10 Great TV Shows With One Major Flaw
9. Too Many Characters - Stranger Things
Even if you're able to overlook the fact that Stranger Things' young cast members are noticeably aging out of step with the show's more compressed timeline, it's a simple fact that the sci-fi horror series has amassed an overstuffed roster of characters.
At present, the show has over a dozen significant characters it needs to give something to do, as resulted in season four portioning them off into a series of delineated subplots which only further bloated out an already wildly distended season.
It's clear that the storytelling canvas simply can't support an ensemble cast of this size without the ongoing presence of some characters feeling forced, enough that even star Maya Hawke herself admitted that she felt the show has too many characters.
Season five would do well to trim the fat by having villain Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower) swiftly cull a few characters, which would also in turn seriously up the stakes for the final season's climactic battle against him.
In the very least, the Duffer Brothers have already confirmed that season five will have shorter episodes than season four, hopefully meaning that the storytelling is at least a little more disciplined and concise this time around.