because i love her

The s5 finale is just hard to have solid thoughts on. I hate it but I guess I wasn’t expecting much more and it could have been worse. I definitely agree that s5 Means more than s3 narratively, so there is that.

totally feel you! i think s3's release was also such a Moment culturally it was hard to really see it for what it was at the time 😭 i've never been its biggest fan but definitely did not remember disliking it as much as i did on a rewatch lol.

ABSOLUTELY because i did a full rewatch prior to watching season 5 so this is fresh

1) season 2. maybe a hot take? idk. i think season 1 is objectively cleaner, but i really love the bulk of the character work in season 2. i also enjoy the way they raise the stakes in this season - if you ignore where it goes the mind flayer is still a fantastic creature design. i am a proud lost sister apologist and think everyone hating that ep may be part of what ruined the show. this is also mike/el's best season as a couple and their reunion remains the most romantic moment in the show. season 2!

2) season 1. duh. i don't think this needs to be explained. perfect and could have ended there and the show would probably be seen as one of the greatest things to come out of the streaming era of television.

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3) season 4. it's weird to me that this is technically in my top 3, because i don't think it's particularly good, but i do think there are a lot of solid emotional beats. 'the massacre at hawkins lab' is, imo, the closest the show ever comes to the highs of its first two seasons post The Great Enshittification of Stranger Things. also.. girlmike <3 romance <3 lumax <3 i enjoy more than i don't, and i think s4 would have been an appropriate send off for the show with a few tweaks considering how meaningless s5 was as a whole. but also, fuck eddie munson forever and the russia plotline killed my family.

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4/5) season 3/season 5. idk which i prefer between these, honestly lol. season 3 is more fun to watch, i guess? but i also kind of resent how literally nothing in it matters. the best episode of the season is the finale and they immediately retconned everything about it that was interesting. the humor is bad. the creature design is bad. i actively hate most of the storylines the characters go through this season but i did get my dyke robin! so that's something, i guess.

season 5 is bizarre. every episode in it feels like killing time until the finale to a point where i don't even know why they made a last season instead of just finishing the show with a singular movie. but i do think the finale was about as good as i could have realistically expected from the show at this point (which is to say, it was Fine), so i don't have as much overall Hatred for this as i do a lot of season 3, but i also can't really say it's Better considering how uninteresting the bulk of it is. so i don't know, i kind of just group these two together.

man this show is really bad. anyway #her