It's terrifying...

They're not kids anymore. Eleven just got married. No way they can pass them off as younger now.

You say that like TV series producers don't have a history of casting adults to play teenagers.
- Oof, I mean, CGI can go a long way, but still... some actors stay young-looking (Johnny Depp did, for a long time), but it's a large cast and not all of them will. And they have to do it for an entire season, which gets expensive.
  But, we'll see. My money's on a fast-forward into the 90's, like someone else suggested.
- Honestly it’s not that hard, they just use clothing and makeup to disguise their height and age. Works really well for the most part.
I always thought they'd do an I.T style band gets back together in the 90s
- That's probably wise. 90's nostalgia seems to be "in" these days.

Do they mean a classic DnD foe, or a foe with the name of an entirely unrelated DnD monster tacked on?

In season 4 it's """""""Vecna"""""""" (a kid named Henry who got experimented on by some scientists) so probably
- That's what all of it is. They just started naming everything after D&D monsters because they play D&D.

OMG how can they survive such a vociferous beast!? :-P

Though I stopped watching after the abysmal season 2 - is the rest of it worthwhile?

Season 2 was the worst in my opinion, with the most recent season being about on par with the first.
- I liked season 4, but season 1 just can't be topped for me because of how grounded it was. Just normal characters from a small town experiencing supernatural things in a way that's believable. The rest of the show is good as long as you let go of any wishes that it stayed grounded like season 1.
- Both season 2 and 3 sucked because they just kept going back to the portal, but without any substance. Felt like running in circles.
  I think season 4 should have been the second season with elements from season 2 and 3 added in.
- For me it was season 3 that I found the worst, too much slapstick and I disliked how they turned Hopper into a walking bastion of juvenile insecure comic relief. Season 4 on the other hand rocked again, much darker and a better balance between seriousness and humour.
- The show was started with a pair of guys - I forget if they were brothers but they were at least reputedly friends - who had a vision of what they wanted to do. They broke apart as the show was renewed after the first seasons though, hence that immediate drop in quality from this magical wonderland to "grrr, watch beast go smash into goo".
  From what I read, they told themselves they would have (at least) two rules: (1) never use CGI - only puppets - for the purity of what seeing them, and more importantly not seeing them, conveys; and (2) do not "sell out" the show merely for reasons of profit. Money is fine but don't continue it unless there is a real story that wants to be told.
  After the financial success of the first season, one of the co-creators left, and the second season was literally a different show, yet Netflix lied to us all and heavily pushed it as if it were the same as the first, for profits. It backfired, and revealed all the more how Shitflix just pushes forward purely for profits at the expense of offering much that is actually worth watching.
  But if it got better after that, I might push through, one day. :-|
  Edit: oops, I meant this in reply to Spider2013@lemmy.world's comment.
- No way, how can you rate 2 higher than 3? I skip the entire third season on rewatch
S3 was the worst one in my opinion, but everybody is different. I just feel like the massacred Hopper’s character to pay homage to the “loose cannon cop” of the 80’s.
I am on the same boat, and from the replies, i am not going to watch it

Meh, how many of you want a DM but never got a chance.

A classic D&D foe - like, a Duergar?