Will Eleven regain her full powers and save the day? Will Max (Sadie Sink, one of the MVPs of this season) continue to survive Vecna with the help of Kate Bush? Will metalhead Eddie (Joseph Quinn, the other MVP of the season) clear his name? Will Hopper (David Harbour) and Joyce (Wiona Ryder) escape Russia? Will the Hawkins kids save the world … again? All of these questions may or may not be answered by the time the season ends, but getting there will take some time.
Much digital ink has already been spilled over the fact that these two episodes seem way too long (the final episode clocks in at 2 hours and 20 minutes!). In my humble opinion, overly long episodes of TV aren’t a bad thing, as long as they justify their length. And “Stranger Things 4 Volume 2” never really reaches that point. There are long, long stretches where characters fire off wordy, protracted speeches to each other, and you can’t shake the feeling that the Duffer Brothers, who wrote and directed these two episodes, could’ve trimmed the speeches down just a tad. On top of that, some plotlines go on way past their expiration date — the storyline about Eleven stuck in the underground bunker trying to get her powers back is the prime example; it stretches on for an interminable length, and should’ve been condensed considerably.
Thankfully, these pacing problems don’t sink the finale as a whole, as the Duffers pack in so much stuff that you can’t help but get swept up in it all. Explosions! Interdimensional missions! Psychic fights! Jocks vs. nerds! Kids arming up with weapons and military gear as if they were auditioning for “Red Dawn”! Scenes where characters emotionally yell at each other! It’s all here, and then some. These final two episodes also make good use of the scattered, overpopulated cast. Everyone gets more to do here. Hell, even the perpetually stoned pizza boy Argyle (Eduardo Franco), someone I found immensely annoying in the first half of the season, ends up being liable and funny this time. (The same can’t be said for Nikola Đuričko as shifty Russian smuggler Yuri, a character who remains irritating).
