After three years between seasons, “Stranger Things” is back with an older cast and a new threat: adulthood.
“Stranger Things 4” is set in 1986, six months in TV-time since the gang from Hawkins, Ind., defeated the Spider Monster in the food court of the Starcourt Mall and thwarted a Soviet plot in the shopping center’s basement. El, Will, Mike, Lucas, Dustin and Sam have outgrown their dorky-cute phase. Now they’re uncomfortably awkward, like a collection of humiliating photos from your 10th grade yearbook come to life: uber-gawky teens so socially inept in comparison to their high school peers that they teeter on the precipice of unlikable. (The hair is particularly bad, even for the ’80s.)
The brilliance of “Stranger Things 4” is that rather than gloss over the unpleasantry, it leans hard into their clumsy, painful transition. Though the alienation and shame of bullied high-schoolers is a much tougher sell for a beloved sci-fi series than the pain porn of young adult dramas like “13 Reasons Why” or “Euphoria,” “Stranger Things” channels that darkness into a fresh narrative that’s as much an ode to “Hellraiser”-era horror films as it is to growing pains.
Series creators, writers and directors Matt and Ross Duffer have always turned to films, shows and references from the Reagan years to set the tone for each season. Odes to the goofy nostalgia of “Ghostbusters” and “Goonies” worked when the gang was younger, then nods to “Fast Times at Ridgemont High,” mall culture and “Indiana Jones”-style adventure as they aged. But the misery of high school calls for horror, naturally: “A Nightmare on Elm Street” and the “It” miniseries are a few of the callbacks in Season 4, and the terror is as much psychological as it is physical.