By MaCayla Jablonski, Editor-in-Chief.
If you were one of the few people who decided to skip-out on watching Stranger Things, let me be the first to tell you about the bad life choice you made.
Stranger Things is a supernatural, horror-science fiction series created by the one and only Duffer Brothers. It stars Winona Ryder, David Harbour, Finn Wolfhard, Millie Bobby Brown, Gaten Matarazzo, Caleb McLaughlin, Natalia Dyer, Charlie Heaton, Cara Buono and Matthew Modine.
The show begins with a young girl in a hospital gown running away from something, or rather, someone. She tries to find shelter in a small restaurant on the outskirts of town, but when someone notices her, a commotion arises and causes an accident, resulting in someone’s murder. This starts the chain of events that leads to a disappearance of a child, and the discovery of their town’s deepest, darkest secrets.
The girl in the gown, who is later named El, flees from the crime scene and into the woods, where she soon meets a group of boys looking for their missing friend, Will. The boys, Mike, Dustin and Lucas, bring El back to Mike’s house to keep her safe. Lucas and Dustin are hesitant toward El due to her shaved head and inability to speak in complete sentences, however, Mike is more sensitive (he thinks she’s cute). As the boys begin to worry about their still-missing friend Will, they start to investigate. El begins having flashbacks of her traumatizing past, which hint at multiple-dimension experiments, and El being of clairvoyant nature; this causes El to realize her ability to communicate with Will while he is in the upsidedown (a different dimension).
As the boys and El take on their own investigation, Will’s mother, Joyce Byers, teams up with the local sheriff, Jim Hopper, in hopes to find her son. Joyce claims early on that she is getting phone calls from her son, and speaking to him through the lights in her house. The town and even her oldest son, Jonathan, declare her a psychopath. She and Hopper take it upon themselves to find Will by breaking into the local “military plant” where mysterious and dangerous things happen.
As all of this is taking place, the government is tapping into their phone lines and stalking the boys in order to find El and take her back.
When you get toward the end of the series, the show starts tying together in ways you didn’t think it could. The boys and El team up with Joyce and Hopper to fight the government, Mike and El start falling for each other, El blows up some shit with her mind, not to mention the major plot-twist in the last five minutes.
The Duffer Brothers draw you into this series with their flawless casting, intriguing storyline, and the amount of imagination poured into the plot. They create an emotional connection with every type of audience member, whether you’re a parent, a friend, or a confused little girl with a shaved head. If you have an hour (or eight to finish the series), I truly recommend sitting down and watching this show. The only regret you’ll have is that you waited so long to experience it.
