Stranger Things Season 4: Volume 2 Review - 8 Ups & 2 Downs

1. The Plots Vary Wildly In Quality

Much like Volume 1, the show's massive ensemble cast continues to be portioned off into a number of disparate, tangentially related plots, which again are of wildly variant quality here.

While the Hawkins kids dealing with the villainous Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower) is the primary motivating thread and by far the most compelling one, Hopper (David Harbour) and Joyce's (Winona Ryder) journey back home continues to be only sporadically involving, and the road trip with the Byers brothers and Mike (Finn Wolfhard) again fails to do much interesting with them.

It's not much of a spoiler to say that there is eventually a convergence of these plots, yet it comes far too late in the season to change the perception that splitting the cast up for so long harmed the overall story's consistency.

While it's fair to say that Will (Noah Schnapp) and Jonathan (Charlie Heaton) are among the least-interesting characters on the show, it's still a shame that so little is done with them.

Aside from one great heart-to-heart scene together, they basically feel like furniture here, and Mike doesn't fare much better either.

If you can accept these gripes - and you surely can - Season 4 Volume 2 is absolutely worth your time. So, here's what it gets right...