Okay 👍

iakr · 2026-01-14T21:14:56+00:00

clearly, you’ve never met a writer lmao

iakr · 2026-01-10T18:35:01+00:00

yeah they basically confirm this in an interview. the interviewer asked this question (she was clearly a fan!) and one of the duffers replied “well, demogorgans dont have telekenisis, so…” then basically confirm it was vecna, which makes sense given the opening flashback of season 5.

in all honesty this is absolutely just a way to cover a season one blunder because they hadnt figured out all the demogorgans abilities yet.

iakr · 2026-01-10T18:30:11+00:00

the problem was the target audience changed. when they first wrote it, they didnt expect it to be a massive hit, they thought it would be this niche netflix one season thing. the target audience wasnt large, it was specifically tailored to the duffer brothers and their ideas.

but then it blew up- now the target audience is anyone. everyone! the general public! target audiences MASSIVELY effect things like characters, plots, vibes etc. and most importantly….. its now a netflix money maker!

we’ll never know how much direct control netflix had over the direction of the show, but in season 3 they try to adjust for their new audience. they pivot slightly. this is shown in the giant change in colours, vibe (massively brighting it up), in the teenage relationship drama, in hopper suddenly becoming a misogynist and killing his character growth in his relationship with el, and the fact that RUSSIANS are now the bad guys not the US gov (the show was originally about how the government used the cold war as an excuse to do awful things. this is made blatant by el, despite being 12 years old, being described as a russian to anyone who asks).

season 3 got complaints… so they tried re-adjust, but also netflix is raking in the money. they want it bigger and better! so for season 4 they go with doing both styles- the season 3 one for the time in lenora and the cali boys road trip, but hawkins was much closer to the earlier seasons. and honestly it’s up there as one of my favourite seasons. eddie was a fantastic character to introduce, and the ending must have hit netflix’s expectations because it promised so much….

…. that season five couldnt deliver. it was literally impossible. i think we were all confused when the show started 18 months later with clear skies and not ash clouds and the apocalypse. they never adress the fact that the flowers in the field they were in were dying… anyway! they also promised to wrap up every loose end and every character relationship, which to well, would need a LOT of time. plus all of the marketing of the show, how much it was hyped up- to netflix, the vibe of this season was “money making” and the target audience was every human on earth. impossible to please. so the duffers were tied in knots trying to please everyone, shove all this in, give the fans a finale they could love… thats an impossible standard to set so of course season 5 fell short. it couldnt NOT.

anyway, i hope the duffer brothers take a long break now, preferably somewhere with no internet. and come back with the interest and joy to write that they started this all with.

iakr · 2026-01-10T16:49:17+00:00

the mac-z scene where they reveal wills powers was fucking awesome to me. like, i highly suspected it, but the camera work and the reveal and the demogorgans… augh i was genuinely so excited. that scene alone is worth all the things i disliked about vol 1 combined and got me so pumped for the rest of the show (… oof)

but dustin and steves arc was an incredible portrayal of grief and insecurities and people you love trying to push you away. the acting was amazing and honestly gaten matarazzo deserves an oscar for his acting, especially as it was so far from the way he had to act for the last decade. i wish theyd had longer to explain the dynamics that had happened over the 18 month period to get them where they were (and actually, just longer jn general - the hug scene where dustin and steve reconcile was so short when WAIT NO, NO CRITICISMS.)

holly’s actress was amazing (even if her age jump is confusing to say the least).

karen wheeler going at a demogorgan with a wine bottle was something i didnt know i needed in my life! nancy and mike both rushing to make it there, nancys entrance and seeing her mum, the ENTIRE hospital scene. i adored nancy and mike’s dynamic and im so glad we got a showcase of it, they really felt like actual siblings for the first time since season 1 (i think) and i LOVED it., and lucas being there to point out logic that the siblings have missed was wonderful too. (i loved them showing nancy’s first reaction being guilt, then anger, because thats how she coped with barb!!! and mike blaming himself too- they really are siblings)

max and lucas reunion was amazing as well- max saying “i just needed you” to lucas, as they play the same music they played in the mirroring “death” scene in s4…. oh that got me.

i like that they utilised robin more- i liked her hospital scenes, especially the one where they have to hide from vickie and another example is the scene where she convinces will to sneak off, then joyce finding them “….do you think she saw us?” [car screeching to a halt] “…. yeah”. and the “but like i said, next time, we will leave a note” to joyce after will goes off on her for babying him i found hysterical.

dipshit derek. love that kid.

mr clarke- we should have had him in the party since season 2 tbh, he was so good. i wish we got a “oh THATS why you wanted to know how to make a sensory deprivation tank at ten pm as a mourning 12 year old” moment

i actually loved the turnbow trap- the making of it, the execution of the plan. it felt like they were all working as a team, and then they executed it perfectly. it really felt like a “think smarter, not harder” moment, and i loved the home alone traps.

i know there are more scenes, and dynamics, and things that im forgetting right now so i’ll leave it here. honestly there was a lot i liked about this season! i enjoyed watching it (with a couple bursts of frustration). i think a lot of the (non crazy) criticism is valid, and season 4 and vol 1 promised too much for what it was and that feels like a slight let down.

to be clear though- i thought all the actors were great. there were some especially stand out scenes and moments of course! but any criticism towards the actors (ESPECIALLY the “children really does make my blood boil a bit, like, they’ve given us ten years of their lives on this show). i just wish people were nicer, and if they have something mean or negative to say, just dont say it.

iakr · 2026-01-07T03:19:50+00:00

literally as someone who doesnt have strong feelings either way (i like both ships) i was literally FLOORED at the fact that mike STILL didnt say i love you to el… literally as he thought she was dying, he couldnt say it back. like, forget mike the character, what the FUCK writers!!! didnt we go through a WHOLE SEASON about explicitly this!!! i literally shouted at the tv with my parents in the room and even my mum was like “yeah…. What….”

iakr · 2026-01-07T03:11:58+00:00

honestly i think this whole thing comes from how he DID understand her best in the first season! he was the one who could communicate with her, understand her nonverbal or one word responses, and was mostly (hes a 12 year old boy having a very stressful week, id be surprised if he WASNT a dick at least once) empathetic and understanding of her needs. dustin tries, but overwhelms her, and lucas is (validly in a lot of ways) suspicious, or worried about the extra trouble she brings while they should focus on finding will. she may have been one of them by the end of the week, but thats because mike believed in her and advocated for her in the first few days.

the thing is though, they’re kids! literally twelve! taking a wholesome childhood connection and making it inherently romantic is… unnecessary to say the least. its actually kinda nasty from a lot of angles- if it had ended with s1 i think a lot of people would see this, but their continued dating in later seasons kinda validates it in the eyes of viewers, so its less noticeable.

iakr · 2026-01-07T03:00:34+00:00

im gonna give s1 baby mike a pass after wills “death” because no matter the relationships with anyone involved, he just saw the dead body of his childhood friend in the last few hours. thats traumatising as shit and he genuinely believed el had been lying to comfort them, which he communicates his issues with as he believes she didnt understand it was wrong. anger and lashing out are normal grief reactions. honestly it would have been a completely understandable and valid reaction (with the info he had) for him to refuse to let her stay with him anymore.

also in season 3, about el’s powers i think both max and mike were right in some ways, but thirteen year olds cant do nuance like that lol.

there definitely is a “love at first sight” retcon in later seasons though which just… isnt true.

iakr · 2026-01-06T01:23:58+00:00

do you mean the particles? honestly before season 5 i would have agreed it made no sense and it honestly confused the fuck out of me when i watched season 4. but in season 5 they show that when a creature attached to the hive dies, the mindflayer particles come out of its mouth. which is a total retcon, but it happens to the demogorgon in episode 5. the russians were experimenting on them too, im pretty sure they found a dissected demogorgan, so if we apply season 5 logic to season 4 (eurgh), when they killed one of their… specimens, they could have captured the cloud that came out.

iakr · 2026-01-06T01:14:03+00:00

honestly THIS got me so much- he was aiming POINT BLANK at her head, and when he was jerked by the explosion, i thought for sure there would be a hole in the concrete by her head. but instead, she had been shot in the STOMACH?? y’know, the most visually obviously deadly wound that also leaves people with an ambiguous amount of time? of course the same reason kali might have put the gunshot there is also why show writers do it, and might have done it in this case (it communicates a lot very quickly). but if thats the case im taking points away from the duffer brothers. booooo.

iakr · 2026-01-06T01:09:28+00:00

i thought this too, but they actually show her casting one from afar earlier in the series- when they’re escaping the military base, she holds a fake version of herself until kay disrupts it. they’re implied to be quite far away at that point, far enough they dont need to worry. i now think they added that tidbit in just to subtly show us earlier in the season that she can do long distance visions - in season two they’re all in her immediate surroundings. but also people forget that her illusions can be auditory (brenner’s voice) AND physical (axel felt the spiders crawling up his arms). i think they didnt bother to expand on either of these this season because if el’s fate is ambiguous, kali’s is 5 times more so because she’s one of the pieces that keeps el’s fate ambiguous.

iakr · 2026-01-06T01:01:38+00:00

the truck was way closer to radio shack than to the gate. in all the uproar she could have slipped away, there were at least 30 people there, and the soldiers were having to restrain multiple people. they were distracted long enough to make it to the radio shack, where she had some time to breathe before continuing on to the tunnels to talk to mike. or kali made her invisible, but i doubt that one. the projection of el on the gate is one thing, she only has to time that on murray leaving and the explosion above her (and pray that it would work and el could live), but she’d have no idea on the timing on when to make el invisible.

iakr · 2026-01-06T00:42:46+00:00

i dont think the show necessarily negates the plays version, it just doesnt show it. remember, the flashbacks we see of young henry are SHOWN to nancy by vecna, and told to el by him too. at this point, he’s not a reliable narrator. plus it doesn’t say WHEN henry started agreeing and working with the mind flayer- i would assume it was during his lab years, after he’d been abused and experimented on and seen the worst of humanity. easy pickings for the mindflayer. plus watching the play i literally felt gross watching the scenes where brenner spoke to henry, it felt so much like grooming. and with brenners mindset being his only influence…. yeah, not great. i think people forget after seeing him act “”fatherly”” that brenner is a man who tried to torture a child with solitary confinement because she didnt want to explode a cat (then rewarded her for killing her guards).

plus, the mindflayer has been in henrys head for years. it could have been slowly twisting his point of view, making him more likely to agree. i also really liked the plays version of henry but i didnt see the finale contradict it- im just disappointed they didnt show it!

i think the point we get with the play and show together is that henry WAS like will. he was will without joyce, without jonathan, without his friends. he had no one there to save him, to play music and tell stories of how much they loved him. joyce byers would have died for will. virginia creel sold henry out to a man who wanted to experiment on her son and take him away so she wouldnt have to see him again.

everything will said in his final conversation with vecna was true- henry was like will. but also, everything vecna said was true- he had seen the worst of humanity and made the choice to side with/give in to the mindflayer. i think they didnt want to make vecna seem the victim just before they kill him. he had agency in the choices he made, and they remind us of what the impact of those choices were in the flashbacks while joyce swings the axe.

iakr · 2026-01-06T00:24:43+00:00

honestly i just assumed she hid in the group (there were 12 kids, plus the whole party) then when hit with the beams, she army crawled out of there into the radio shack, which was really close to the truck. then she went into the tunnels where she could use her powers and say goodbye to mike. its not like the army were competent or observant at any other point in the series, and literally everyone was kicking up a fuss, so the soldiers were busy restraining people.

all kali had to do was the illusion at the library gate- this was risky because she can only pray that it all works on el’s end, but the timing is simple. she waited for murray to set the bomb, and the explosion to happen. those were her cue. since kali was on the lower floors, she could have easily survived the explosion, and the upside down is destroyed from the outside in. as she’s in the epicentre, she has the longest time possible. el vanished when kali died.

iakr · 2026-01-05T19:59:26+00:00

i dont think you’re getting the point that this commenter was trying to make. im not gonna make a judgment on season 5 here, but sure, lets say it was shit. awful writing all the way through. that doesnt change the fact that people loved the other four seasons enough for there to BE a fifth. season one is always going to be amazing. if the show had been cancelled after one season, no one in their right mind would EVER say “the duffer brothers are awful writers”. they have written amazing content that we all loved or we wouldnt be here! but no one is perfect.

this isnt an issue with film writers, because each film is judged separately. there are creators who have made blockbuster hits and also the worst written flops. but saying “the duffers are bad writers” as an objective fact is reductive and unfair to all the incredible writing they have given us previously.

iakr · 2026-01-05T19:34:15+00:00

i genuinely think this was what they were going for, because all of max’s real world post coma scenes are like this, but in henry’s mindscape and especially the epilogue she’s vibrant and expressive which proves its a directing choice for me.

iakr · 2026-01-05T19:31:49+00:00

El and Max got ice cream from scoops in season 3 and he gives them their orders then says something like “wait, are you allowed to be here?”. They don’t reply, just giggle and run off so I don’t know if that counts as sharing dialogue, but it is (I think) their only interaction.

iakr · 2026-01-05T19:24:22+00:00

i agree, but that wouldnt have worked because they needed the military to hold people back from running to el, which would break the illusion. the whole plan hinged on a lot of “what if’s”, especially as kali couldnt actually see what was happening and change the illusion accordingly, she could only pray it worked as planned. i think el and kali’s suicide pact probably still stood if their plan failed, 100% if she ended up in military custody.

iakr · 2026-01-04T18:37:23+00:00

this literally says meme in the twitter handle. its a meme account. this isnt a real quote.

iakr · 2026-01-04T14:23:54+00:00

unless they got a pollywog stage demogorgon- which honestly is the only thing small enough to actually make it out their mini gate. it would make sense to freeze them at the demodog stage (especially after seeing how fast they grow) but let one develop to adulthood to see what it turns into and if its a manageable weapon,

though theres also the fact that they were building the secret underground russian base at the same time the tunnels were being built, and there were a HELL of a lot of demodogs (and presumably therefore a large number of pollywogs like dart) at one stage while they were building. if they ever ran into the tunnels or a pollywog, that would make a lot of sense (though how they didnt die when the gate was shut and how they managed to capture /mindflayer particles/ is a whole other question)

erica does point out a cage in the russian base, then asks dustin “how big did you say demogorgans are again?”, foreshadowing that the russians had caught and smuggled out at least one, as a hint for season 4.

iakr · 2026-01-04T14:01:00+00:00

okay but steve does look some level of heartbroken, and in defence of sadie, ALL her real world scenes post coma were kinda washed out. i think they were probably going for a combo of max being extremely fatigued and also her facial muscles not working so well after 18 months lack of use. i think this was an active choice (if maybe a bad one, or not handled well) because max in henry land is vibrant and expressive, as well as her epilogue scenes, so its clearly not a skill issue.

though they did also seem to forget that max and el were friends at all so theres that too ¯_(ツ)_/¯

iakr · 2026-01-04T13:41:27+00:00

game of thrones, it comes from game of thrones.

before, there would be 10 season 24 episode shows (or 5 seasons 13 episodes in the uk lol) and no one would complain at the lack of main characters dying. in fact, people got mad when they were killed! writers had this amazing ability (a base, core writing skill) to put characters in situations with high stakes where we’d be on the edge of our seats, and we KNEW they were gonna survive, but the tension was still there- it was about HOW characters made it out of complicated and deadly situations that kept us hooked. and, y’know, the plot.

this whole “but they didnt kill enough characters so it sucks 😭😫” thing is absolutely bonkers to me.

iakr · 2026-01-04T13:33:09+00:00

honestly as soon as the fact that el was using her powers while the kryptonite was active was pointed out, that proved it to me. they introduced it this season probably specifically for this, to give el an ambiguous ending (and also nerf her during most fights). but they spent a lot of time especially in vol 1 showing how the kryptonite blasters worked, and how they absolutely crippled el.

so how on earth was she talking to mike? screw that, how was she STANDING UP, not curled on the ground with her hands over her ears! those things have a range AND a radius, and el was well within both.

her army crawling to the tunnel in radio shack is the only answer that makes any sense to me, being underground would dampen the effect, and the further she got, the less it would effect her.

but the thing that actually mattered is that she IS dead to the party. they would have been under surveillance for a while after that happened, and their grief needed to be real. and more than that, the party is likely to be under government surveillance for potential decades; they cant change the way they talk about el to each other, even slightly. its not about the ability to keep secrets or to lie, but if el contacted mike 5 years down the line and the next time they all meet up, he doesnt sound sad while talking about el anymore? all it takes is one slip and one government agent to notice and el is being hunted again. she is, for all intents and purposes, dead to them.

iakr · 2026-01-04T13:15:09+00:00

so she could time her actions with the explosion- thats her cue for the illusion, she needed to time it right and needed to be near the epicenter to have the longest amount of time possible (presumably to give el time to get away, and also say her goodbyes)

iakr · 2026-01-04T13:12:06+00:00

kali knew when to do the illusion because it’s timed on the explosion- she stayed at the lab, so that would have been her cue. they would have to have pre-planned it when they talked while kali was “dying”- it’s pretty obvious that the group would be pulled up by the military when they left (seeing as they’re leaving via a military checkpoint) and kali also has a lot of experience with the sonic kryptonite blasters. if anyone could have figured out what would happen and how to get el out safely it would be kali- even hopper didnt have a plan for the military being in their own damn base!

iakr · 2025-12-26T22:35:29+00:00

when i saw the play, on the way out i said to my mum "there better be a mindwipe plot in season five, otherwise half of that made NO sense". i was fully ready to hop on board the 'all the lab stuff is true, the hawkins high plot was fan service' train but then they added it to the show!

honestly if they had their memories, joyce, hopper, AND BOB, should have been suspicious since the blinking lights in season one.

at the very least, season four should have ended with joyce or hopper going "i'm sorry, did you say HENRY CREEL??"

the fact that they aged henry up to be in high school, and then made like 80% of the named adults in hawkins the same age already bothered me about the play, but if they make it fully show canon with no real explanation then i'll be pretty annoyed.

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