Stranger Things Season 1 was pure lightning in a bottle — so why is Netflix’s hit sputtering now?

Jonathan now….is there. That’s the best you can say about him in Season 4 and 5, apart from the fact that he has been trapped in a vapid love triangle. But Season 1 Jonathan was a 16-year-old, living with his single mother and brother, cooking and cleaning for the house, while taking up an extra job for money. And one day, his brother is supposedly dead. He has to plan a funeral, while his mother talks to Christmas lights.

Charlie Heaton is searing in this season. In the episode where Joyce runs out of the house as a demogorgon tries to break through, she runs into Jonathan in the dark woods. The two just hug and sob, while the music reaches a crescendo. Once again, Stranger Things twisted the knife. You felt the pain: Two very broken people, grappling in desperation and heartache, just waiting for a sign of hope, when there isn’t none.

Their relationship frays too, as Joyce refuses to believe Will is dead. A battered Jonathan yells that he refuses to let his brother lie cold for another night in the morgue. But, Joyce pays no heed, and perhaps for good reason.

With Joyce, you felt her manic, frantic energy sweeping the season. The exhaustion of sleeping next to a telephone, waiting for a sign. The clutching at Christmas lights. The dishevelled hair and the incoherent stumbling. What a performance, Winona Ryder.

But in Season 5, this bond is gone. Joyce uncharacteristically talks in stilted tones to Will and doesn’t seem too fazed by Jonathan’s absence.

Before she was reduced to a love triangle by fandoms, Nancy Wheeler (Natalia Dyer) actually had one of the most complex arcs, and you only figure that out after returning to Season 1. She’s excited and almost intoxicated to be dating the coolest kid in school, much to the chagrin of her friend, Barbara. The giddiness clouds her, to the point that she is willing to lie to her own parents and unable to care much that her little brother’s friend has gone missing. She wants to be with Steve Harringon, and her last conversation with Barbara always burns her later: ‘You’ve changed’, says Barb before she is snatched away forever.

This trauma shapes Nancy’s entire personality later: She is never the same person again. It also unconsciously seeps into her relationship with Steve, fracturing it for good in Season 2, and pushing her towards Jonathan. Call it trauma bond, if you will. But it’s an understanding of sorts. It deserves more respect than just being flattened into a love triangle.

And Nancy’s trauma returns in Season 5, when her little sister is taken. This is actually the most watchable part of the show, because someone finally seems human and fleshed out, again.

In short, Season 1 was tightly written. It held more mystery, more questions, and—looking back—was stronger precisely because we didn’t have all the answers. It didn’t need a superhero; it needed kids simply growing up together. The conversations felt real, not rehearsed or propped up by perfunctory lines that might as well scream, ‘We’re all in this together.’

Season 1 didn’t have to tell you what it was. It just was.