Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for the Season 5 finale of Stranger Things.It’s been almost a decade, but Stranger Things has finally reached its end, even if it is rather controversial. While the series finale is certainly cathartic and very emotional, the overall feeling is that the entire final season is uneven at best, and perhaps the worst of the entire series. There are many complaints about this, with the amount of dialogue and explanatory scenes stands out. In each of the eight long episodes, it feels like every 15 minutes someone comes up with a plan for something and explains it in incredibly visual language, making these already long episodes feel like a drag with so much exposition. This has become a recurring problem in television, especially in the streaming era, but, in Stranger ThingsIn this case, it might have its roots in one of the show’s staples: its obsession with Dungeons & Dragons.
‘Stranger Things 5’ Storytelling Problems Are Directly Related to ‘Dungeons & Dragons’
Of course, not all expository dialogue is bad, and this trend didn’t start with Stranger Things either. Since the early days of television, it has been a necessary narrative device, with viewers jumping into something by changing channels during a commercial break, for example, and needing to know what’s going on. We still do it, but instead of TV channels, it’s social media and multiple screens; Netflix reportedly even established a guideline that characters “announce what they’re doing” for this reason. This often happens everywhere, but Stranger Things 5 made it the central point of his writingwhich is particularly annoying considering the length of the episodes.
It started in Season 1, when the four main boys were still very young and needed a familiar setting to make sense of everything that was happening in Hawkins, and D&D offered just that. Their strategy was very reminiscent of the way players think during a campaign.where exposition is vital as you explain your reasoning to your group members — plus, it was cute to see them name the monster that was after Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) a Demogorgon, or supporting Will (Noah Schnapp) in season 2 by calling him “Will the Wise”. However, as characters grew up, their reasoning did not change, and in Season 5, even characters who had never played D&D, such as Robin (Maya Hawke), Steve (Joe Keery), and even Joyce (Winona Ryder), developed plans in these terms.
Things got to a point where even fans started to wonder if this was really all just one big D&D campaign over the course of the series, since everything in the narrative relied on how the game is played, and the Duffer Brothers even had to answer questions about it and explain that, no, that would never be the case. Always, the reasoning behind each character’s actions and plans remains intrinsically linked to D&D logic. Even when the references aren’t D&D related, like when Dustin (Matarazzo Gate) talks about a “shield generator” at Hawkins Lab in Upside Down, the principle is still the same to think like a D&D campaign, even if it’s a nod to Star Wars.
Constantly relying on ‘D&D’ as a framework makes ‘Stranger Things 5’ feel limited
One of the key aspects of creating a D&D campaign is ensuring a proper flow for all characters, as well as the story as a whole, hence why being a Dungeon Master is such an important role. In Stranger Things, it feels like the Duffers have always written history as if they were dungeon masters rather than true storytellersand it created certain patterns that weren’t harmful in smaller seasons, when their very structure needed to prioritize Netflix’s binge model and needed to be more dynamic, even with its exposition dumps. Season 5, however, needed to be bigger than ever, and its longer episodes clearly showed these patterns when they repeated over and over again.
In Stranger Things 5This pattern is: something happens, the characters come up with a plan, they carry out that plan, something goes wrong, they somehow overcome it, achieve their goal, and then regroup. And at every step, it really feels like the Duffers are asking the characters the classic dungeon master question: “So, what are you going to do?” Instead of allowing the plot to unfold organically and giving the characters time to properly develop, this sort of “narrative roundabout” always forces everyone to move forward without managing anything properlysimply overcoming one obstacle after another and needlessly stretching out plotlines that should have been much shorter for the sake of longer episodes.
With so many characters to manage, it’s really important to keep everyone organized, but Stranger Things 5 seems more concerned with giving each character something to do instead of giving them the opportunity to grow properly. This works for D&D campaigns because there’s a huge difference between doing it yourself while playing and watching someone do it in a story, where their decision is made. has to influence their character. You can structure your story like a D&D campaign, but the characters aren’t like players – and even Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves was wise enough to see this. Unfortunately, Stranger Things 5 was more concerned with asking them what they would do instead of telling a proper story.
D&D’s constant analogies and comparisons were more harmful to “Stranger Things 5” than beneficial
It is not only thanks to its narrative framework that Stranger Things However, it overuses its D&D influences, as there’s yet another layer to the series’ obsession with the tabletop RPG: the constant analogies and comparisons. Just like the narrative roundabouts, the fact that everything can be explained by D&D replaces real exposition when it comes to worldbuilding. There is Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower), who is a spellcaster, the Mind Flayer, the Abyss… Aside from Vecna, we never really know what each of them actually are, as they are already defined by their D&D counterparts. There is no room for them to be used as threats beyond what they represent in a campaign.
This is exactly the same thing that happens with the characters. In Stranger Things 5the best example is Holly (Nell Fisher), which is at the center of the whole story. She is targeted by Vecna, finds Max (Sadie Sink), and organizes a rebellion in Camazotz, but none of these result in any development for her as a character, since she is already defined as Holly the Heroic. — she is even dressed like the character Mike (Finn Wolfhard) gives it to him. So everything she does is based on the D&D character, not the character itself. She’s always there to serve as motivation for the story, more of a plot device than a character, but the heroic Holly archetype masks all of that as she faces challenges and overcomes them exactly as the character would.
The D&D references are actually part of what makes Stranger Things unique, and (as an active player) it’s great to see such a huge cultural phenomenon using it. But most of the winks and references end up replacing original storytelling that would make the series much richer and more original. As nice as it is to see D&D represented, it certainly would have been better if Stranger Things only kept it as an occasional mention instead of making it its main storytelling framework.
Stranger Things is available for streaming on Netflix.
- Release date
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2016 – 00/00/2025
- Network
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Netflix
- Directors
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Matt Duffer, Ross Duffer, Andrew Stanton, Frank Darabont, Antal Nimród, Uta Briesewitz
- Writers
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Kate Trefry, Jessie Nickson-Lopez, Jessica Mecklenburg, Alison Tatlock
