“I’m not in pain / Don’t you want to feel what it feels like?” Kate Bush sang Running on that Hill (1985), similar to its fourth season’s leitmotif strange thingsjust released Netflixwhich is a welcome leap forward, which deepens the story of Eleven and his friends, and is not disturbed, as feared after Season 3.

A jump forward or up, or down, because the Inverted o The Other Side is very, very present in the seven episodes of Volume 1, which are already available from this fourth season. The remaining two chapters that fill in here will come later.

And boy, the end of Chapter 7 has surprises, some revelations and leaves us with the five weeks left until Friday, July 1, quickly passed.

This Season 4 Volume I has many, many arcs in its story. There are so many subplots, that it’s sometimes hard to list them.

There are characters, such as Eleven –Millie Bobby Brown-, who we have already seen him lose power and with the Byers family, that is Joyce (Winona Ryder), Jonathan (Charlie Heaton) and Will (Noah Schnapp) who live in Lenora Hills, California; others in Hawkins-bah; the others-; and some were lost in some Russian jails, wondering who it was. But soon, both in the small town where the series began and in the vodka homeland, the stories vary, the characters separate and the actions become agitated and overwhelming.

And before we move on to the detail of where the plot goes, we should say that the creators, the Duffer brothers, Matt and Ross, did well to devote their time – through the coronavirus pandemic – to figure out how the story will continue.

Not that they don’t have it in mind, but the meeting and the sequence of so many changing situations speaks of full-time dedication and care.

And from the couch and this side of the screen, thank you.

pure entertainment

Not to be confused, that is strange things It’s still teenage entertainment, no one has lost their sense of humor even when faced with life and death situations. Death: the Duffers seem to have matured, if possible, with their characters, who are no longer elementary school children, but teenagers, and consequently, and as the actions take place in the mid-’80s, more they appeal here more than before in slasher, the horror genre cradled, rocked in the ’80s.

We are told that the stories are branching, but there is something that binds them together: Vecna, the demonic creature who needs to see what its relationship is to the Other Side, the Laboratory, Eleven or who knows what or who.

The fact is that there are new characters, whose lives are in danger, as well as some already known, who have fallen under Vecna.

“What are you doing?”

And the question revolves around Eleven, who in the first minutes of the first Episode received in the Laboratory the intriguing curiosity of Dad (Matthew Modine), many years before what we saw in the first season. “What are you doing?” he told her, and he was surrounded by the bloody corpses of his number of “brothers”.

Eleven, is he a monster or a superhero, as Mike (Finn Wolfhard) refers to him?

Various characters hold larger roles here, from Max (Sadie Sink), who mourns the death of his brother Billy, to Nancy (Natalia Dyer), who is a journalist, to Robin (Maya Hawke) ), working with Steve (Joe Keery)).

The circle widened, and for the better, by the way.

On the other hand, the adult characters (Joyce, Jim Hopper -David Harbor- and even Murray -Brett Gelman) go their own way, one is serious or playing action, the other pair becomes comedy.

do you want to see more

There’s something in these seven stages that you want to see more of. The reason is easy to identify: there is a tendency to what is being said, there are enrichments in the plot, it doesn’t turn out the same and it doesn’t feel, as happened in Season 3 which, except for the last chapter, and maybe the previous one, seems to have been served us the food -the program- heated in the microwave.

Not even in the oven, which gives a new flavor, a different flavor and a different aroma to the main dish, even if it is more than already tasted.

Not here. There are several constants that have won approval, such as the style of using the color red, welcome references to pop culture, from VCRs to cans of Mountain Dew, questions about what the Internet is, and , of course, the musical inclusion. themes that intersect the episodes.

There’s one that, since he heard in the first Episode, and came back to some, because of the needs of the story, believe me that this time it’s like that, he won’t leave you until the last picture of Episode 7 – the longest of all , 98 minutes-.

This is -the embargo is over- Running on That Mountain, by Kate Bush. And wait until you see how director Shawn Levy used it again in Episode 4 (dear billy), the best chapter, I dare say, not only this season, but of the whole series.

Speaking of terror, that’s how it looks – I’m not destroying anything, because I found out they called him – by Robert Englund, of Nightmare deep into the night like a certain character (you see I’m not spoiling), when this season there are points of contact in the Wes Craven saga. And not just because of the slasher and the teenagers being harassed by a creature …

There are also nods, or eagerness, to The minority report, with character, female, short hair or shaved in a tank. Do you remember Agatha, in the movie with Tom Cruise and Samantha Morton? Even Spielberg’s film will be 20 years old this year, and on strange things breathe more eighties airs.

Finally, what strange things maybe it came at the right time for Netflix to stop bleeding subscribers. It has something exciting, and much more to discover until the fifth and final Season.