At exactly 3:15pm on Friday the 27th of October 2017, a school bell dutifully rang within central Edinburgh, and my thirteen-year-old self was at long last dismissed from the final period of the week. Having enduringly escaped from what was, at the time, the least of my life’s priorities (that being my seemingly boring and insignificant education), I bounded with the speed and voracity of a galvanised knight towards my glorious mode of homeward bound transport, the number 45 bus.
I sat upright for the entire journey with my heart in my mouth, blood pumping through my trembling body to the beat of Should I Stay or Should I Go by The Clash, which to the dismay of my fellow commuters, was blasting obnoxiously through my wired headphones. I felt every second that passed as if it were an entire aeon, and by the time the driver pulled up to my stop, I was already sprinting towards my front door. After farcically fumbling to find my keys, I stepped inside and threw myself down on the sofa. There it was, awaiting me on the screen, the most anticipated audio-visual experience of my life to date: Stranger Things 2.
Because I was a child and had nothing better to do, I greedily consumed the entire season within one sitting, only briefly excusing myself to attend to the necessary bathroom and snack breaks that would allow my body to function. These momentary gaps would have been the extent to which I was willing to peel myself away from the screen, and it alarms me significantly that nothing since has ever quite captivated my undivided attention in such a way.
I was deeply, irrevocably obsessed with the show from that Halloween forth, entrenching myself unashamedly within the deepest, cringiest recesses of the fandom. I started my own fan page, (which rather disturbingly I have lost access to so can never delete), and I succumbed to every Stranger Things marketing tactic made visible to my teenage eyes of indulgence. I asked for Stranger Things cookbooks, figurines, posters, t-shirts, even socks for the Christmas and Birthday that followed. It was all quite ridiculous, but it also meant a lot at the time.
The point in embarrassing myself by sharing this, is to illustrate that I am not, and have never been a casual Stranger Things viewer. I feel a sense of genuine, palpable nostalgia for each season, and can confidently map their release dates onto an epoch of my own youth. I first watched the show as it was released in 2016 and I feel in many ways that I have grown up alongside the main cast.
With the first volume of Stranger Things 5 having been released last week, I was heartily prepared to connect with these characters one last time in an emotional send-off, that would reflect this poignantly shared growth. Instead, I was bitterly disappointed to realise that Stranger Things has failed to mature alongside its original wave of devoted fans, and even worse, that I am clearly no longer its target audience. Is this punishment for hiding all my merch at the back of my wardrobe, I wonder?
I am aware that this claim makes me sound like an out of touch and archaic old fossil, because Stranger Things is literally the most popular show in the world, but I am selfish and delusional enough to admit that I feel deeply and personally betrayed by the Duffer Brothers. Stranger Things 5 is in my expert opinion, quite bad, and has irreversibly dissolved the atmospheric brilliance and character mechanics of its earlier seasons, all in the name of scale and spectacle.
My subsequent identity crisis regarding this realisation occurred when I logged onto Twitter hoping to find some likeminded critics, only to realise that the Stranger Things fandom are all closer to the age I was when I first watched it than the age I am now. This younger wave of fans absolutely adored the blockbuster direction of the final installation, and this infuriated me. I almost angrily tweeted from a burner account, ‘This fandom is not what it used to be, and the show isn’t either,’ but I thankfully pinched myself and realised it was time to get a grip.
My second wakeup call stemmed from the fact that because I am now a grown woman with adult responsibilities, I was unable to binge the series. Naturally, I deleted all social media for several days to avoid spoilers, yet I was still genuinely terrified that somehow someone at work would decide to reveal the plot to me before I had a chance to watch it myself. This in fact, did not happen, because all my peers stopped watching a few seasons ago and no longer care. My paranoia was pathetically misplaced.
It was after these unfortunate events, that I was faced with the harrowing fact that I am an old git who has outgrown Stranger Things. I suppose this is what happens when I age a decade and comparatively, only a few years pass for the characters within the show. Still, I am feeling rather forlorn about the whole thing. I am not sure when exactly the right moment to have said goodbye to the show was, but it has clearly already passed.
Now, the most noble next step in my Stranger Things journey would be to try and recreate the end of Toy Story 3, and pass all my hideous merch onto a younger, more critically forgiving fan, but for now, I’m not sure I am quite ready to let go. I think I will just let it all gather dust in my childhood bedroom. Such is the ironic way for a show literally founded on the capitalisation of nostalgia.
Honor Kerr (she/her)
qmunicatemagazine.co.uk 