I Finally Watched "Stranger Things" and I’m Obsessed

*Possible Spoilers ahead! Read with caution if you’re one of the few remaining stragglers like me who’s just crawling out of the Upside Down to watch the Netflix phenomenon.

A week ago I woke up with a mild headache, my phone full of “Stranger Things” memes both from friends and in my social media feed, and mind swimming with heartbreaking moments I can’t unsee. It’s my own fault for staying up far past my bedtime to finish watching the season four finale of a show I never, ever, in a million years thought I’d watch. Much less binge—and fall in love with.

Kudos to you, Duffer Brothers, for conjuring characters and spinning such tales that even this scaredy cat dared to brave watching because I just had to know. I had to know what was happening next because they made me care about a bunch of kids from Indiana.

Watching the show for me is akin to Eddie Munson facing the Demobats. Standing my ground, facing my fears—and there were many; spiders?! Why people!?—and learning a bit more about myself than I anticipated from a Netflix hit I’d avoided since it debuted nine years ago.

“It’s all fake, mom,” my teenager frequently assured me when I agitatedly yelled at the TV, sensing the Bad Shit that was about to go down. In an effort to join in on the current zeitgeist conversation with his own crew, he’s the reason I was in this mess to begin with. Faced with two weeks until the fifth and final season dropped, he pleaded we dive into the show I’d staunchly avoided, and we undertook watching the first four, start to finish, together.

We really do do anything for our children, don’t we?

There’s no one else I would agree to watch horror for. Nothing like some good mother-son bonding time watching Demogorgons stalk, the Mind Flayer decimate, and Vecna haunt. Over thirty-four episodes I honed-in on my fears, and they weren’t what I expected going in.

The Big Bad Isn’t Always All (and Who) We Crack Him Up to Be

Vecna. He should be the monster I feared the most. Jamie Campbell Bower nailed the paranormal mastermind, don’t get me wrong. Like Freddy before him, he expertly dredged up one’s darkest feelings to use to his advantage. But compared to the Mind Flayer’s monster form of season three?! That gory spider takes the Eggos.

Horror gory is different from Sci-Fi gory, you see. Sci-Fi, I love. This? This was a faceless creature, an evolution of the particle spider monster—like those moments in the peripheral that when you finally look, vanish, and therefore haunt our subconscious more than any attack our conscious self. While Matt and Ross Duffer draw from Stephen Spielberg and Stephen King alike throughout the show to achieve that fine balance of paranormal, horror, sci-fi and dramatic coming-of-age genres, it’s the ephemeral spider I most feared.

That’s when I realized the craftiness in the writing: While one singular villain preyed on fears, it was the variety of villains to ensure there’s something for everyone (you were more right than you could possible know, Ted) an ongoing theme of the show in character, storylines, and genres alike. Though Vecna emerged as the antagonistic puppeteer, once I saw where he came from, his true original form, he lost his edge in holding power over my fears. Interesting.

Along with the spider monster, it was watching the core cast age, their onscreen friendships grow and morph. Some painfully. Looking at my own kiddo across the couch, that’s where my deepest fear came to light. The more you look, like the particle Mind Flayer up close, the harder it becomes to see clearly because life gets more complicated as we get older. There are more grey areas.

We can’t protect them from it all.

Coming of Age is Just One Big D&D Game

As is life, in general.

I might play D&D occasionally, and the references were a wonderful touchpoint to tame the show’s terror by skewing it into a version I could handle. Right along with the moments of levity, the friendships between all the kids, and fantastic ’80s nostalgia.

See season three especially; “I’ll be back …” Watch it, and then tell me you don’t see that connection.

The people we lose touch with, growing pains in childhood friendship, absent parents and the helicopter ones, first love, and the reality that life can be unfair. Death comes for us all. Not in the “Final Destination” sense, but in the way that life just gets more … real, as we grow up. People leave us in different ways. We can’t control any of it. All we can do is play the game, try to have fun while we’re doing it, and never loose hope.

It reminded me that this time is all fleeting, like sitting there with my kiddo, watching an age gap-bridging show together that both appealed to his sense of adventure and my addiction to great love stories.

And there are many in the show. Not all romantic, the love bonds between the friends and more at the heart of the show is perhaps why ‘Stranger Things’ caught on and not only survived streaming hell, but flourished to reign supreme in that strange microcosm of Hollywood. Sure, audiences return for the thrills, but I believe it’s about the heart.

You were a thousand percent right, Will. You need the heart, or the rest all falls apart.

The Soundtrack to Our Lives Is What We Make It

A quick note on the music in “Stranger Things”: It’s pitch perfect. The soundtrack embraces the ‘80s, bringing viewers back to their own memories of the decade or moments those timeless tracks played in their own lives over the years. It’s even a whole plot point in season four.

Music can provide a strong link to memory-evoking emotion.

Composers Michael Stein and Kyle Dixon scored the show beautifully. Their work enhanced by the immortal lyrics and strains of Peter Gabriel’s “Heroes,” Metallica’s “Puppet Master,” Limahl’s “Never Ending Story,” “Every Breath You Take” by The Police, and the one my teenager most poignantly hums around the kitchen now: Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill.” I’ll never not hear the song and think of the 2025 holiday season ever again.

Music is quintessential to our lives. Not just carried in our pockets on our phones, it has the power to soothe, excite, conjure up memory, elicit emotion, and bring people together. Just like good television. Deeply personal, even when experienced together. A touchpoint to open dialogue and understanding.

Another thing I think “Stranger Things” did really well was develop understanding—even for the Bad Guys.

Bullies Aren’t Born, They’re Made

Billy, you deserved better. Fight me on that one if you will, but I stand by my statement. Along with the Upside Down monsters, there were the Real Life ones our Hawkins kids had to face. Dr. Brenner and Billy Hargrove at the forefront of those.

Each character had his own redemption arc in a way, each stepping up to save Eleven to some degree. While Brenner was driven by ego and science, Billy was driven by being the bullied. A case for those on the side of nurture, instead of nature. Because, well, he wasn’t. I’m a mom, and Billy broke my heart because of that.

On the Converse heels (Eleven’s favorite) of that however, there were more bullies along the way who met their demise that I ashamedly cheered on. The interesting question there is, from a screenwriting perspective, is it because we didn’t get the backstory? So, they’re “plain evil”? Or is it that within the context of the story, sometimes, people can be monsters because their moral compass is so inherently off … there’s no possible redemption?

In the case of the jock, they just … believe their own bullshit and are emblematic of how humans can sometimes be far scarier than any mythic monster. Therefore, at what point does one blame nature vs nurture?

The Future Doesn’t Always Look the Way We Planned, But That Doesn’t Mean It Isn’t What We Need

Dear Steve Harrington, you Single Mom harder than anyone I know. Okay while that isn’t entirely true, I do love his character arc.

Writers take note: creating solid character arcs pays off.

We get to watch his character mature emotionally while the boys he babysits mature physically. Steve has a vision for his own future, and only season five will tell if he’ll get it or not, but based on how far this character has come, his current state may not be what he thought it’d look like, but it also ain’t so bad being so full of the found family he’s collected along the way.

Speaking of: Hopper and Eleven. Joyce. Karen Wheeler. TBD on Will—oh, I have high hopes for you, Will! And so many more in Hawkins who thought life would go one way, but worked with what they had to create something, dare I say, better.

Better in the sense that while it’s good to have dreams, it’s even better to be flexible and open to what love, life, and success look like.

A solid mantra for writers to remember, as well.

Now, while Netflix bombards audiences coast to coast and around the globe with a full-scale “Stranger Things” marketing campaign from the streets of London to your local supermarket aisle in celebration of season five dropping, we’re all running up that hill together. The memes and conspiracy story theories filling up our Instagram feeds worthy of any good energy monster from the Upside Down.

So, go turn on those Christmas lights, grab your nail bat and bestie, and let’s get ready to have our hearts shredded all over again.

*Feature photo from "Stranger Things" (Netflix)