Stranger Things Started as a Triumph of Trauma Bonding. It Ended as a Casualty of the Franchise Machine

This article discusses plot points from Stranger Things Season 5, Part 2.

Try to remember what it was like to be alive in the summer of 2016. As the West struggled to absorb the shock of Britain’s vote to leave the European Union, a humanitarian crisis was unfolding in Aleppo. Barack Obama was still President of the United States, and Donald Trump was still months away from being elected as his successor. Just about every trusted pollster favored a Hillary Clinton victory that would—after...