Stranger Things Finale: Through the Paste of Nostalgia

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»Dad«: Eleven rebels against her foster father in »Stranger Things«

Photo: Courtesy of Netflix

It is finished.

After a hiatus of several weeks, Netflix has wrapped up the fourth season of »Stranger Things«, but it's still a long, loooong way to the finale.

So: it's best to stash a bucket of chips in front of the TV, a case of water is also advisable.

It is a well-known fact that beer is a driving force, and you can't afford to take unnecessary breaks here.

Only two episodes were missing, but what does that mean for this series monster?

Episode Eight entitled "Papa" is feature length, Episode Nine is called "Piggyback" and takes as much time as "The Dark Knight" or "Pulp Fiction": two and a half hours.

And the end, of course, is just a new beginning.

It's the series logic, dummy!

Nevertheless, one feels as if one has finally scaled the summit of Mount Everst, only to find that a new, as yet unknown massif looms just behind it.

Obviously we, the viewers, don't want it any other way, do we?

After the serialization of the blockbuster with its ever-expanding narrative universe, the blockbusterization of the series followed, which devoured ever larger budgets and now functions like its big brothers from the cinema in terms of attention economy.

This is worthwhile for the film studios and streaming services, because the risk of substances that have already proven to be mass-compatible appears more calculable and the tension can be increased from a marketing point of view.

In this respect, Netflix has made a small masterpiece in terms of marketing strategy with its artificial shortage shortly before the finale.

But that only works economically if the viewers are really enthusiastic, and that's obviously the case with various comic book adaptations and series like »Stranger Things«.

As if a very basic human need were being satisfied here: that for stories that are more uncertain than real life with its uncertainties.

The challenges for the characters are incomparably greater - the world as a whole always has to be saved - but so are the possibilities: superheroes have other powers with which they can intervene in the course of fate than the average Joe.

And even underdogs and underdogs can prove to be true heroes when they have an Eleven at their side.

It may be true that media use is fraying due to the many streaming services and the unmanageable range, that the audience is retreating deeper and deeper into the echo chamber that suits it.

But it is also true that there is a great longing for connecting substances, for the media campfire, where hands and hearts can be warmed with stories that tell of the good core of human beings, all monsters and all the horror of being thrown into a hard world Despite.

Man is good at heart

»Stranger Things« fulfills this need perfectly.

There is also fighting here with sawed-off shotguns and trash can lids that have been converted into signs.

But even more effective in the fight against evil are tears of knowledge, emotional revelations and vows of friendship and love.

This season's main heroine, Max, battles warty creep Vecna ​​by hiding from his telepathic snares in fond memories.

Man is good at heart, this message trumpets the fourth season more pathetically than ever, and the 80s are unmistakably the foil for the huge longing for the good America, in which people stand together in disasters and smear peanut butter sandwiches.

It is bitterly ironic that the decade in which Ronald Reagan sown the seeds of today's discord in the United States becomes a nostalgic particle accelerator in »Stranger Things«.

But nostalgia is never about the accuracy of the memory, but about its emotional potency.

And given the current tangle of crises, the 80s look wonderfully cute with their neatly tidy Cold War and their hairdo crimes.

A bad-tempered, slightly stiff-hipped elderly gentleman

Oh, you've been wanting to know the whole time, how are you, the last two episodes?

I really can't tell you that without delving into the depths of the story, and that in turn would trigger the spoiler radicals.

Suffice it to say: the secret highlight of the season for me was the last episode

the break, in which the (far too) many narrative threads were masterfully brought together and mixed with a real revelation.

After that it goes on as usual, Vecna ​​has to die and just doesn't want to, although he always seems to me like a bad-tempered, somewhat stiff-waisted older gentleman with blocked sinuses, at least that's what his voice sounds like.

Someone has to die too, but who isn't the biggest surprise.

When you look at it, you feel a little like wading through paste, it all goes very slowly and you can hardly move.

And when you get to the end, you already know, everything starts all over again.

Maybe you should clear a whole shelf for chips with season five in mind.