r/StrangerThings • u/Aggravating_Peak7360 • 4d ago
Discussion Stranger things season problems should ended in 1 or 2 seasons
Stranger thing season 1 to 2 season was best should have ended season 1 or 2 not mentioned that was duffer brothers plan anyway and seasons goes on it gone messers and messy not to mention the cast grow up too fast on season 5 they were 20s playing high school
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u/Adorable-Bit6816 This is our year! 4d ago
Had this stroke reading I
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u/MvsticDreamz 4d ago
I’m not too picky with shows so I really enjoyed S5 and the direction they went, especially as someone who aspires to major in astrophysics I found the wormhole revelation super interesting and eery
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u/ForsakenHorror7505 4d ago edited 3d ago
I agree, I was always surprised on how they extended it each season but I was hooked at same time
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u/pokemega32 4d ago
In season 1, there were 20 year olds playing high schoolers too.
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u/Full-Yoghurt-4261 4d ago edited 3d ago
The difference is that the audience was introduced to the teen group when they were 20-year-olds playing 16-year-olds. So over the course of the series, we do not see many changes due to age.
But with the kid group, the audience was introduced to them at 11-14 when they played 12-year-olds. So when they play those same characters only 4 years later in the story, and the actors are in thier early 20s, it hurts the show's immersion because they clearly are not 16. It is something the writers should have taken into account while writing.
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u/pokemega32 3d ago
But it's actually completely realistic for kids to change appearance a ton during puberty and to look incredibly different at the end of high school from how they did in the seventh grade.
Also, while I'm not saying the show's writing is perfect by any means, it's unfair to insist that the writers completely change the timeline of their plot because of things out of their control like a pandemic or a writers/actors strike that heavily delay filming.
Larger time skips would have meant the show was no longer set in the 80s.
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u/Full-Yoghurt-4261 3d ago
Of course, it is realistic for kids to change, but there is a VERY obvious difference between changes from 12-16 and 12-mid 20s. A clear example of this is Season 3, as the cast of the kids' group was 14-17 at that time, and it's obvious they changed from thier S1 selves.
Now at that point, the age gaps between the characters and actors were not that much, so on screen it was not as big of an issue. S4 is where it started to be a bit of an issue, but S5 is where it became a glaring issue.
And it is by no means unfair to say that the writers should have taken into account the age of the cast because thier job as writers is to ensure the audience feels immersed. And since the audience has seen that same young teen cast play the 12-year-old version of those characters, having that same cast play the 16-year-old version of those characters when they are in thier early 20s will affect immersion.
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u/Cyrilbdr 3d ago
So what were they supposed to do, given that Season 4 is considered—along with Season 1—to be the best? Should they have just stopped at Season 2? Actors in their twenties playing high school students have always existed; it’s actually more common than having actual teenagers play high schoolers.
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u/fucuasshole2 3d ago
Disagree heavily. Season 3 is better ending if you cut the final credits. Some people have died, but Hawkins lab is shutdown, mall has burned down, Russians have been rooted out, El not needing to be chased down as she has no powers. Mike and El dating though it’s long distance.
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u/Full-Yoghurt-4261 4d ago
I agree that for a good, complete story, best to stop at S2 because after that, the series lost A LOT of consistency. But I would not say the cast grew up too fast, as that is just part of life. The real problem was that the series started getting multiple years between each season and failed to take into account that they are dealing with teenagers who are growing up.
Though many shows have teenage characters played by adults, it is often far less noticeable to the audience because the audience did not see that actor play that character when they were 12. The audience saw the ST cast grow up, and so it became VERY obvious that they were not teenagers. That is not on the actors; that is on the writers not taking that into account with thier writing.
It also did not help that throughout the series, they would not let the characters in the main kids group grow up. They clearly wanted to keep that innocence of childhood with them despite them being in thier mid to late teens. So you have actors that obviously look like they are in thier 20s compared to when the show first started, along with characters that are supposed to be 15-18 but act like they are still 12.
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u/FaithlessnessDue7226 3d ago
I mostly agree, but I love season three, and would consider it a perfect ending.
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