The fifth and final season of Stranger Things, the only show that could get away with making fans wait this long between seasons, is back with eight new episodes…eventually. The show has dropped four episodes as of this writing, and I’m here to walk you through the first two: “The Crawl” and “The Vanishing of Holly Wheeler.” Beware MAJOR SPOILERS below!
“The Crawl” reacquaints us with the enormous cast. Moving right along, “The Vanishing of Holly Wheeler” throws us right into the thick of things as the malevolent Vecna abducts Mike Wheeler’s younger sister and brings her to the Upside Down. Let’s get into it.
Worked: The premiere does a great job of catching us up
Last time on Stranger Things…
Credit: Netflix
The first half of “The Crawl” is a masterclass in catch-up. In a cascading series of quick scenes, we learn exactly what’s happened since the end of season 4, when Vecna punched a hole through reality and the Upside Down started spilling into the sleepy town of Hawkins, IN. The rundown:
- The military papered over the giant crack in the earth and is now studying what’s going on. Our heroes, obviously, aren’t working with them.
- The Byers family is now living with the Wheeler family, complete with massive daily breakfasts.
- Eleven is training with Hopper and Joyce and now has more control over her psychokinetic powers than ever before.
- Dustin is broken up about Eddie’s death last season and has gone full emo.
- The group doesn’t know whether Vecna is alive or dead and is sneaking into the Upside Down on the regular to search for him. That’s what a “crawl” is.
Some of these updates are delivered in rapid-fire fashion by Robin, who’s now a local radio DJ. I was impressed with how quickly and efficiently this stretch caught us up to speed, and with how they found fun new roles for every member of this now-huge cast.
Worked: The show speeds directly into the story
This time on Stranger Things…
We only have eight episodes to work with, so the show wastes no time getting to the good stuff. Little Holly Wheeler is abducted right at the top of the second episode in a grisly scene that puts both of her parents in the hospital, so the stakes are raised sky-high very quickly.
From there, it’s not long until Eleven and Hopper are both tooling around the Upside Down looking for her; Nancy and Mike are at the hospital gathering clues from their mom; Steve, Jonathan, and Dustin are riding around in a van trying to establish communication with the Upside Down; and Will and Robin trying to use Will’s connection to the Upside Down to pinpoint Vecna’s location. The show often breaks its characters up into smaller groups that will converge later in the season, and it does that here in record time.
Didn’t work: Little time for the characters to breathe
Will Byers remains a thankless exposition machine
All that said, it’s a little disappointing that the show went to the trouble of setting up a new status quo and then immediately shattered it. I would’ve liked to spend some time with the kids at school, with Robin and Steve at the radio station, with the combined Byers-Wheeler family; how does everyone feel about how their lives are going? But like I said, we only have eight episodes to work with. The rapid pace is a blessing and a curse.
The show still manages to cram in moments of character development, but they’re not all created equal. Jonathan and Steve are now competing for Nancy’s attention, and there’s a cute scene where they race to climb to the top of a very tall antenna. Hopper and Eleven have a nice father-daughter moment in the Upside Down, but it feels like it would have worked better before things got really serious; as it stands, the show has to slacken the pace to fit it in. Will has a good moment where he sees Robin kissing her girlfriend and looks like he might be having an epiphany about himself, but mostly his job is to stare into the distance and deliver exposition about the nature of the Upside Down. And Lucas is mainly confined to sitting by the bedside of the still-comatose Max, wishing she would wake up.
Although I did like Lucas’ little zinger when he and Mike were spying on the soldiers: “Snipers chew gum.” And Dustin’s struggle with his grief is affecting. The show fits in what it can, despite the lack of room.
Didn’t work: Clunky leaps of logic
“We have to fix the flux capacitor” is only a slight exaggeration
Credit: © 2025 Netflix, LLC
Stranger Things is made with a lot of love, but it’s never had airtight plotting. There are a couple of moments in “The Vanishing of Holly Wheeler” where characters arrive at conclusions mostly because the script needs them to, not because it makes much sense.
For instance, Robin pieces together that Will is an “antenna” that’s sensitive to Vecna’s presence based on stray bits of information even Will himself, who’s lived with this stuff for years, hadn’t put together. And Mike, working mostly off vibes and hunches, figures out that Holly’s imaginary friend “Mr. Whatsit” might be the key to understanding why Vecna took her. This is all pretty harmless, but I rolled my eyes a bit.
Right: That ’80s look
Thanks for everything, Diana Ross
Credit: © 2025 Netflix, LLC
With so much happening, I doubt the show will have much time to luxuriate in its ’80s setting this year; a stray Back to the Future reference from Robin is about all we get, although I suppose you could count the presence of Terminator icon Linda Hamilton as a hard-nosed government scientist as an ’80s reference. That said, the looks are as wonderfully garish as ever.
Eleven, our warrior princess, ventures into the demons’ den wearing a pair of leggings and high-cut jogging shorts. I wouldn’t be surprised if she wears that outfit all season. Nancy’s blood-splattered pink pastel sweater evokes ’80s slasher movies, and the scene where Mike’s mom drowns her sorrows with white wine and Abba is so campy it almost ruins what’s supposed to be a serious sequence.
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A few wrongs and a lot of rights
There were a bunch of little things that irritated me throughout the first two episodes. How huge is Eleven’s obstacle course that 12 minutes and 30 seconds is a respectable time? Where are they getting all the pumpkins for her to blow up? Does Robin have to come up with accurate music trivia every time she sends a coded message out over the airwaves? And how could Karen not hear her daughter screaming as the Demogorgon tore into the house? “Fernando” isn’t that good a song.
But these are little nitpicks. Mostly I’m happy to be watching the series again, and am looking forward to more (super-long) episodes in the near future. The next three episodes drop on Christmas Day, with the series finale dropping on New Year’s Eve. Until then, check out these other shows that may beat Stranger Things at its own game.
Release Date
2016 – 2025-00-00
Network
Netflix
Showrunner
Matt Duffer, Ross Duffer
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Millie Bobby Brown
Jane ‘Eleven’ Hopper
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Finn Wolfhard
Mike Wheeler
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Gaten Matarazzo
Dustin Henderson
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Caleb McLaughlin
Lucas Sinclair
