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The first installment of the final season of *Stranger Things* has premiered, drawing a range of critical reactions. While many reviewers are praising the return of the popular Netflix series, others suggest it may have lost its initial spark.
Ed Potton, in a four-star review for The Times, described the initial four episodes of season five as “richly entertaining stuff with proper jeopardy and bags of emotion.”
Similarly, Jack Seale’s four-star assessment in The Guardian declared that “this luxurious final run will have you standing on a chair, yelling with joy.”
However, not all perspectives were as enthusiastic. USA Today‘s Kelly Lawler noted that the show “seesaws between thrilling and annoying,” while Sophie Gilbert of The Atlantic characterized much of it as “largely joyless and grim.”
Upon the release of the new episodes on Wednesday in the US and early Thursday in the UK, Netflix experienced a brief service disruption. The streaming platform informed Variety that normal operations were restored within five minutes.
The final three episodes are scheduled for release around Christmas, with the series finale airing at the start of the New Year.
As the wildly popular sci-fi drama nears its conclusion, the inhabitants of Hawkins, Indiana, face an impending showdown between the now-adult teenage protagonists and the formidable Vecna.
Many dedicated fans launched early morning binges of the new episodes following their 01:00 GMT release on Thursday in the UK.
Eve Edmunds, 25, shared with BBC Radio 1’s Newsbeat that she awoke at 04:45 specifically to watch. “I did want to get up earlier but I slept through my first alarm,” she admitted.
“I didn’t take my eyes off the screen and I’m really glad I made that decision.”
She described the episodes as “incredible,” noting, “It’s absolutely worth the wait. It keeps you gripped. They’ve not held back, they’ve pulled out all the stops and I was very impressed.”
Vicky Jessop of The Standard concurred, stating, “It’s classic 80s adventure fare, in the best way: kids outsmarting adults, lashings of humour and a surprising amount of heart. I gulped it down – more please.”
The Times commented that “Volume one doesn’t rewrite the manual but why would you want it to?”
In Empire‘s four-star review, Leila Latif wrote that the show “remains a show that knows exactly what it is, and one that reminds us that youth may be precious, but growing older can still be exhilarating.”
She added, “All the trademark elements are intact: the dark humour, the whimsy, the poetry of trauma and hard-earned resilience. Most reassuring of all is how quickly the show proves it has not lost its sense of fun.”
Laura Martin of BBC Culture called the “bombastic” fourth episode *Stranger Things* “at its best.”
“It’s thrilling; and if it’s a precursor to how the Duffer Brothers plan to wrap up the show… then viewers are in for an all-time great TV ending.”
Writing for The Telegraph, Ed Power gave the season three stars, describing *Stranger Things* as “top-rank comfort viewing.”
“For now, despite a slightly slow start, the signs are promising that it will go one better than Game of Thrones, and deliver a send-off that lives up to audience expectations,” he said.
The Guardian, despite its positive review, also offered some reservations.
“Stranger Things definitely needs to switch off its boombox, hang up its catapults and admit it’s too old for these capers, but it’s worth indulging it one last time,” Seale wrote.
As of this writing, the show’s fifth season garners a strong 86% critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes, although not all critics are entirely convinced.
“The cast keeps growing up, but the show hasn’t,” observed Sam Adams on Slate.
“It’s not just Hawkins that feels cut off from the world. It’s Stranger Things itself, a show now sealed in an airless, impenetrable bubble of stagnant characters and snarled lore.”
Other critics have also commented on the increasing ages of the main characters.
Angie Han of The Hollywood Reporter stated, “It’s time to let these adolescents do as adolescents are meant to do: grow up and move on with the rest of their lives.”
Alison Herman from Variety wrote: “By declining to enrich its characters as they age, Stranger Things traps itself in arrested development. When you get bigger without going deeper, you end up stretched thin.”
Ben Travers of IndieWire declared that season five “leaves you wanting less,” with Michael Walsh of Nerdist similarly suggesting that brevity could have been beneficial.
“The start of Stranger Things 5 is a lot,” he wrote. “A lot, a lot.
“While very little from these four overly long episodes is outright bad on its own (with one major exception), too much story, too many characters, and too many complicated/convoluted developments keep Volume One from being great.”
The next three episodes will be released on Christmas Day in the US and Boxing Day in the UK, and the finale will arrive on New Year’s Eve in the US and New Year’s Day in the UK.
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