then i guess, i wish, i wish, i wish you loved me less

STRANGER THINGS (2016-2025)

And the thing is that Steve’s jealousies and insecurities in season two are well written! They make sense for the character and lead him on a path to trying to get past those insecurities.

The frustrating part is that the show just straight up didn't let them talk for the first 5-ish episodes of season 5 and implies that they haven't talked during the 18 month time gap (which is just asinine) to maintain the conflict. It's like they, the writers, knew if Jonathan and Nancy talked even a little bit like the would in st1-st3, the whole conflict would evaporate.

It's so incredible validating and frustrating at the same time because the moment they finally do talk open and honestly about hard things (which had never been an issue until season 4), they are back to their dynamic despite it being a break up/letting each other go and they literally dragged out having that conversation for no good reason other than they ran out of ideas for their characters and so they needed to wait until they felt they could properly conclude their characters.

So instead of having that scene where they see each other and work out their issues in a place that felt natural for their characters, they paused their character growth and had them essentially mute their personalities around each other for 5 episodes. This in turn left Nancy feeling like an incredibly wooden character since Jonathan was allowed to vocalize the conflict to Steve and Murray, Nancy was given nothing, no avenue for introspection.