Stranger Things 2 is bigger, weirder, and — eventually — better than season 1

At once better and worse than its first season, Stranger Things 2 is good enough to suggest the breakout Netflix series isn’t a one-trick pony, while still falling into many of the pitfalls that made season one diminish a bit in the memory the further one got from it. It takes a long time to get where it’s going, it makes some bafflingly strange choices on the way there, and it still feels like a show that’s set in “the ’80s!” instead of the 1980s.

But when it works, it works. I’m powerless to resist it. You probably are too.

Rating

In some ways, the series is trapped by elements entirely beyond its control. The first season became a phenomenon entirely by word of mouth and gentle nudging by the Netflix algorithm. Before you knew it, think pieces rained from the skies, catalogs to the show’s ’80s movie references popped up on every website in existence (including this one), and merchandise filled Hot Topics across our great nation.

It’s the kind of overexposure that’s dangerous to any TV show, much less one as unassuming as Stranger Things. It was a good show, but not a perfect one, and the hype machine turned a spotlight on its (mostly forgivable) flaws. I kept finding myself taking the opposite position of people in arguments about how it was great and how it was overrated. And yet somewhere in the intersection between its synth-heavy score, its pitch-perfect casting, and its “always October” aesthetic, the show’s biggest moments and best characters had a tendency to stick in the memory. It was deeply flawed but hard to shake, the kind of TV show you could love in spite of its worst moments, which was appropriate for a series about kids approaching adolescence.

Season two is, in the grand tradition of sequels, even more than season one. Sometimes, that’s good. Sometimes, that’s very bad. But to tell you more about it, I’m going to have to spoil everything.