I love Lovecraftian horror. Weirdly, I find cosmic horror more than a little fascinating; I find an odd comfort in it that I didn't understand until recently. That's a different article, but if you put something in front of me that dips into a very cerebral, vast kind of horror, I can't help but immediately give all my attention to it.
The hit Netflix show Stranger Things is one such creation that I fell in love with the moment I saw it. A mystery of Lovecraftian inspiration set in a small Indiana town in the 1980s, and featuring characters who felt like they came straight out of that time period, was, to this day, a stroke of absolute genius. The first season of Stranger Things is, in my humble opinion, one of the defining moments of streaming television. It put to bed any question that platforms like Netflix could create something genuinely great and refreshing despite not having a massive studio behind it.
The magic of the show wasn't just that it had a mysterious horror element; it was that the people who were involved with it were so well written that you quickly became invested in their lives. Joyce Byers, played brilliantly by Winona Ryder, steals the entire show as a mother desperate to rescue her son from a darkness she can't define or see. The scene where she communicates with her little boy through the lights will live on as one of the most creative moments in television.
No season since has matched the brilliance of the first. In fact, its sophomore offering was pretty bad, but then the show only got better from there. Characters from the show became memes in their own right, such as Steve Harrington (Joe Keery), the unwitting babysitter, and Dustin Harrington (Gaten Matarazzo), who form a brotherly relationship that's both heartwarming and hilarious.
But around the third season, Stranger Things got a dose of Netflix's trademark woke juice, and the show started introducing characters and altering others. For instance, we were introduced to Robin Buckley (Maya Hawke), who is teased as Harrington's love interest and partner in crime, but is soon revealed to be a lesbian. It makes absolutely no difference to the story, but soon, it's suggested that Buckley isn't the only homosexual in the cast.
In the fourth season, it's strongly suggested that Will Byers (Noah Schnapp), Joyce's son and the original kidnapped child, is blossoming into a homosexual with a crush on his best friend, Mike Wheeler (Finn Wolfhard). It's an annoyance as you watch this dynamic get introduced to a friend group, and frankly, it's highly distracting and wastes a lot of screen time. Watching Byers furtively breaking down into tears because his friend doesn't feel the same way he does feels completely out of place, and more like bad fan fiction than good writing.
Still, the show wasn't awful. Aside from these annoyances of having homosexuality injected into places that felt shoehorned in, they didn't consume the show. The end of the fourth season had me looking forward to the fifth.
And now that it's here, and I've watched what Netflix has offered so far of it, I'm kind of disappointed. Not because the story is bad. In fact, I think it's excellent, and that's what makes the annoyances I experience within it all the more annoying.
From here, I'm going to get into spoiler territory.
The gay creep has now spread into the show's bones. Buckley's lesbianism now plays something of a central role in the tale because it inspires Byers to embrace his "true self," which, upon doing so, allows him to harness his potential, and he becomes something of a telekinetic wunderkind in the nick of time. His attempt to unlock a romance with his best friend feels just weird and out of place, seeing as how they're brothers in arms, and Wheeler continuously displays no homosexual tendencies, making it awkward to watch. Moreover, it makes Byers look awful because Wheeler is in a multi-season relationship with Eleven (Millie Bonnie Brown Bongiovi) and both are in love.
I find all of this annoying because romantic relationships always played a secondary role in the show, as they should. The true star was just plain old friendship and familial love in the face of unspeakable terror. That some characters would fall in love with others is a given, but no one else's love story trips up the tale. This homosexuality has put itself center stage to the point where it's become a major plot point.
"Just embrace your gayness, and you'll unlock your true potential" feels completely out of place because it doesn't feel like a 1980s show about kids and their parents trying to fight back against something monstrous that could consume the world; it now feels like a 2025 show that wears a 1980s mask. It takes you right out of the setting, and you have to remind yourself that this is still Hawkins, Indiana, via the near-end of the 20th century.
"But Brandon, homosexuals were around back then, too!"
Yeah. So what? Why do I have to watch a kid have homosexual feelings about his friend that feels wildly forced and takes up a solid chunk of screen time that could be better dedicated to tightening bonds and unfolding mysteries? Despite these moments, the show still shines as fascinating and fun, and it just slows down wildly to make room for these "yay for gay" moments.
Before I'm accused of "homophobia," let me make something clear. Gay or lesbian relationships don't necessarily both me if they fit into the story naturally. I thought Schitt's Creek was a brilliant show, and Willow Rosenberg from Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a genuinely good character. This homosexuality in Stranger Things feels like Netflix's boardroom does what it always does, and introduces leftist concepts because what kind of company would they be if they didn't just force something LGBTQ+ in your face?
It doesn't help that the acting coming from Schnapp is so wooden that it wishes upon a star to be a real boy. Hawke's deliveries are so manic that every second she's on screen is something I feel like I have to endure. If it weren't for the stellar acting coming from Keery, Ryder, Matarazzo, and David Harbour as Jim Hopper, I'm certain Schnapp and Hawke could've really brought this show into unwatchable territory.
The last thing that truly bugs me about the show is that both Hopper and Eleven kill U.S. soldiers like it's no big deal. We're supposed to believe that these particular soldiers are somehow the evil kind over a small monologue from Hopper, but it just doesn't sell it well enough. The soldiers are portrayed as bad-tempered and abusive to make you feel better about it, too, but if I'm being honest, I just can't get there. The moment Eleven casually snaps the neck of a guard who manages to see her while she's sneaking around left a bad taste in my mouth.
This could've easily been avoided with better writing, making the U.S. Army sell the overwhelming power of the evil overtaking Hawkins by making it clear that they're outclassed. Each death could've been treated as a tragedy or a noble sacrifice, but instead, the show tries to convince you that it's no big deal if a soldier dies because they're in the "bad" part of it. It feels a little lazy and a lot disrespectful to our men and women in uniform.
Stranger Things Season 5 has moments that could make it incredible television, but it bogs itself down with leftist sentiment where none needs to exist, which is a lesson I really thought creators would've learned not to do by now.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member