'Stranger Things' Season 5 Streaming Now on Netflix; Rotten Tomatoes Reviews Revealed Actorsvaultpro

The long-awaited fifth and final season of Stranger Things landed this morning, with the first four episodes of Season 5 providing some answers to questions fans have waited three years to find out, and delivering a cliffhanger that everyone will need to wait a month to see resolved. But with so much hype and expectation on the shoulders of the Duffer brothers and cast, how have these first episodes been received and is Stranger Things set to end in a Breaking Bad flourish, or a Lost plane crash.

Stranger Things Season 5 has two different views from its initial burst of critic and audience reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, and it leaves those people who still rely on such guidance to feel a little upside down.

The Tomatometer score for Stranger Things’ first leg of its final lap has landed an 86% score, the lowest of the series behind Season 3 and 4’s 89% and 11% adrift from where the series started almost 10 years ago. Yet, the rating is still one that many shows would die to have, and doesn’t mean the new episodes are a disappointment or disaster in any way.

Some worried that Part One of the final series could spend too much time setting up what is coming next, but it seems that this is definitely not the case. For Zaki Hasan of the San Francisco Chronicle, the opening batch of episodes “reminds us why Stranger Things hooked us in the first place.” Zach Pope added that the series is “just perfection for fans,” and delivered an “incredible payoff from much of the setup from the entire series.” Meanwhile, the main issue in the few “rotten” reviews, such as from The Atlantic, is the overall “grim tone” the show has taken on as it heads towards a conclusion.

Fan Reactions to ‘Stranger Things’ are Exactly What It Needed Them to Be

Lucas Sinclair, a Black teenage boy, carries Max Mayfield, an unconscious white girl, while standing in an elevator of a hospital. Max wears a hospital gown.

Netflix

While critics have given the series its lowest score of the series’ history, albeit due to around 5 negative reviews, those who have binged their way through the show on its debut have scores it a collective 91% at the time of writing – the highest audiences score since Season 1.

You can throw all the usual “A words” into the mix – awesome, amazing, absolute must-see – but beyond that the reviews have been largely positive because even those who have been slightly underwhelmed have had the sense to point out that this is just the beginning of the show’s final journey. The main reaction is going to come with that final episode on New Year’s Eve.

In the meantime, one review proclaims that “every year, month, day, minute was worth the wait.” Another added that the final season seems to be shifting gears into a new era as the show’s 80’s setting draws to a close, saying, “Duffers decided to pull the big dystopian sci-fi guns. Goonies out. Terminator in.” A third simply says that the opening episodes “nailed it” and the “masterpiece” of Episode 4 has left them “completely disorientated.”

When a series becomes as big as Stranger Things, the ending is what defines it. Many perfect shows have gone down in infamy for bad choices made in their final seasons, but with the Duffers having known their endgame all along, perhaps Stranger Things will be one of the few that can truly deliver on its decade of promises.