Stranger Things: Season 5

"Stranger Things’ high-stakes final season is an escapist pleasure."

"Brings blockbuster-level thrills and euphoric bursts of action and heroism, but little room for much else."

"Admirably immersive."

"This luxurious final run will have you standing on a chair, yelling with joy."

"Stranger Things' final season is OK. But we should demand greatness."

"Time to move on."

"Like an increasing number of recent streaming shows, it feels written for an audience that is only half paying attention."

"Confirms the show's status as a cross-generational all-timer."

"The premiere is messy and unfocused in ways that none of the other seasons were."

"It's fun to watch, and it's never boring. But it's also a bit exhausting."

"Less scary and less singular at a point when it should be reaching its Mount Doom–like peak."

"Remains top-rank comfort viewing."

"By declining to enrich its characters as they age, Stranger Things traps itself in arrested development."

"The Duffers are so skilled at keeping the plot hurtling along that many may not notice how much these new dangers feel like old storylines."

"No Stranger Things fan is going away disappointed from these episodes."

"Season 5 works because of the humanity still underpinning its increasingly absurd story."

"Excessive running times aside, the final season's first half works better in its few smaller moments than its many big ones."

"Volume one doesn’t rewrite the manual but why would you want it to? This is richly entertaining stuff."

"This opening batch of episodes does more than set the stage for a climactic showdown; it reminds us why Stranger Things hooked us in the first place."

"Both our heroes and their deadliest foes still have thrilling new tricks up their sleeves."

"As the show has grown, so has the need to make Vecna bigger and badder... and as a consequence, to shrink the lives of the other characters."

"Good but no longer great."