Stranger Things: Season 5 Vol.1 Review

This article contains some spoilers. If you want the full story, watch seasons one through four of Stranger Things on Netflix

BY: ETHAN CHAHINE / STAFF WRITER

(Image Credit: GeekTyrant)

On Nov. 26, 2025, the first half of the fifth season of Netflix’s hit series Stranger Things debuted. 

After three years of waiting, fans are finally brought back to Hawkins, Indiana. The year is now 1987. The main cast is slowly reintroduced to the audience through an opening set piece of the Byers and Wheelers eating breakfast together. As they leave for the day, we see their town has been surrounded by the US military as they are quarantining the citizens as they perform experiments on a large opening to the Upsidedown. 

We are then brought to one of my first issues with the writing of this season, and that is Dustin’s interactions with almost every character. Dustin had been previously written to be a very sweet character, but from the very beginning of this season, he has been very passive-aggressive in every comment he makes. 

He makes passive-aggressive comments towards Steve throughout the entire first half of the season and is generally just disrespectful to a lot of the other characters. I have discussed this season with others, and it has been brought up that this may be due to the recent loss of Eddie Munson. I would argue that, given who Eddie was as a person and Dustin's insistence on keeping his memory alive, he shouldn’t be shunning people like he is portrayed to be doing, as that is the exact opposite of everything Eddie stood for as a character and everything we know about Dustin as a character. Of course, this is subject to change as we have half of the season remaining, but we have yet to see any real character advancement for him throughout the season. 

The second problem I have with this season is best demonstrated in one of the first scenes we see with the main group of boys at the high school, and that is how bad the dialogue can be at times. A beginning scene shows a group of bullies picking on Dustin, and we see Lucas, Mike, and Will standing up for him. While this scene is sweet, especially considering how excluded Dustin has felt from the group for the past 2 seasons, the dialogue feels as though it is ripped from a low-budget Disney Channel sitcom. 

Later on in the episode, we see Holly Wheeler communicating with Mr. Whatsit, a mysterious figure warning younger children of monsters, and we are the introduced to the crawls, a series of expeditions to the Upsidedown done by Hopper, during this one communication with him is lost and Will Byers gets the sense that something bad is going to happen with the Wheelers family. 

Then, right at the beginning of the second episode, we are greeted with one of the most intense action scenes in the whole series. A demogorgon attacks the Wheeler house, and Ted and Karen Wheeler are terribly wounded while trying to fight it off. This scene left a great impression on me, as we haven’t seen regular people trying to engage with the creatures from the Upsidedown, and these fights were brutal. This scene added stakes to the series that haven’t been present for a while, and it actually made me feel as though an important character could actually die instead of being miraculously saved by plot devices. 

Throughout the whole series, there has been a trend of characters being introduced just to die, but in this episode, we see the main characters fighting and ultimately losing, and that built the suspense very high for the following portion of the series. Ultimately, the demogorgon escapes to the Upsidedown with Holly while El chases them down.

Continuing, Mike and Nancy seek answers from their mother about Mr. Whatsit, El, and Hopper are reunited in the Upsidedown, and Will discovers Robin with her girlfriend. Eventually, Will and Robin team up to try and use Will’s sense of the Upsidedown to discover the location of Hopper and El, and this ultimately leads to some of the best character interactions in the series.

 Will and Robin, as two LGBTQ individuals in the 1980’s don’t have many people they are able to confide in, and the way they are written shows a deeper level of understanding of that by the writers. Will's identity is never flat-out said, but everything we need to know gets presented, which is to me a perfect demonstration of storytelling for a closeted individual. It was satisfying for his character to see him be able to have a sort of role model that shares that trait with him, and you can see how it inspires him later during the climax of the season. 

Unfortunately, to me, this is where the season reaches its peak, as compared to the second episode, the third and fourth weren’t as good. The protagonist learn of Mr. Whatsits’ plan and attempts to get to his next target, Derek Turnbow. First, they ultimately succeed and use Derek as an in to attempt to save the rest of the children Mr. Whatsit is targeting, as they had been gathered by the military for protection. While this occurs, Holly discovers herself in a house with Mr. Whatsit in the Upsidedown, he leaves, and she is told to stay.

 She does not do this, however, and follows a map she believes to be from Mr. Whatsit to Max. Max explains how she ended up in the Upsidedown and how she saw Lucas trying to reach her. This moment spoke to me as their relationship was one of my favorite parts of the series, as their chemistry felt in no way forced, and the characters felt naturally right for each other. Seeing Lucas by her side in the hospital bed made me feel something for the characters, and that is ultimately one of the most important things a story can do: inspire emotion. 

The first volume's conclusion was fairly underwhelming to me. El and Hopper escape the Upsidedown and break into a facility, believing it to be the location of Vecna, and after a brief fight, discover El’s sister Kali from season two. The plan to rescue the kids from the military failed after 12 demogorgons tear through military personnel when Will, in a very Deus Ex Machina fashion, kills them using his previously unused powers. This moment felt very off to me. It felt very out of place for Will to just be given powers seemingly from nowhere just to save the day, and we aren’t given a very good explanation as to how he obtained them. The best parts of the final two episodes from this season were the humor and the very human moments we saw, particularly between Lucas and Max, and Will and Robin. 

Ultimately, while I did enjoy this part of the series, I found it to be very flawed, more so than what we have come to expect from this series, and I felt there was a noticeable dip in quality in the writing. Visually, however, this is likely the most impressive season yet; at no point did the visuals distract from the story, and they held up consistently throughout. I do hope the second half of the season addresses some of the complaints I have, and while I do believe this season has its faults, I continue to look forward to it.