Nearly three years after the release of Season 3, the long-awaited Stranger Things Season 4 dropped this past weekend on Friday, May 27. With the lights off in my room, and the only light coming in from the headlights of cars passing by my house, I opened Netflix and clicked “Play Season 4: Episode 1.” 

I regret watching it in the dark, but I couldn’t stop watching. 

The first episode starts off by setting the scene in the aftermath of season 3 and the events that occurred at Starcourt Mall. I thought that it was really sad how Eleven didn’t fit into her new school in California or how the teens in Hawkins were no longer as close with Lucas being on the basketball team and Max being haunted by Billy’s death. 

As the episodes continue, it starts to get gory with Hopper’s torture in the Russian prison and the extreme detail of Chrissy and Fred’s death. At times it made me flinch with the amount of gory detail shown, as they showed more in this season than they have previously. 

Meanwhile, Joyce and Murray get kidnapped in Alaska while Mike, Jonathan, Will and Argyle get attacked by gunmen, and Eleven is taken to a secret bunker to try to get her powers back. To her surprise, Dr. Brenner, also known as “Papa”, is there and they use “NINA”  to revisit Eleven’s old memories to get her powers back, but I thought that part was really creepy and a bit confusing to see on whose side Dr. Brenner was on.

In total, there were almost three continuous plot lines going on. One with the teens in Hawkins, the other with Hopper, Joyce, and Murray, and the third with Eleven and the teens from California. 

I think in general, while the plot was good and kept me on the edge of my seat, this season lost the light-hearted undertones that were always present underneath the horror of the upside-down.