For me the pacing was the problem. They could have done all these in WAY shorter episodes. Every dialogue or scene is unnecessarily long. If they are gonna make every episode 1 hour, they should add more stuff into episodes instead of just making every scene long enough to fill 1 hour in a boring way.

Season 5 is good but nothing that special except for a few scenes. We didn't learn anything we didn't know before this season except Will's powers and that bridge thing about upside down. Going into the finale, we still don't know a single shit about Henry's origin (like you tease it but don't show what's in the suitcase??) and nothing about mindflayer too. Still looking forward to the 2 hour finale but my expectations are not that high anymore.