I can see the desire to make Season 4 bigger than what has come before, the series really needed something like this in order to stop repeating itself.

The production is epic in every sense, really impressive work, visually Season 4 is a major accomplishment.

There's also a good story in there, it's just a shame that everything felt drawn out and laboured. The issue probably stems from there being so many characters, each needing something to do, so we have a constant jumping between stories which becomes jarring. Any pacing is ruined by then jumping to something else entirely for a good portion of time before coming back to one of the other groups of characters.

Things get there by the last 3 episodes but even then the finale feels laboured and drawn out with so many slow motion emotional moments at the very end coming off as overblown.

I hope I don't come off as too harsh, but for me, as a whole this was disappointing, purely because, it had all the elements in place to be so much better if only it was tightened up.

There's some fantastic performances in there, every actor knocks it out of the park so it is a real shame that it wasn't paced better, at times it felt like hard work to get through it all.

I'd prefer to see Season 5 as a movie rather than a TV series, as I fear the next series will also suffer from the same issues that have plagued this one.

I guess we'll have to wait and see on that. A tighter re-edit of this Season may go someway to improving it but would prove difficult I imagine because of all the characters that need to be shoehorned in.

Stranger Things used to be a perfectly crafted series, the first season is evidence of that but it now feels that it's outstaying its welcome with an overlong and excessive ending.