I’ve been writing about television for a long time. And during that time, I’ve come to recognize a handful of truism that tend to separate the good from the mediocre when it comes to effective dramatic storytelling. Now, for folks who have studied criticism – or literature, drama, creative writing, any of the major arts, really – these items aren’t going to come as a shock. They’re the bedrock of most forms of storytelling. But, for those who might have nodded off in English class a few too many times, I’m going to use them to breakdown what worked and what didn’t about this second portion of episodes in this final run of Stranger Things.
#1: Character is King
When you’re crafting a story, your characters are your most important tool. They’re the ones who are going to be living out the story you’re telling. Now, what does that mean? Well, the more complex and richly drawn your characters are, the easier it will be for your audience to empathize with them. If we understand who they are, what they want, what blind spots they might have, their fears, and their foibles, we better understand why they make the choices they do and how they might go about completing their assigned narrative arc. If you know what makes them tick, it unlocks a key element of the story. If they’re one- or two-dimensional, audiences are bound to get frustrated when they don’t get why a character does what they do – and in the event a character makes an epic sacrifice, well, the emotional impact will be blunted if the audience never came to care about that character at all.
The good news is that Stranger Things has a handful of complex characters. The bad news is that most of this (way too large) brood definitely aren’t. Now, this is the truism where writing and acting mesh is the clearest way, so while a great actor can elevate a poorly drawn character into something more, having a weak actor can really bog you down even if the character has been given a host of characterization over time. Think of Erica (Priah Ferguson). She’s hardly a complex character*, but Ferguson is so charismatic in the role, she’s turned into burst of fresh air every time she pops up on screen. On the flip side, there’s Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown), a character with all the backstory and emotional layering you could ask for but an actor who can’t seem to imbue the character with much in the way of a personality. It worked in the early seasons because Eleven wasn’t socialized well. But now? The performance hasn’t grown at all.
*A great quick way to test if a character is complex: Describe them. If the only thing you can do is use adjectives, then they’re not complex. They’re an archetype. For Erica, she’s smart and sassy. But what else do we really know about her? Her future STEM career goals fall under that smart umbrella as well. Compared to, say, Will, who we know comes from a broken home, he’s a closeted (or, not anymore) gay kid who is fiercely loyal to his friends. He’s a nerd, loves his family, trusts them implicitly. He holds so much guilt inside – not only from Vecna’s interactions with him, but from his dad leaving, his mom being sad, him not being the friend he always wants to be. We know so much about him compared to Erica, and that’s great for Will. But it shows the disparity between writing for characters here – something that happens when you have so many central characters on a sweeping series.
And this lack of complex characters – and strong performances – was pretty evident throughout these three episodes. The pieces of the story that worked the best – such as Holly (a great Nell Fisher) and Max (the season MVP Sadie Sink) – worked because, despite having spent less time with either character over the course of the series, each of these girls has a clearly laid out complex backstory. We know who they are, how they got here, and how – mentally and emotionally – they have become who they are in this moment. Couple that with two strong performances and you have a compelling, character-driven arc. Another pretty strong sub-arc? The friendship between Will (Noah Schnapp, great at emoting, less great at acting) and Robin (Maya Hawke, stellar). In a series where the supernatural mythology can bog down the story, the clear, personal, emotional storytelling here was lovely to watch. Although I’ve got some issues with Will’s actual coming out scene, which I’ll get to in a bit.
But everything else? There’s so much mythology surrounding the story at this stage – and the Duffer Brothers also managed to pull the great “Everything We Thought We Knew Was Wrong” trick, which further destabilizes the storytelling right when it should be getting stronger – that it constantly overshadowed the characters. Making plans and executing them is all well and good in a thriller like this, but when the only times certain characters who have deep, personal relationships even speak to one another over the course of a three-episode stretch is to talk about a plan, you’re starting to abandon a character-first focus in favor of trying to slot characters into roles to fit your story. Characters should always be the driving reason for the action happening on screen. They need to do something, save someone, learn something, to grow as a person. That’s why they’re acting. In these episodes? That was rarely the case.
#2: Show, Don’t Tell
This is one rule that truly separates the wheat from the chaff when it comes to great television. This is a visual medium. So, show us what leads a character to do something or what a character has done to get to a point, don’t just have that character tell us. And boy, did Stranger Things break this rule in a big way during an emotionally excellent scene.
I loved that Will came out to his family and that it went well. I loved that he felt comfortable telling them, that Joyce and Jonathan immediately embraced him (although, I never had any doubt – both of those characters love Will so damn much they would never hurt him like that), that his friends hugged him, and that his fairy godmother, Robin, was able to be there and see it. It was a beautiful sequence. But what drove me up a wall was Will’s explanation for why he was telling them: Vecna showed him a future in which he told all of them and even though everyone was cool, Will felt they pitied him and that led to a schism in the group and Will ending up alone, having pushed them all away.
That’s such a vivid story, such an interesting reason to inspire this moment of bravery in a character who has been the victim for so much of the series. And such a really awful, sadistic thing for our chief villain to do – show Will that sure, they all love him, but that love will curdle into something he can’t handle and lead to him being alone without them. Why not show us that? Why not explore that fear, show us that Vecna is more than just someone who imprisons you in his mind, that he can get inside of you and make you doubt not only yourself but those you love? That’s more insidious than the villain we’ve seen so far. And that would be such a terrifying parting gift to Will – someone he chose because of his “weak” mind.
But we don’t get to see that, we have absolutely no idea it even happened until Will tells us the story – it comes completely out of left field. At no point leading up to that moment does Will explain that he’s scared of what Vecna showed him of the future. That he’s wrestling with something more than the knowledge that he was an unwilling pawn for years. It’s a wasted opportunity.
The same could be said with the entire Jonathan and Nancy arc. We spent six long episodes watching the pair bicker and be at odds over some unspoken slights – Jonathan’s continued jealousy and Nancy’s inability to vocalize her wants and emotions – and when they finally open up, we learn a lot more than we could have imagined. And it’s a good scene, but comes way too late in the game to help shore up not only the storytelling but also the characters themselves. Let us see more about why Jonathan is so scared to lose her – other than the idea that she’s his and he doesn’t want Steve to have her. Let us see more about Nancy’s inability to have the tough conversation because she doesn’t want things to change. That she doesn’t know who she wants to be – and that she needs to come to terms with that on her own. Again, the conversation is great, but there were so many chances to show us just what each character has been wrestling with (outside of their immediate family members being in constant mortal peril for years), that it’s another missed opportunity.
#3: Twists and Turns are Great, But Not Late in the Game
My last truism is one that Stranger Things has actually been doing pretty well compared to some genre stories out there – save for that one major mythology shake-up this time around. And this rule is one I suspect a lot of folks out there won’t like, especially in this era of puzzle box storytelling. But there’s a difference between having a “surprise ending” that was carefully built toward over the course of a series and throwing twists and turns in for the hell of it as a show reaches its climax. Because for a strongly structured narrative, you need to have a story that stays on the tracks. As you get closer to the end, there’s less track left to get you where you need to be and everything you show us has to be moving toward that singular goal of the end.
On the whole, the Duffers have been great about this. Almost all the major narrative elements in season five feels like they were organic from a story perspective (even if it can be hard to follow all the Vecna-related story beats). Kali showing up? A surprise, but one structured in the narrative – of course they would want to get someone like Eleven if they can’t get her. Dustin’s emotional turmoil turning him into a heel for a while? Makes complete sense. Max being stuck in Vecna’s mind? Sure, he grabbed her mind but couldn’t destroy her body like he did with the others, so she would be there, hiding. Vecna needing twelve kids? Well, twelve is a common number in these kinds of stories, so it makes sense to me.
The revelation about the Bridge between Vecna’s realm and the Upside Down and Earth? Yeah, that one does violate this rule. You can feel the narrative track coming to an end and now this curve suddenly appears – mostly, it seems, just to stretch out the level of threat to Earth from Vecna before he can officially be banished. It doesn’t work because we’ve had no indication that there was something else happening here. If we had been hearing whispers of “The Bridge” back in season three, well, yeah, then this wouldn’t feel like a needlessly confusing twist to help ratchet up the tension at the close.
That all being said, here’s the interesting thing about a well-crafted finale: You should be able to see how it is going to end. Taking that train analogy out one more time, Stranger Things is approaching the station. We see it on the horizon. There’s only so many pieces of track it can take to get there. So, while I can’t predict precisely how the show is going to end, I can predict a handful of options – one of which almost certainly will be the case. You should never watch the finale of a TV show and be totally shocked at how it ends. That’s bad writing. Surprise? Sure. But if you cannot see a couple ways to end a story, the writer didn’t set up the end properly. And with Stranger Things – which drops its finale on New Year’s Eve next week – there are only a few ways this story ends. So, despite finding Dustin’s revelation about the state of the Bridge an annoyance rather than a cool plot point, the Duffer Brothers seem to have the story more or less on the track heading to the end. But I guess we’ll see for sure in a week.
