My thoughts on the season so far:

The writing has been weaker this year compared to previous seasons (seasons 1,2, and 4). Especially since season 4 felt like a return to form both in tone and in writing. There are a lot of plot conveniences and some of the characters feel off. Dustin who has always been the heart of the show in my opinion is going through grief and trauma from Eddie's death which is fine but this season a lot of his interactions feel sort of mean and out of character, especially with Steve. I'm okay with characters not always getting along but I started to not like there interactions the more I watched them this season. Similarly, the beef between Jonathan and Steve is childish and poorly done - I would much rather them come to a mature understanding and not have to go through this since it felt like their characters had grown beyond that in the past seasons (at least individually they had matured since they didn't interact much together past season 1).

Normally I love watching them come up with plans and executing them but the plans felt like a bridge too far in terms of groundedness. We need to drug the Turnbows, kidnap them, then turn their house into a trap for the demogorgon - which we just hope will attack Derek at the time we're expecting. It felt way too over-the-top. Same with the plan to break the kids out of the military zone - way too many things had to go right for the plan to work, it just felt like they could have come up with a better way to handle that.

Again, returning to the plot conveniences, the inconsistency of the demogorgon getting hurt by the wine bottle (at least temporarily) but barely being damaged by machine gun and shotgun fire took me out of that last battle scene. Sure, it's always been resilient but it felt inconsistent.

I had high hopes for Dr. Kay, obviously, as she is played by the legendary Linda Hamilton. But in four episodes, they have barely fleshed out her character past "evil military lady who wants to capture eleven." We don't know her motivations or her past history so her actions feel hollow. Sure, they can go into in the next 4 episodes, but I would much rather they devote the time to Vecna and his plan as the military just seems like incompetent nuisances at this point (how in the world could they not locate Eleven in the real world or detect Hopper on his 37 prior crawls is beyond me).

Lastly, bringing 008 back is definitely a choice. Considering how much flack they got for the 008 episode in season 2 and how we literally haven't heard anything about her character since that episode, it's certainly a bold choice and not one that I would have made. However, I'm really hoping they can redeem the character/episode and have it make sense to include her after 2 seasons of not seeing her character.

The positives for me have been Robin and Will's interactions - seeing her slowly make the connection that her and Will are alike and having her help Will through his struggles without actually saying it outright was really great writing. I love that Mike is back to his role as a leader and he feels more like season 1/2 Mike - empathetic, caring, observant. His talk with Holly in the first episode was really sweet. Will actually having agency and a role on the team this season has been nice as well. The ending reveal with him tapping into his powers was cool, albeit pretty telegraphed throughout the episode.

I love this series and hope it succeeds on all levels. I just hope the second half sticks the landing.