The fifth and final season of Stranger Things, now available after 40 months’ wait, has been among the more cursed productions in the contemporary history of television.
There was that three-and-a-half year gap between seasons, thanks to the pandemic and the Hollywood writers’ strike; there was the salacious revelation, courtesy of Lily Allen’s divorce album that dropped just weeks before the season premiere, that implied that series star David Harbour was the world’s most terrible philandering husband with a secret bachelor pad full of butt plugs. There was also an unfortunate (though thankfully short-lived) political scandal surrounding series star Noah Schnapp’s advocacy for Israel.
But there’s another, even worse issue plaguing the show—one that’s incredibly awkward and impossible to ignore.
