‘Stranger Things’ Should ‘Kill More People,’ Says Gaten Matarazzo: ‘The Show Would Be So Much Better if the Stakes Were Much Higher’

by GroundbreakingSet187

29 comments

  1. “Kill the children.” I’m not sure it would have the positive effect they think it would.

  3. Tell it to Glenn and Carl. Sometimes it’s nice to see your heroes win.

  4. He’s right, I remember as a kid feeling like no one was safe when chunk get stabbed through the heart by sloth in the goonies

  6. Argyle should have died if he isn’t coming back like the rumours say. Same thing with Jonathan and Max.

  9. At this point, it’s so easy to tell from episode 1 who they’re going to kill.

  10. The shows got bigger issues, I won’t be returning to watch it with Will and Murray still there. They should have recast them. I used to be a big fan as well, buying up all the merch.

  11. The fact that they keep living in the same place kills me

  12. That’s not really what the show is about though. It’s not Game of Thrones it’s Goonies. But they also
    shouldn’t introduce new characters just to have someone kill.

  13. Bringing back Brenner was the worst part of season 4, he should have stayed dead

  14. Boo I hate when they kill off characters I’m invested in for no other reason than “raising stakes” why’d I even bother getting invested

  15. Season 2 was the best, “Kids vs. Cosmic Horror” is great television. Mind Flayer had better be back with a vengeance in S5

  16. I don’t think so the main characters are kids. It’s not game of thrones, it’s more mature Goonies.

  17. I generally think this is true of a lot of shows that include life or death stakes. Anime is the biggest offender. When the stakes are “life or death” but you’re always writing reasons for your characters to not experience serious consequences or death it doesn’t make sense

  18. When I first watched game of thrones, when they built up that one guy as the main character and then beheaded him in the first episode. I had never seen anything like that.

    And it sets the tone for the whole series. No one is safe. Anyone could be offed at any moment. Every battle and skimish is a nail biter. My heart would pound. They killed off an entire royal family in one episode.

    I feel like you never see that. Usually it starts with a protagonist, someone close to the protagonist dies to drive the plot, and everyone else you can assume is safe for the remainder. And sometimes some guy comes along that it’s OBVIOUS they’ll kill off.

  20. i’m not sure people tune into this nostalgic, mostly light hearted genre TV show to see characters get murdered. this isn’t Band of Brothers.

  21. Stranger Things should worry less about killing people and more about filming new episodes before the kids are all in their 30s. Damn.

  22. The show has declined so much in quality since the first season. Every plot line is fixed by eleven pointing at someone and screaming and the writers have way too many main characters to do anything interesting with them individually

  23. I wish they would just make a movie of the final battle. Like Two Towers epic. Yeah. Deaths. But it’s gonna stretch out to 8 or god-I-hope-not-10 episodes in which different characters go on their arcs only to come together in the end. And Eleven is the ex machina who Captain Marvels through the giant Demagorgon. Still gonna happily watch with my 16 year old. I remember when he used to hide behind the couch during scary moments in season one.

  24. “Alright Gaten. Thanks for volunteering your character.”

  25. The stakes feel low because the story feels repetitive, that’s the problem not because major characters are not being killed off. Stranger Things is at heart a friendship adventure story, it was never going to give you Walking Dead or Game of Thrones style of kill-offs.

    For comparison Harry Potter didn’t kill off a major recurring character until Book 5 (Order of the Phoenix). It did fine waiting that long though because every book always brought something new and exciting. 

    Stranger Things is only in its Season 4. I think we should be patient, the story is after all not finished yet.

  27. Wouldn’t the directors get arrested and studio get sued if they start murdering people?

  28. I feel like the show needs more stakes in the form of a coherent over arching plot that isn’t held up by almost random introductions of problems and circumstances for characters to solve that like sorta fall together to form a narrative? But mostly just feels like shoehorned in conflicts that don’t serve to teach the characters a whole lot.

    It’s entertaining and dramatic adventure (sorta) story, but s1 was lightning in the bottle, everything else has felt like parody media of various genres.

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