Time is a huge problem with this final season of Stranger Things.
There are multiple moving parts in “The Turnbow Trap” and “Sorcerer,” the last two episodes of Volume One. Now, while I love interwoven character arcs and big plot reveals as much as the next guy (and these are, after all, two of the tenets that make the foundation of Stranger Things), it does feel like the Duffer brothers are trying to cover too much ground in too little time. Hasn’t anyone told them that the show’s getting a spin-off?
But alas, we get not one, not two, but four big plot points that Volume Two will hopefully find a way to wrap up, although I’m not entirely sure the remaining runtime will be enough.
Without giving anything away, these are the convoluted storylines we’re now dealing with: A once-dead member of the Party has been resurrected, but only in a deranged dream palace that they must escape from with another kidnapped Party member (please refer to this season’s second episode). Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower) is planning something big with the children of Hawkins, but all we know is that it involves incapacitating them and hooking them up to tentacles (yikes). The military officers stationed all around Hawkins are led by the evil Dr. Kay (Linda Hamilton), whom we’ve never met until this season, and they seem to have a powerful entity locked up like their secret weapon. And finally, one of the main Party members taps into their inert superpowers and becomes almost as good at breaking bones as Vecna.
That’s a lot of new plot to get through, and we’re not even considering all the emotional character arcs that we’ll need to complete before the series finale. Hopper (David Harbour) and Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) are clearly working through an important part of their father-daughter relationship as they torture guards and fight tentacle monsters in the Upside Down. There’s an infuriating love triangle going on between Steve (Joe Keery), Nancy (Natalia Dyer), and Jonathan (Charlie Heaton), but I’m much more interested in seeing if the latter two work through this rough patch in their relationship. Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo) is still grieving the death of Eddie Munson (Joseph Quinn) from last season, and I hope he gets enough character development in the second volume.
What’s more, some of these arcs are new and, although heartwarming, may run the risk of seeming half-baked if we don’t have enough time to completely walk through them. The main one that comes to mind is between Robin (Maya Hawke) and Will (Noah Schnapp), because Robin is really trying to drum it into Will’s head that he shouldn’t be afraid of his sexuality. In what is arguably one of the most uplifting moments of the first volume (down in the tunnels, no less), she relays her coming out story and tells him exactly what he needs to hear. “I had all the answers,” she tells Will, “I just needed to stop being so goddamned scared.” Cue the teary eyes, both onscreen and off, and if anything happens to Robin in the finale, it will be one of the biggest tragedies of the Stranger Things universe since the Duffer brothers killed off Alexei back in Season 3.
