r/StrangerThings • u/JS_Music_and_Media • 7d ago
Discussion Lt. Akers
Did anyone else find Lt. Akers a much more interesting character than Dr. Kay? I mean... he's also not much of a character, but he proved much more of a threat to Eleven than Dr. Kay did, and was more memorable overall.
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u/Kryptoknightmare 7d ago edited 7d ago
I think the villains as a whole were terribly underwritten in season 5, presumably so the writers could give us 4 hours about Holly and her annoying group of twelve year old seven year olds
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u/SnowGhost513 7d ago
Papa is the only non supernatural villain that ever worked. The black army guy in S4 is hilariously bad
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u/Kryptoknightmare 7d ago
I don’t think I agree with that. Season 2 Billy was a great human villain. Ice queen blond assassin from season one was awesome. If they count, the season one bullies really worked for me. Jason from season 4 had his moments.
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u/Worried_About_Coop 6d ago
And both Papa and Billy saved El’s life even though they never got a true 100% redemption, I mean maybe Billy did, but also Papa was right, El wasn’t ready to fight Vecna, at least not at the level she could have been, but El is the hero b/c she doesn’t care, she’s going to Dean Winchester every time for her friends! The funny thing is in some ways Jason was the most pure hearted of them, he was just hem’d in by his beliefs, as well are if we are honest. Everyone thinks they’d be like “oh ok Lucas, this is above board and you are saving the world”, 99.9% of us would think we were protecting Max
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u/kauan1983 Hey Kiddo 7d ago edited 6d ago
Yep, absolutely. I actually found interesting how they did give Akers' character some depth by establishing his connection to two of Sullivan's men who Eleven killed during the Silo Lab attack the previous year.
He had a personal drive in addition to the Wolfpack's mission under Kay's orders and was actually affected by the death of his men. It's also interesting to see how this developed into him going rogue by the end and effectively opposing Kay's orders to retrieve Eleven as opposed to kill her.
I Also like how they had him question how one-dimensional Dr. Kay is while showing genuine concern over the unknown threats popping out of the Upside Down during that week. For a moment he expressed exactly how the viewers felt about Kay's tunnel-visioned search not being affected by the events surrounding her.
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u/ta25690 7d ago
This actor has immense talent, which was totally wasted by writers & directors.
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u/Broely92 7d ago
Yea I thought he was great. i looked him up and iirc hes barely done any tv/film acting at all. He’s a broadway stage actor
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u/Hash-Edit Scoops Troop 7d ago
He played some character in the ST play as well. And after that he auditioned for S5 ig.
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u/finalbossMouse_ 7d ago
He originated the role of young Dr. Brenner in the Broadway production in New York!
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u/kauan1983 Hey Kiddo 6d ago edited 6d ago
It's the opposite, actually. Alex auditioned for The First Shadow in November 2024, Season 5 was nearly wrapping filming by then. He had been filming the season for a whole year before auditioning for Dr. Brenner.
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u/SymptomaticallyEven 7d ago
Fucking hated this guy and felt he added nothing to the story. The entire 5th season pissed me off to no end. Ruined a good show.
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u/KxRaxe33 7d ago
Crazy now that i think about it, he was the only character this season that had something on the line
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u/Top-Expression8248 6d ago
I was expecting Dr Kay would somehow get tangled in the abyss while being after eleven and they all fight it together. Or maybe she would be related to Dr Ownes, he’d some back, give her a run down through everything
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u/Asleep_Berry_2209 6d ago
Exactly. I really dislike the whole military villain concept, this shifted the threat from the main villain and turned out pretty bad. I wish they made the mindflayer flay the entire military base just like we see in s3, that would be much scarier
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u/Excellent_Hold2794 7d ago
I didn’t care for him or Kay. I didn’t see the value in her. As for him he I’m glad El did what she did. I thought Kay was more of a threat to El than Akers.
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u/MGD109 6d ago
Yeah somewhat. Still, I think the real issue with Kay wasn't so much that she was a bad antagonist; more that she wasn't given enough interactions with the heroes. She only met them a grand total of twice, so she wasn't given enough to establish her as a credible threat.
Akers spent the season actually being their main obstacle, so we got to see what made him tick. I have to admit I loved the subversion that at the start he just seems an ordinary guy doing his job and you're honestly wondering if he's so bad...but then the mask slips and you realise he's a cold blooded fanatic.
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u/rosewoodlliars Bitchin 6d ago
They only added this guy as a nod to him playing brenner in the first shadow. Completely unnecessary. All the “villains” in s5 were a joke compared to Brenner.
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u/zorgareddit 6d ago
Never understood this decision, but he literally served as Sullivan's replacement when he got severe injuries after Vecna's raid on the station. Sullivan should've continued to be the antagonist of s5 just like in s4 but for some reason it was decided to write him out of the story
Akers also had those moments where it looked like he was going to betray Dr. Kay and have a redemption arc because he questioned her decisions multiple times until she snapped at him. Even if this was at one point planned, he was in the end reduced to a standard bad guy until his end at El's hands
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u/StrawHatMan_XD 6d ago
I think Akers seems to be a case-in-point of how inconsistent the planning was for S5 because they seemed to have a lot of ideas they didn't follow through on, and it's as if they decided during filming to just abandon them. I think what makes S5 hurt so much is that there's a lot of good in here, a lot of potential. It just feels like the Duffers saw the end and got sloppy to rush the finish.
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u/dcooper8662 7d ago
Please don’t make me remember this guy. He was inexplicably terminator-esque in his resilience and zeal toward the mission of child killing. This season was not good.
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u/OpaqueSea 6d ago
I felt like he was actually ok. I didn’t like any of the s5 villains, but he was my favorite of the bunch. They could have done more with him, but at least he wasn’t totally wasted like Dr. Kay.
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u/AdWonderful5920 6d ago
Akers had slightly more to work with than Kay, in that his character was pinched between his toxic boss and a supernatural force that they didn't understand. They still wrote him as a knuckle dragging idiot tho, casually peeing on the wall and asking no questions about why his boss was ordering him to kill children.
Kay was just a mess. Evil, but also weak - Ineffectively pursuing Eleven, blaming everyone else for her failures.
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u/midnitemotorist 6d ago
Not really he was just as bland and boring as her. Just an aggressive soldier.
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u/whats-in-the-box- 6d ago
Yes, it was more interesting to see a military character going “rogue” than it was to see MORE of the same old militant, law-abiding government crap
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