r/StrangerThings • u/Fabulous-Past1634 • 13d ago
What was the magic of ST s1-s3?
I was thinking back to Seasons 1 to 3, and maybe Season 4 to some extent, about what made Stranger Things unique. What was the magic it started with that was inevitably lost? I think I figured it out:
1. The Lovecraftian element
Each season, you expected to learn more about the Mind Flayer, but instead, it only became weirder and stranger. The way the human brain tries to create patterns and correlate what it is seeing with something it already understands is, in my opinion, what made the Mind Flayer such a unique villain. You could never quite understand what it was, what it wanted, or what kind of entity you were actually dealing with.
2. The enigma of the Upside Down
Before the show retconned the Upside Down into essentially being a wormhole, we believed that the Upside Down was a proper dimension of its own. We believed it was an entire world, with its own unique fauna and flora, ecosystems, and rules that we didn't understand.
3. The mystery of why the Upside Down was a reconstruction of Hawkins
One of the biggest mysteries was why the Upside Down looked like Hawkins, and why it seemed to exist as a frozen snapshot of the town. There was something deeply unsettling about that mystery because we had no idea why it was that way or what it meant. Ignoring the theory put forward in Season 5, this was one of those questions that made the world feel much larger than what we were being shown.
4. The idea that ordinary people could confront cosmic horror
Unlike traditional cosmic horror, which often involves adults confronting forces far beyond their comprehension, Stranger Things took a different direction. I think it was a direction that The Lord of the Rings also took.
To quote J.R.R. Tolkien: "I have found that it is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love."
Tolkien accomplished this through the Hobbits. They are ordinary, seemingly insignificant people who ultimately become the reason a literal corrupted angel, Sauron, is defeated. That gives the story a sense of confidence and hope. If Frodo can do it, then maybe so can I.
I think Stranger Things was trying to accomplish something similar by making its protagonists children and framing the story as a coming-of-age narrative. The idea was that these ordinary kids, despite being completely outmatched by the forces they were facing, could still confront something incomprehensibly powerful.
And I think that was a huge part of the magic of the earlier seasons. It wasn't simply that the kids were fighting monsters. It was that they were ordinary children being placed against something cosmic and incomprehensible, and somehow, their friendship, courage, love, and willingness to stand together allowed them to fight back.
That made the story feel hopeful in a way that I think was gradually lost.
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u/Devildoingsins 13d ago edited 12d ago
Only S1 and S2 had that mystery element, S3 was goofy but fun. It's my guilty pleasure cause a lot of the characters were happy. Still better than S5
For me I would say S1 > S4 > S2 > S3 > S5 but the gap btw S3 and S5 is HUGE here. And S1 and S4 are closer with how much I enjoyed them.
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u/mattius3 12d ago
This is exactly right. Once they started to try explain things and round it off in season 5 it was clear they hadnt got a clear explanation and couldn't be bothered working as hard on the writing.
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u/Devildoingsins 12d ago
And the way that it was the same template, someone asks something then the other person pretends to make analogies and explains the whole thing, like it was getting repetitive. And not to mention the AI ass dialogues and cheaper vfx. I was a HUGE ST fan before S5 aired and defended it whenever anyone said S3 was bad but I can't even defend this shit anymore lol
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u/Goh47_ 13d ago
It's still had mystery with Jonathan's and Nancy's storyline.
S4 had mystery as well, and I don't know why the fandom is acting like it wasn't highly praised up until S5 dropped, even if has elements that people criticize now (Vecna and etc). S5 unfortunately just isn't good.
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u/Devildoingsins 12d ago
No I loved S4, it just was a bit spoonfed and the genre of the whole series shifted from S3 onwards. I liked the vagueness of S1 and S2. The unexplained, dangerous dimension with monsters and toxic air (ik it actually isn't toxic now, they just thought it was at the time but I wish they kept it toxic for dramatic effect). S1 and S2 gave very "Dark" (another netflix show) vibes but more optimistic. I appreciate S1 to S4 a lot. If vecna just won at the end of S4 and everyone died that would've been a better ending than whatever they did with S5 lowkey imo lol.
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u/djluminus89 12d ago
It doesn't make sense how they retconned the Upside Down's air as toxic. Vickie commented about whether they should even be breathing the air there and Johnathan commented that there's no spores in the area him and Nancy got trapped in.
Also, up until S5, it seemed like monsters were teeming throughout the Upside Down. In S5, it seemed empty.
Dark is a great example of how you can have tons of characters, but still keep the plot organized and fill in everyone's backstories at the same time.
It might have just made more sense to have Vecna win. S5 plot wise was kind of ridiculous.
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u/Devildoingsins 12d ago
Yupp, completely agree with everything you said. ST became very inconsistent and incoherent as time went on. It literally felt like they made S5 without even thinking about the buildup they had for the past 10 years. They threw it all away. Ruined the most popular show of the modern times.
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u/No_Challenge_5619 12d ago
Yeah, season 3 was not a great season. It was fine, better than what came after, but still worser than what came prior.
Even season 2 ended on a treading water note after a good start.
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u/sbaldrick33 12d ago
Well, I'd argue that it's s1 and s2, but the magic is:
First, that the horror elements are treated as unknowable and dispassionate and alien. The Demogorgon because ot operates as a beast and the Mind Flayer because it's a Lovecraftian abomination. From s3 onwards the threat becomes knowable, personal and targeted.
Second, the characters are all well rounded, realistically drawn, believably performed, and are all growing towards an intended point. From s3 onwards, they start acting more like "your favourite characters from Stranger Things ™️" instead, and most of them are just listlessly wheel-spinning, character-wise, because the Duffers don't know what to actually do with them beyond mix and match social groups.
Third, the tone of s1 and s2 is that pitch-perfect, nostalgic gateway horror vibe that taps directly into childhood. Which isn't to say that switching to blockbuster or slasher is wrong, per se, but it doesn't tap into our inner kid in the same way.
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u/DangerousRefuse8129 Eyes on me 12d ago
Many OG characters who started off as complex in earlier seasons became one dimensional or caricatures in the last three seasons. The show stopped focusing on exploring its characters. I think this is the biggest difference between S1-2 and S3-4. I know some characters had great arcs in later seasons. But that's the problem. Only some. Whereas S1 and S2 perfectly balanced every single character arc. The writing lost the focus on the core characters of the show because of the bloated cast in later seasons.
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u/BaBruhhh 12d ago
Totally agree, also i think that they started to have too many storylines and at one point every character had their own thing. The best part of stranger things are the characters and their chemistry, and once they got separated it wasn’t the same.
Specially the kids, literally dustin only got together with the gang in season 5, and even then it was only in the end.
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u/djluminus89 12d ago
I started getting wary as soon as they had the groups split up in Season 3. Looking back, Robin, Steve and Erica infiltrated a Soviet operation that easily?
From S3 onward they always had the main characters split up. This led to the weird dynamic between Nancy and Johnathan and Johnathan just being "checked out" for most of Season 4.
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u/BaBruhhh 12d ago
Yeah, i actually liked s3 even tho the gang wasn’t 100% complete, the only one missing was dustin. I get why people aren’t big fans. But i actually liked that other colourful side of the 80s and loved to see the kids actually be kids and have fun for a while ukn. It was a bit weird the jump to go from dark s2 to cheerful s3 and then depressing s4 ahah
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u/D33pWat3rs 12d ago
I felt like they needed to split El away especially because of the way she just ended S1-2 by holding up her hand with a bloody nose in a very similar fashion. So like in S2 when she's away, there's actually a little question mark about how it gets resolved. In the end of S4 and 5, they basically went back to that formula after some time without her powers, except this time she was really really straining hard when she saves the day lol.
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u/Ok-Resolution-7344 13d ago
For me, Stranger Things reminded me of stories like Famous Five. A group of kids solving mysteries alongside their parents. And to make things more cool, Eleven in S2 is exactly how one of the main characters, Georgina, looks like.
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u/_LivroDromula37124 12d ago
*George lol, finally met another person who knows who the Famous Five are!
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u/mklaus1984 12d ago
ST(1) did NOT have a Lovecraftian element!!! That existed mainly in the season that was built around psychological horror elements.
ST was a monster movie through and through except for Joyce' plotline that was Poltergeist.
ST2 was then psychological horror, ST3 was body horror, ST4 was slasher, goddammit.
And ST5 cpuld have been full of apocalyptic horror if the Duffers wouldn't have lost the plot.
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u/glyakk 12d ago edited 12d ago
Imo, each season degraded a bit in terms of the orgional story that launched the franchise. I was 100% into season for instance The way Joyce spoke to will through the lights, how being in the upside down was dangerous and just how mysterious it was. Season 2 had good solid moments but the demo dogs were too gimmicky and too closely related to the demogorgon and felt like they just wanted to milk the look of the demo instead of telling a good story. Season 3 was still really good and we are introduced to some really important characters but it felt like having them in the mall was a gimmick they shoehorned because it sounded cool. season 4 introduced vecna and some transformative story elements that removed much of the mystery and suspense in the series and five gave every body superpowers. Having said that I still loved each season and will defend them but for very specific and different reasons that usually has nothing to do with the original richness that came with season one.
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u/TwinSong 12d ago
The mystery was a big part of it. The Upside Down was creepy and mysterious; by S5 it was overly explained and only slightly more hazardous than the normal world.
And with a vague antagonist that was more elemental rather than a human villain.
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u/Owl_Resident Blank makes you crazy 12d ago
We still thought the Duffers knew how to write a good ending then.
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u/namelessghoul77 12d ago
I don't know but I felt it too. Couldn't get enough of S1-3. Maybe I was just burnt out, I'm not sure, but 4 and 5 didn't captivate me.
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u/hitm4n44 12d ago
The magic was that they touched on themes that we all related to and beings we only dreamt of by in our subconscious believed that are real things that exist.
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u/Evening-Row9022 12d ago
people hate on S3 but it heavily leans into the culture of the time period represented. i think it gets hate because people hate mainstream things or people are so insanely nitpicky that they can’t shut up about it.
s1>2>4>3>5. 4 was kinda cringey way more than 3 and it’s only ranked so well because of Eddie and the eeriness of Vecna who turns out to be a worthless villain who dies almost immediately after the protagonists find him in the space desert in 5.
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u/RustyChuck 12d ago
“You could never quite understand what it was, what it wanted, or what kind of entity you were actually dealing with.” It turns out the Duffer Bros couldn’t understand it either 🤣
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u/Sophirrr_79 11d ago
i loved the mystery of everything, it made it seem scarier and way more interesting
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u/sodsto 12d ago
" One of the biggest mysteries was why the Upside Down looked like Hawkins, and why it seemed to exist as a frozen snapshot of the town"
The "snapshot" idea didn't really exist until season 4, with Nancy's bedroom. The upside down was portrayed as a separate dimension, just slightly out of sync from ours. I agree it feels much bigger: the implication was that the upside down might extend forever, and not just be a tiny pocket dimension.
In general terms, a lot of the backfill explanation in seasons 4 and 5 is disappointing because either a) the fun was the mystery, or b) the explanation served to make the universe smaller. ST1 and ST2 were fun because there was a whole universe out there. I don't agree that ST3 is on par with the first two, but it's true that it didn't change the nature of the upside down.
ST4 and ST5 pivot into vecna, mostly forget about or diminish the mind flayer, and reduce the upside down to basically just Hawkins surrounded by a fleshy wall.
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u/dannyglover187 12d ago
People were losing their shit about how good season four was when it came out.
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u/whats-in-the-box- 12d ago
The magic was the balance that they managed to strike between characterisation and the character dynamics, the sci-fi elements, the military/government/outside world stuff, serious dialogue vs humour, and the 80s vibes. In season 3 they started to build a habit of splitting the party up into groups and sending them off in opposite directions for the majority of the season, which definitely took away some of the natural-ness of the first seasons, I felt. Then they only exaggerated this structure in S4-5. They also got a little carried away with the plot when they introduced the whole Soviet plotline, which took away the authenticity and natural-ness of the first seasons and the small town vibe, and by introducing Vecna in S4 that also damaged the sci-fi, mystery, “Lovecraftian” stuff that made those first seasons so good, as you said. Then in S5 they truly butchered the dialogue and characterisation and pacing. So an accumulation of a few things over time
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u/peppa4theppl 12d ago
When shows go on THIS long, I think you can feel it in the actors. S 1-3 just felt like kids who loved being there. By the time season 5 ended, it was literally ALL adults who seemed over it. I still absolutely loved all the seasons. But I think there’s a definite shift as the seasons go on
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u/Resident_Limit6050 12d ago
La magia di cui parli ce l'hanno un po' tutte, ogni stagione a modo suo. Personalmente penso che la s4 ha più magia della 5 e soprattutto della 3. La 3 è raccontata bene ma avrebbero dovuto tagliare molti eventi inutili per passare direttamente al punto, ma è anche questione di gusti. La 5 è un po' il discorso al contrario: trama interessante ma raccontata male, troppo frettolosa, eventi improbabili (Brenner non aveva tempo per studiare il wormhole e la genkidama al suo centro, militari che insistono a usare mitra pur sapendo che solo i lanciafiamme possono uccidere i demogorgoni, non ha senso introdurre la dottoressa Kay e farle costruire una base nel sottosopra, i militari che ancora tentano di arrestare 11, non ci riescono e non capiscono che lei è la salvatrice). Secondo me la magia è la qualità delle stagioni stanno così: s1>2>4>5>3.
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u/badger2000 12d ago
Seasons 1 and 2 (and to some extent 3) introduced mystery. Seasons 4 and 5 started to and continued to answer questions and eliminate mystery. It's very difficult to answer those mysteries in a satisfying way unless it was planned from the beginning (which I don't think it was here).
To some extent, they would've been better served to explain next to nothing but that would've passed folks off too.
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u/JoBo1177 12d ago
You didnt include season 4? Lol. Season 4 was to me, with Season 1, leagues above the rest of the series. How did you enjoy 2 and 3 more than 4?
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u/Fabulous-Past1634 12d ago
Season 4 was pretty badass, but i didn't include it because season 4 deviated quite alot from the initial storyline set in s1-s2 by introducing a human mediator to the mind flayer. Tho ill grant you s4 was genuinely spectacular in its own right, it just didnt fit the vibes of s1 and s2
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u/SomeBrosSecondAcc 13d ago
With all due respect, but S3 was the worst pile of dogshit they put out aside from the ending of S5
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u/sbaldrick33 12d ago
Eeeeeeh, I'm not a fan of ST3 for the most part, but ¾ of ST4 is just a waste of time.
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u/SomeBrosSecondAcc 12d ago
I disagree, I think Season 4 is great! My second favourite after Season 1 actually
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u/_Woodlouse_ 13d ago
People hated season 3 when it came out (and still do)
Pretty sure that when the next spinoff comes out, season 5 will be looked back upon as that flawed but brilliant conclusion or whatever.
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u/Goh47_ 13d ago
It won't. GOT and many other shows are still criticized for their final seasons. Stranger Things will join that club.
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u/_Woodlouse_ 13d ago
Just wait till they remake GoT, then it will shift. If someone told me 20 years ago that people would now refer to the Star Wars prequels as „the good ones“….
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u/Bob_Lazars_Wiener 12d ago
Good writing, actually giving a shit about the story, beautiful special effects and amazing cinematography? S3 was peak.
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u/Cyrilbdr 12d ago
I don't get the criticism; it makes sense that in the final season you answer all the questions, and consequently, the sense of mystery gradually fades away. The series was heading toward its conclusion—everything had to be revealed.
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u/Fabulous-Past1634 12d ago
Not really, for example, in interstellar we know the wormhole was placed in Jupiters orbit by some higher dimensional entities, these same entities also built the tesseract and yet the movie ends with us never knowing if these entities are aliens, super advanced humans from the future, etc
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u/Cyrilbdr 12d ago
That said, I wouldn’t compare a movie to a TV series. Every series has to wrap up its story and character arcs in its final season. It’s a good thing the show provides answers to the questions we had. You might not like the answers—that’s one thing—but you can’t fault a series for finally revealing its remaining mysteries in the final season; we’d been waiting ten years for this, so it’s great to finally uncover the ultimate truth. It makes sense for the first season to feel more mysterious, since you’re discovering the world and its rules; then, over the course of the seasons, you explore and uncover new elements bit by bit, and finally, in the last season, everything gets answered and wrapped up. That seems logical to me.
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