Comment | Filming for the final season of Stranger Things has finally begun, but years of delay could ruin everything

Last one of the biggest streaming cases of the decade Stranger Things is finally getting its long-awaited closing season.

The series' social media channels announced on Monday that filming for the fifth and final season has begun. Unfortunately, enthusiasm for the new season is waning for many reasons.

The series, which is one of Netflix's mega-hits, has suffered from bad luck: after the third season, the coronavirus pandemic hit and after the fourth season there was a Hollywood strike, which have delayed the otherwise laborious large-scale production by a year.

The first season was released in 2016. If we start shooting the last season now, the final product won't come out until next year, as the series contains a lot of effects made in post-production.

This would mean that the series will have five seasons within nine years. It's a painfully slow pace.

Of course, good things are worth waiting for, and not Stranger Things has lost its grip on viewers due to the previous slowdowns as well. The fourth season, released in the summer of 2022 after the pandemic subsided, was Netflix's most watched English-language series of the year.

However, the passage of time turns out to be a more difficult problem than usual for a series like this.

Stranger Things is a story set in the 1980s about the residents of a small American town who become targets of supernatural forces and conspiracies.

The focus is on four elementary school-age boys who get on the trail of the horrors happening in their hometown.

Cast Noah Schnapp, Finn Wolfhard, Gaten Mazzaro and Caleb McLaughlin have been a great foursome. It has been a pleasure to watch the characters' fight against dangerous forces, colored by their childhood innocence.

Now the stars who started out as child actors are already adults, which is difficult in terms of the believability of the characters. For example, the youngest of the four, Schnapp, was 11 years old when the series started, and now he is 19. The other main stars have grown from teenagers to over 20 years old.

So much time has passed between the seasons that even the events of the series have had time to be erased from the mind. Even if the last season is good in quality, the overall picture of the series remains fragmented.

You can watch the old seasons again to refresh your memory, but that might be asking too much of the viewers in a field full of quality series compet
ition.

In the fourth season, Max (Sadie Sink, foreground) falls into a coma. Pictured from left are Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin), Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown), Mike (Finn Wolfhard) and Will (Noah Schnapp). Picture: Netflix

Waiting also slows down Schnapp's drifting into political upheaval: the young man has disappointed many fans appearing in the videowhich has been interpreted as a statement against Gaza.

When I went Stranger Things Instagramprofile to see fans' reactions to the start of filming the final season, the comments were full of boycott threats.

According to the show's creators, Schnapp's character will have a major storyline in the new season, and now fans are calling for him to be fired.

Stranger Things behind are the American twin brothers Matt and Ross Duffer. They have clearly made the series with a big heart: they are the developers, screenwriters, directors and producers of the original idea.

That's why it's a shame that the difficulties water down the project, which they would certainly like to finish with honor. Maintaining a good series level for several seasons is challenging anyway.

Viewers and creators must accept a harsh reality: the passage of time and unexpected obstacles cannot be controlled. Hopefully, despite the bad predictions, the great series will get the decision it deserves.

The author is HS's culture editor.