When 12-year-old Will goes missing, his mother, Joyce, launches a very unusual investigation to find her son. As Joyce and the local authorities go deeper into this investigation, they start revealing concerning mysterious, including supernatural forces, classified government experiments, and an atypical girl.

It stars Winona Ryder playing Joyce, David Harbour playing Chief Hopper, Finn Wolfhard playing Mike, and Millie Bobby Brown playing Eleven. The Duffy Brothers created this show. The genre is Fantasy / Science Fiction. It is a Netflix Original, rated TV-14, and has two seasons. 

The show is set in the 1980s, which has no purpose to the storyline, in my opinion. There is no reason not to have the show set in the twenty-first century. Also, I think that they promote that the show takes place in a small town (Hawkins, Indiana) way too much. I know that the purpose of mentioning that this all takes place in a small town to follow the idea most horror movies try to use. However, early on we do establish that the show takes place in a small town, and I think that the concept is pushed a bit too much.

Although I do have some complaints about this show, I really like one character in this series above all. There is a very interesting girl in the series. Her name is Eleven and

she is becomes a strong, powerful character after years of abuse and being experimented on in a lab. Eleven is my favorite character in this series, as she is simply just an amazing character capable of many things. She is capable of choosing who lives or dies as her powers can allow her to harm a person. I think that this makes her even more of an amazing girl. Throughout the series, she consistently uses her power to defend the other main characters.

I want to find out what the Duffy Brothers aimed for when creating the character of Eleven. I’m curious if her character was a metaphor for how people can choose how moral they want to be. Throughout the series, Eleven could have easily turned against the other protagonists and started hurting them, but never did. I think it was interesting that she never did.

I always thought that Eleven would turn on the other characters, stop helping Jane find her son, and hurt Mike, but it never happened. I always thought that out of all the other characters, Eleven would hurt Mike first because the way Mike always showed affection for Eleven was suspicious to me. Mike and his friends first find Eleven out in a rainstorm one day and Mike let’s Eleven sleep in his basement. I don’t know if I would feel safe in some stranger’s basement in the dark, especially when his mother didn’t know that there was a person sleeping down there. However, I do understand that Eleven was homeless, stuck in a rainstorm, and desperately needed help, so I don’t criticize her for letting Mike help her.

I also found it weird that in Season 1, Will and Eleven were never in the same dimension. While Will was stuck in a place called “The Upside Down”, Eleven was in the normal world. However, when Eleven went back to The Upside Down with the Demogorgon, Will came back shortly after. I wonder if the Duffy Brothers did that on

purpose to make us think that Eleven was actually a demogorgon. It definitely left me in suspense and until Eleven and Will were in the same house at the same time, I really was convinced that Eleven was actually a demogorgon. Although that theory was never confirmed, I thought I was correct until Season 2 Episode 9. I do note, however, that is the final episode of Stranger Things, so to me, it seems that this could’ve been done on purpose.

Also, I did not like Max’s character at all. Max is more of a secondary character and is introduced in Season 2 Episode 1. This is after Eleven goes back to The Upside Down. Max was a cool girl – she was a tomboy who rode a skateboard, and was also outspoken, rebellious, and bold. However, I don’t think she had any actual contributions to the plot. She didn’t help get the monster out from inside Will, didn’t help close a portal to The Upside Down, and was just a girl the group became friends with after Eleven disappeared. I feel that Max might have been used to replace Eleven’s character, both were strong girls coming from broken families who were becoming very bold women. Even though Max and Eleven are drastically different from each other as Eleven does have special powers and Max does not, it almost seems like Max was a replacement.

Moving on from Eleven, I found it interesting that the writers related it to a Dungeons- and-Dragons-like game. That factor definitely made me keep watching as I am a fan of the game Dungeons and Dragons. I think this was excellent foreshadowing on the writers’ parts. In the first episode, Will places the demogorgon on the board himself as he says, “No, that noise came from something else…The demogorgon!” It was almost as if a notion that the demogorgon was coming to capture someone. His other friends were arguing as to whether he should “fireball” the demogorgon or cast the spell of protection, almost as if Will might have to choose between fight or flight sometime later on.

Stranger Things is a show I really like a lot. Though are there some unnecessary parts and some episodes may leave you with some questions, Stranger Things is, in my opinion, is a compelling and interesting show to watch. I do highly recommend the show to all.