The amount of times I’ve rewatched this show by myself, with friends, family, past lovers, and just for the fuck of it. Has to be at least 20 times (seasons 1-4 of course lol). Season 1 & 2 are by far my favorite seasons. The darkness of the color grading, innocence of the child actors, the mystery of everything, the horror look & feel, and the absolute amazing performances from David Harbour, Winona Ryder, and Dr. Brenner were phenomenal in those seasons. Once we get to season 3, we get to the corny season. I like it for what it is, but it looses its touch of horror and becomes more campy and becomes to bright. Literally, the color grading from seasons 1 and 2 is night and day. It’s to bright and too colorful and my god. The advertisements for that season was so ridiculous and forced. When Lucas started drinking a Coca-cola. It legit just turns into a fucking add for how good the drink is. This is around the time where I felt the show and live action actors were starting to become sell outs to brand advertisements. Season 4 tries to go back to the horror routes of 1 & 2, but sadly didn’t capture it all the way. They introduced a new Stoner/Mexiacan dude just to show diversity to stoners and Mexican fans, but that character was literally a nothing character, other than to help them get from point A to point B with his van. I did love Eddie, Chrissy, and Vecna being introduced. I loved how I guessed that the Creel boy was number 1, but I loved how I didn’t guess how he would go on to become Vecna. Jamie Campbell as Vencna was peak casting and he became one of the best fictional villains of all time. Loved Robert Englands cameo. Seeing Eddie die had me and my brother in tears and Gaton Matarazzo gave his best performance this season. Season 5 was such a mess and let down. Lucas hair was down right terrible. Mike became such a nothing character. Eleven keeps facemaxing every seen (looking like handsome squidward). They keep gooning us that Steve will die, just to not kill him off. They Duffers lied and said they wouldn’t introduce new characters, and then introduced hella new kid characters. Noah stops a game plan just to come out as gay. Piah Ferguson looked to old to be playing a kid character by this point. Like she was 13 in the show (by this point), but clearly looked 17 or 18 lmfao. They bring back Kali to redeem her, just to kill her. And really messed up the timeline and made retcons due to the stupid Stranger Things play nobody really watched or cared for. And just had a messy and lame ending by the end. And seeing they got in trouble for using A.I and tried lying about it made it even worse. All in all. I love this show so much and felt like I grew up with the cast along the way. Just unfortunate how the show ends and kind of ruins the rewatch-ability.
