After binge watching season 1, I've just also finished season 2. I thought season 2 was better. The pace was certainly faster. I also found season one "derivative," just as Madmax said when Lucas told her the story.
season 1 was more X-files ripoff.
I thought it was a homage to Elm Street, Friday 13th and all other nasty horror movies, especially as they show young adults getting drunk and partying, while the monster prowls outside waiting for opportunity.
Not to mention
Scanners (1980) and
E.T. (1982) and
Gremlins (1984) and Super Eight (2011) and, so many other movies. Though the 1980's homage is surely part of the appeal?
I thought season 2 was more original. I even liked the episode 7 everyone seems to hate. That was an important episode to have. 011 was very naive. She would be, having spent her childhood in captivity. How else was she going to learn to be streetwise and get worldly wise. She learnt about her mother and that gave her something to be angry about. 008 taught her how to focus her anger to increase her powers. However, she could not kill the ex-orderly with the children. He was a cruel and brutal man, but killing him would be murder, and she has only killed in self-defence before. The episode taught her about who she is.
IF there is going to be Season 3. At the moment the story ends quite well.
See, at the end of series 1 I thought it was so perfect that they'd definitely ruin it if they commissioned a series 2. Ho-hum, I was proven wrong (and happily proven wrong, I hasten to add).
Season 1 left many threads behind to pick up - the mother, the gorgondog that went down the sink, the fate of 011, the gate still being open. Season 2 has not left much. The thing is still above the school in upsidedown land, but it has no way to get through to ours. I expect that Season 3 will be quite different, with some more focus on 001 through to 011. That doesn't mean it will be bad (as far as I am concerned as I love psionic battles) but I'd doubt those who disliked episode 7 will be pleased if it turns into
The Tomorrow People.
There is a lot to be told on why Eleven and Will are such a special kids.
Wasn't Will's ability simply because he survived so long in upsidedown land and because the thing got inside him? Maybe you could say he was special because he survived when others (Barb) did not?
011 and 008 are the result of drug trials on pregnant women. That was established early on in season 1 and is the same plot as
Scanners).
I wonder, will it be exactly one year from season two ending as Chief Hopper indicated? If it happens around next Halloween, does it mean that there's so sort of ritual that opened the tear to our world in the first place?
I hadn't thought about the significance, but maybe the anniversary is important. Why would that be? It is just a man-made dating system?
You may be correct though. The portal/gate opening on the same day every year would be a SFF trope quite in-fitting with the other tropes in this series.
I'll now begin watching season 3 and find out, as I have that advantage.
