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

Sometimes, you just want to trace your steps back to the beginning of a show. It’s that bittersweet urge to search for the last hint of fragrance in something that has slowly grown old and stale—something you didn’t want to acknowledge was fading. So you hold on, hoping to catch that same perfumed whiff again.

Stranger Things has that smell. And as Netflix’s flagship series comes to an end, it’s hard not to notice how far it’s drifted from where it began. You don’t think about it at first—you’ve grown used to the fragrance fading slowly—but the moment you revisit the beginning, you realise just how good we had it.

You realise, the reason Stranger Things became a phenomenon. Season 1 takes you back to a time before the Upside Down had a serial-killing villain with an elaborate backstory, before the endless teasing over love triangles and fandom turf wars, before the cast grew up.

A time when the dialogue in even the most insignificant scene flowed more naturally than entire seasons do now.

The premise was simple.

A little boy goes missing after playing a game of Dungeons and Dragons.

A young girl is found in the woods.

A science lab holds the secrets to a sleepy town. Monsters tear through walls, an anguished mother tries to communicate with her son through Christmas lights, while everyone including her elder son believes she is delusional.

That was Stranger Things in Season 1. The opening scenes set the tone: Mike (Finn Wolfhard), Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin), Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo), and Will (Noah Schnapp) are playing Dungeons & Dragons, their personalities bursting through in a brief snapshot of the game, full of exuberance, flair, and cheer.

Will (Noah Schnapps) is the quiet one here, even if he eagerly participates in enactments. “The demogorgon got me,” he says quietly, referring to the DND monster. But he isn’t scared either; just before he vanishes for the entirety of the season---he is ready to fight whatever is coming for him in all the flickering lights.

There was no need for campy dialogues or exposition. His tremulous expressions said it all. We only see bits and pieces of Will through the season, and yet his presence is pervasive. The story revolves around him, and we see little pieces of his story, with his brother and mother through flashbacks. Like Joyce, you almost wait for him to return to his ‘Castle of Byers’ in the woods.

But in his absence, his family and friends are left to pick up the pieces. In the midst of the turmoil, Eleven (Millie Bobby-Brown) appears. Unable to say much, traumatised and softening under Mike’s care, Eleven’s story slowly unfolds. Not as a series of dramatic expositions, but quietly, about a girl who was abducted, experimented on, isolated---a girl who doesn’t know what friendship means. And, her real family are the friends she makes.

Eleven’s understanding of friendship didn’t require sermons or lectures. It reflects in her monosyllables, taught by Mike. He teaches her ‘promise’, which she repeats after him. It’s almost painfully endearing to watch her learn, and it is truly, Millie’s best season, outshining the others by a mile. You yearned to know more about this curious little Eleven and watch in her adapt to new surroundings, and the immortal fondness for Ego-waffles.

But, over the seasons, we gradually lose little pieces of Eleven, though we remain unaware of it. We’re sure that she is just growing up. It’s only by Season 5, when you see her as a fully-fledged superhero likened to an Avenger without any of the nuance and enigma that she once had, does it strike like a knife.

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.