A few more spoiler positives, Robert “Freddy Kreuger” Englund as Vecna’s dad was a nice touch. The brief Nancy / Robin team-up was awesome. The more official introduction and development of Suzie was done really well. And of course Eddie’s Master of Puppets solo in the Upside Down is the thing of Metal Legends
However …
I wanted to care about and should have felt invested in Hopper’s escape from the Soviet/Demogorgon prison and Joyce rushing off to rescue him but it felt so separate from the rest of the storyline, I couldn’t bring myself to care.
Same for everything going on with Mike, Will, Jonathon, and Argyle. Their whole narrative amounted to them riding around the Southwest in a pizza van all so they could spend the final act doing nothing but sitting around Eleven in her saltwater tub and occasionally asking distracting questions and yelling encouragement.
And even the main party in Hawkins felt like it was a lot of wandering around
School->trailer park->lake house->wheeler’s house->school->murder house->cemetery->lake house->skull rock->lake->upside down ->wheeler’s house->trailer park->gun store->murder house->trailer park->upside down
The upside down has just become another place now. Sure there’s deadly demobats … suddenly, but otherwise it’s no more dangerous than the streets of Hawkins with armed roaming jocks out for misguided revenge.
When Eddie jumped into the Watergate, my first thought should NOT have been “oh good, he’ll be safe there from the angry teenagers.” Really should be a much bigger deal when the party has to go there.
While Chrissy’s death was perfect, in a “first victim” you cared about even though she was only in one episode to set the tone and the stakes kind of way, the other two had little to zero impact.
The first guy, Nancy’s editor, I kept trying to Google to see if he was a minor character from previous seasons I’d forgotten about, because otherwise I had no idea why he was getting so much screentime, and by the time it was revealed he was going to be victim #2, his death wasn’t going to top Chrissy. And the basketball kid, I honestly can’t remember anything about him
Max’s near murder at the Cemetery and epic “Running up the Hill” scene was the highlight of the season … but after that she was essentially backbenched, (until the last episode of course) sniping sarcastic comments from time to time and listening to her headphones. They had to know she was the star of the show at that point.
It didn't change the plot at all. So what was the point? That's the kind of stuff you can trim out with no loss to the story, save yourself some $$$, and not drag a story on for an extra unnecessary 1/2 hour - 30 seconds of exposition could have covered it all.
