hovering over Hawkins Middle? That’s pure nightmare fuel. Demogorgons hunting you in the dark? Terrifying. But then Season 4 strolls in and casually drops: “Yeah, so that whole terrifying world-ending being? Actually, just Vecna’s weird little sand art project. He made it. Oops!”

And suddenly — poof — all that mystique is gone. The mystery behind the Upside Down is what made it scary. Now it’s reduced to one bitter ex-orderly’s villain origin story. It’s like finding out Sauron from Lord of the Rings was just an edgy drama kid who wanted to decorate Mordor in his image. Less horror, more Hot Topic.

Con: Running Up That Hill is overplayed to the point of exhaustion. The first time it shows up in Season 4, I’ll admit it’s powerful — Max breaking free from Vecna with that track blaring is one of the best moments in Stranger Things. But then the Duffers just keep dragging it back out, and by the third time it’s pounding over Nancy blasting a screaming Vecna with a shotgun, it loses all its punch. Instead of feeling like an emotional anthem, it starts to feel like a lazy crutch the show leans on. For me, it went from goosebumps to grating real fast.


⭐ Why Will’s Season 4 Behavior Feels Annoying and Out-of-Character

🟥 1. The “sad puppy” arc is forced

Will and Mike have been best friends since kindergarten — years of drawings, D&D, sleepovers, loyalty, shared trauma, literal life-and-death moments.
But suddenly in Season 4 the writers decide:

> “Let’s make Will silently suffer because Mike doesn’t love him romantically.”



Being sad is fine.
But acting resentful and mopey because your friend doesn’t reciprocate your feelings?
That doesn’t align with Will’s established personality.

Okay… but here’s the issue:

Being sad is fine — but acting resentful and mopey because your friend doesn’t reciprocate your feelings? That doesn’t make emotional sense for Will’s established personality.

Will has always been:

empathetic

gentle

selfless

emotionally mature


Season 4 Will is written like a walking Tumblr fanfic trope.


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🟧 2. Mike has NO IDEA what Will is feeling

Yet the show treats Mike like he’s failing some moral test.

Mike doesn’t know Will is in love with him.
He thinks Will is upset about:

the group drifting

moving away

Eleven taking his space

homesickness


Mike isn’t being cold or cruel.
He’s clueless — because Will hides everything and lies constantly.

So Will getting quietly bitter at Mike’s “lack of emotional intensity” feels emotionally unfair.


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🟦 3. The painting scene is heartbreaking… but manipulative

The van scene is sad.

But Will crying because Mike doesn’t love him back romantically — when Mike doesn’t know that’s what Will wants — makes Will look like he’s projecting his pain onto Mike.

It’s not Mike’s fault.
He isn’t doing anything wrong.

He’s just willfully bliss, which leads me to my thought. Will buddy, why do u want to spend ur life with mike? He has all the emotions of a wet noodle.

Will is hurting himself with silence.


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🟩 4. Will suddenly acting like Mike is the center of his universe is weirdly out of nowhere

In Seasons 1–3, Will was defined by:

trauma

supernatural connection

his bond with all the boys

outsider maturity


Season 4 reduces him to:

“Mike’s sad shadow.”

It’s not earned.
It’s not logical.
It’s not Will Byers.


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🟪 5. The biggest problem: It rewrites history

Mike didn’t “abandon” Will.

Will:

moved 2,000 miles away

stopped calling

shut down emotionally

refused to talk

hid important truths


Their friendship faded because the writers needed angst for Mike/Will/El — not because it makes real sense.




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🧠 Final Thoughts:

I love this season — especially the second half. It’s gritty, emotional, action-packed, and filled with great character arcs and devastating losses. It gives Stranger Things a much-needed shot of adrenaline and heartbreak as it barrels toward the final season. Eddie Munson’s arc in particular hit me way harder than I thought it would. I don’t cry often, but this? This wrecked me. The town turned on him. He died a hero. And then got blamed anyway.

Max’s fate? Brutal. The Vecna twist? Mind-blowing. The earthquake and apocalypse? Didn’t see that coming. This isn’t just about kids fighting monsters anymore. This is a war now. And it’s personal.

Look, Season 4 isn’t bad, but it’s easily my least favorite. Sure, it had some solid twists, and Eddie Munson was a breakout legend — no arguments there. But beyond that? The CGI was already looking crusty when it aired. Vecna’s design felt like they tried to make Voldemort and a rotisserie chicken scary — and failed. The town? Full of absolute morons. There were just too many characters, which meant juggling a million subplots and no one really getting proper focus. And don’t even get me started on Argyle — that man was comic relief written by someone who’s never met a funny person. Plus, the soundtrack? “Running Up That Hill” was cool the first five times. By the 87th, I wanted to run off a cliff. Sorry, not sorry. For me, Season 3 still reigns supreme. That was peak Stranger Things. Season 4? Big vibes, but messy execution.



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⭐ Rating:

8.8/10
(My favorite two episodes of the whole season. Full season rating: 9.3/10)


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🚨 Spoiler Warning:

Full spoilers below. If you haven’t seen Episodes 8–9, run like you’re being chased by demobats.

💥 Full Spoilers (Episodes 8–9):

Things kick off with Joyce and Hopper reuniting and the crew finally regrouping. But just before we get too cozy, let’s talk scope:
Episode 8 – 1 hour, 25 minutes
Episode 9 – 2 hours, 30 minutes
That’s not TV anymore. That’s a Netflix-funded theatrical event.

With the group divided, Max volunteers to be bait — again — and stays behind in the Creel house with Lucas and Erica in the real world. Meanwhile, Robin, Nancy, and Steve head into the Upside Down to attack Vecna directly. Eddie and Dustin lure the demobats away using… a rooftop guitar concert. Eddie playing “Master of Puppets” in the Upside Down while lightning strikes behind him is, no exaggeration, the most metal scene ever filmed.

Eleven, still in California, figures out she doesn’t need to be physically there. She just needs sensory deprivation and psychic juice. Argyle, bless his high little heart, leads them to a pizza freezer, trades weed for access, and builds a salt bath while eating pineapple pizza. Mike gags. Eleven loves it. Jonathan is just… there.

While Max listens to Kate Bush and pretends she’s not terrified, Vecna strikes. She levitates. The jock finds them, assumes Lucas is performing demon magic, and the two boys fight. Meanwhile, Max is inside her mind sprinting from Vecna.

Eleven psychically piggybacks into Max’s head to face Vecna — and he monologues like a Final Fantasy boss:

> “I’m glad you’re here. You will watch your friends die. Then Hawkins will fall. And then I’ll kill you.”
Cool cool cool 😬



Then the plot goes full conspiracy:

Vecna created the Mind Flayer.
It wasn’t the big bad behind him — it was him the whole time.
He landed in the Upside Down, saw a weird storm cloud, reshaped it using his powers (and his spider obsession), and birthed the Mind Flayer from scratch. It’s been him since Season 1. Every death, every gate, every horror — that’s all Vecna.

Max gets tied to a psychic pillar. El gets pinned to a wall. Vecna starts to kill Max for real — her bones snap, her eyes bleed, Lucas screams.

Meanwhile:
Hopper finds a sword. Yes, a literal medieval sword lying on the prison ground like it’s Skyrim. And he beheads a demogorgon with it.
Robin, Steve, and Nancy break free from the vines.
They rush upstairs. Molotovs fly. Nancy blasts Vecna with a shotgun out the attic window while “Running Up That Hill” plays full blast.

But it’s too late.

Max dies in Lucas’ arms.
“I can’t feel anything,” she says. “I can’t see.”
She goes silent.

One thing that’s been bugging me since Season 4’s finale is how Vecna’s “defeat” went down. A lot of people online keep saying he got beaten too easily, but—uhhhh—no. That’s not what happened at all. Vecna wasn’t defeated. Just like Thanos in Infinity War, he took some heavy damage, retreated, and still ultimately won. The Upside Down literally merged with Hawkins by the end of the season. That’s not a loss. That’s checkmate.

And here’s the kicker: the gang actually made things worse. Eleven had Vecna on the ropes in his own dimension—pinned, locked down, unable to move. If she had just been able to hold him there a little longer, she might’ve finished him. But nope. Instead, the Hawkins crew decide it’s a brilliant idea to unload on him with shotguns and Molotovs. And what does that do? Wake him up. Shake him loose. Give him the window he needed to vanish. Congratulations, you just gave the monster an escape hatch.

So no, Vecna didn’t fall “too easily.” If anything, his survival is proof that this crew, as brave as they are, still doesn’t fully understand the scale of what they’re fighting. They didn’t beat him—they botched it.

And then… El brings her back. Somehow. Script magic. She isn’t dead anymore, but she’s also not alive. Max is in a coma, every limb broken, blind, and hanging on by a thread.

In the Upside Down, Vecna’s burning, bleeding, and gets blasted out a window. But that brief death — Max’s five seconds of clinical death — was enough.

Four kills. Four chimes of the grandfather clock.
Four gates open.

Cracks tear through Hawkins. One literally slices the jock in half. The earth splits open. Half the town is obliterated. Hawkins becomes ground zero for the apocalypse. No one realizes it yet — they still think it was an earthquake. But Will knows better.

Max is comatose in the hospital.

Dustin has to break the news of Eddie’s death to his father.

Hawkins sets up shelters inside schools.

Robin gets the girl she likes.

Mike and El are emotionally distant.

Eddie dies a hero and the town still blames him.

Steve volunteers to help.

Eleven… is broken.


Back at the woods cabin, El slams the door on Mike. She’s pissed. Will tries to talk sense into him. But then Will drops the bomb:

> “He’s not dead. I can feel him. He’s healing. Waiting.”



Cue the final sequence. The group walks into a field and looks out over Hawkins. The grass is dying. Red lightning crackles in the sky. Smoke pours out of gaping wounds in the earth.

The war for Hawkins has begun.

Side note, did any y’all get Nightmare On Elm Street vibes this season? It was 100% intentional.

Also here’s the end credits song it’s my new favorite.

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🎬 Here’s the trailer for Season 5:

Henry vs. Vecna – Two Villains in One Body, But Not in Spirit

Here’s where the character kind of falls apart for me: Henry Creel and Vecna do not feel like the same person. If the show didn’t flat-out tell us they’re one and the same, I honestly don’t think most people would connect the dots.

Henry’s motivation is small-scale but chilling. He’s a textbook budding sociopath — torturing animals, manipulating his family, quietly resenting the world. His evil is intimate, psychological, and rooted in a twisted sense of superiority. He doesn’t want to conquer the planet; he just wants to control, hurt, and “fix” what he thinks is broken.

Vecna’s motivation, on the other hand, comes across like generic supernatural villain boilerplate. Suddenly it’s all about ripping open Hawkins, unleashing demo-monsters, and “bringing hell to Earth.” That’s not Henry anymore — that’s a demon overlord with a Saturday-morning cartoon plan. The sociopath boy who calmly told Eleven his philosophy vanishes under the makeup and the guttural demon voice.

That disconnect is why Jamie Campbell Bower feels wasted. His performance as Henry is scary because it’s human and real. His performance as Vecna is buried under distortion and cliché. One is serial killer horror. The other is “muahaha, destroy the world!” They just don’t collide naturally.

How It Could’ve Worked

The Duffers could have bridged this gap by letting more of Henry bleed through Vecna. Keep Jamie’s natural voice under the prosthetics — that icy, calm cadence is scarier than any demon filter. Let Vecna echo Henry’s exact phrases or micro-habits (the head tilt, the way he sizes people up) so the audience feels the continuity. And instead of giving Vecna a generic “burn it all down” endgame, frame his plan as the logical escalation of Henry’s worldview: not just destroying Hawkins, but “remaking” it into his twisted idea of order. That would make the sociopath and the monster feel like the same person, not two different villains stitched together.