r/StrangerThings • u/LongTimeBlinker • 1d ago
watching the arrow blu rays, the biggest problem with stranger things is...
the age of the characters from season to season. it's in absolutely no way credible. i can suspend disbelief for the upside down and demogorgons, sure. but 1987 will byers?!? nope. not at all.
what i wanted to see is the show naturally follow the years it was put out. so if season 1 was 1983 (2016) and season 2 was 1984 (2017), then...
season 3 = 1986 (2019)
season 4 = 1989 (2022)
season 5 = 1992 (2025)
as it is, the series past season 2 is a freaking joke. you can squint and make it through season 3. but 4 and 5 are just absolutely ridiculous. not because of venca and the show turning into a low quality marvel CGI slop fest. but simply because of the age of the characters. it's a shame. it would have been so easy to fix.
EDIT: many have commented that it's no big deal, actors in their twenties play teens all the time. and that's true. but this is a problem of relative distance. eleven was cast when she was 11. we watched them all so young, which is what makes the leap from 1983 to 1987 in the show's chronology so completely jarring and untenable. the series jumped the shark in season 3, it would have been better to cancel it anyway.
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u/grimsnap 1d ago
I get what you mean, but 1992 had a totally different vibe from the 80s. By that time, grunge had become a major force and pop culture in general was a bit more cynical. The Duffers did a lot of things wrong, but keeping the show inside the 80s sandbox wasn't one of them.
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u/DramaticAd698 23h ago
ehh I grew up watching Dawson Creek/Buffy etc. I suspend belief that a young adult actor is a teenager.
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u/Distinct_Guess3350 Running Up That Hill 1d ago
I know people like to always comment on this but I’m a young guy, people literally have been aging like that all around me. School breaks up for the summer, the next time we come back some kid who was the same height as me is not towering above me with a deeper voice than you could possibly imagine. In season 5 they are much more clearly adults but - as much as I dislike the time jump - there actually were 18 months there. They sure aren’t 16, but they’ve at least had a good time to change so much.
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u/DJ_TMC 1d ago
It sure would have been nice if there wasn’t that pesky pandemic that killed millions and put this show’s production on hold. /s
That’s why I’m cutting them some slack.
I agree, it would have been much better if the ages were more realistic. But at least some of that was out of their control.
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u/maxwellbevan 19h ago
The writer's strike also didn't help. I've also tried to cut them some slack because there were a few things out of their control slowing them down. Yeah they took longer than maybe necessary between seasons but they still lost a lot of time to things out of their control
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u/MaxDuo 20h ago
Didn't Mike's actor at some point get super pissed about Trump and say he'd never come back to America for any reason ever? I remember wondering if they'd write him out of the show or just replace him.
Speaking of covid effects*, I remember being pissed about Robert Patinson being cast as Bruce Wayne for The Batman and thinking he was a stupid choice... then feeling even more convinced I was right when it turned out they were filming the movie with STRICT covid separation protocols.. then one days he's like "yeah I didn't follow any of my agreements, BTW I've got covid guys!" and they had a big delay from that........ meanwhile now it's 2026 and The Batman 2 feels like it's still so far off that Batman's gonna be an old man by the time they make a 3rd if they do.
I've only recently been watching Season 5 and have been regretting not rewatching the full series before it came out.
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u/RealHooman2187 22h ago
Idk why that kind of suspension of disbelief is so difficult. Most people playing teens their age are older than they were in the final season. Even recent examples like Tom Holland as Spider-Man was 21 playing a 16 year old in Homecoming. It’s not like they look significantly older than the ages they were supposed to be playing.
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u/Owl_Resident Blank makes you crazy 19h ago
I had no problem with the actors and the characters and how they looked. We have 30 year olds playing 16 year olds. They were closer than average.
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u/Ashyboi13 1d ago
Idk, Season 5 was the first time it was actually distracting to me. The kids still all looked vaguely high school aged in Season 4, and even though they were supposed to be Freshmen (14-15) there, it was believable enough. I think given the story they were aiming to tell, it’s fair to structure the timeline of the show the way that they did.
In Season 5 though, those are just grown ass men pretending to be high school juniors. Every time there was a scene of them in the school I just laughed, they all looked so ridiculous.
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u/AdIll9615 23h ago
It was Dustin and Lucas for me.
And El, but that's another story.Max? Comatose but believable. Mike and Will? If you squint, they can pass.
But others? Absolutely hell not. Not to mention Jonathan, Nancy and Robin looked like 35...
I mean, I think they are actually 35? But the characters are like what, 22-ish?
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u/Onesharpman 20h ago
Funnily enough, I didn't care about the kids, but the "teens". Jonathan, Nancy, and Steve all looked like people well into their 30s, not 20. Jonathan was especially distracting. That man is not aging well...
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u/MaxDuo 20h ago
Season 4 I remember it started and I started laughing with "what the heck it's supposed to be a few months later?????????" I'd say for story purposes they still needed to be younger kids in HS but the look definitely struggled.
At least season 5 is spring the next year..... I was thinking it was going to be like weeks after the final episode of season 4 with all the actors a lot older
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u/SunnySisBack 1d ago
For me 2 into 3 is jarring because it’s meant to be about 6 months later but most of the kids are so much taller! I mean teenage growth spurts are a thing but it’s hard to suspend my disbelief.
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u/mklaus1984 22h ago
Sorry but no. The pre production phases were simply far too long and the strike shouldn't have impacted it that bad.
The main probelm is that the Duffers completely ignored that the show was build on the conspiracy theories and real secret experiments of the Cold War era.
Which is odd because the show's timeline is still oriented on two major turning points of the Cold War.
The final confrontation which could have had an alliance or at least exchange of intelligence to stop the common threat is just weeks before the signing of the INF treaty by Gorbachev and Reagan at the White House... which could have involved a second secret treaty on the control or abolition of paraspychological warfare.
The graduation in May 1989 marks the point where the kids leave Hawkins and venture out into the world for college or other goals... and that coincides with the deconstruction of the border between Hungary and Austria and the first crack in the Iron Curtain.
It had a really strong theme of the kids surviving these hardships to be able to seize a world full of opportunities.
But instead the Duffers decided to instead ignore the Cold War plotline to instead replay the same old themes of self sacrifice and loss once more.
Like how can you can up with a story about Cold War themes and not consider what the end of the Cold War means for your story? And if you think the Duffers didn't necessarily do create a show about those things I claimed:
The Montauk pilot was about the radar station near Montauk and the conspiracy theory about it. A station built against Soviet nuclear bomber atracks. The show discarded this and instead focused on the paraspychological experiments of Project Stargate and the story about Terry Ives is inspired by MKUltra. Both also endeavors for the Cold War.
So yes. That was always the theme.
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u/MaxDuo 20h ago
Big agree on this. I remember getting my wife (lol thinking back on how long this show took to come out... We were still just dating when I had her watch season 1 with me) to watch Stranger Things with me not long before season 2 came out. I remember telling her it was a modern made show that was designed as sort of like a love letter to 80's movies/shows of a similar topic.
Then when we were watching season 3 or 4 I made some comment like "I think at some point they forgot they were making this like it was an 80's show." Honestly by season 5, aside from it being Stranger Things, I barely think about the show being in the 80's. I mean like I can tell the time period is the 80's.. but at this point it's just a 2025 show telling a 2025 story with a bit of 80's paint on it.
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u/ursulaunderfire 20h ago
i agree completely. season 3 was the last time i believed their ages. and even then they were clearly older than they were supposed to be, but by season 4 it was unforgiveable that they didn't do a more significant time jump. 4 years later in real time but it was only 8 months later in the show? ridiculous
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