Six years ago, brothers Matt and Ross Duffer, who were born in 1984 as identical twins and call themselves The Duffer Brothers like an official 80's band, released the first season of their series "Stranger Things".

And like Eleven, the heroine of their series with her supernatural abilities, they have opened a gateway to a parallel universe.

Today, Stranger Things is one of Netflix's biggest hits, and each new season is a twist on its nostalgic look at the '80s, a pop culture evocation that painlessly and evocatively borrows from the notorious genres of the time: a little high school drama, a bit of fantasy, bit of world conspiracy, weirdos and monsters, "The Goonies" and "Alien", BMX and D&D.

Harold Staun

Editor in the feuilleton of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sunday newspaper in Berlin.

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Since the surprise success of this mixture, the question of how the Duffer Brothers continue to develop their recipe has arisen with each new season.

In the fourth, it seems at first glance that the answer is simple: more of everything.

The eighties seem even more colorful (which is also due to the move of some of the protagonists to California), the underworld even darker (and at the same time so well developed that you can traverse it by bike), the horror even more brutal and explicit.

And he doesn't exhaust himself in subtle hints for long either: by the end of the first episode, the manifestation of all the repressed trauma seething in the small town of Hawkins has a name, and the ability to speak,

cracks bones and pops eyes, standing in all her glory before Eleven and the bevy of teenagers aged another year.

If you want, you can also see this increase in the budget: the new season is said to have cost 30 million dollars per episode, 270 million dollars in total.

The series even beats the special effects wonderland of "Game of Thrones" and is at the top of the most expensive series ever.

An ensemble with super powers

The fact that it's great fun (and wonderfully touching) when the Duffer Brothers go through the well-known motifs is because they don't rely on the budget or the loyalty of the enormous fan base;

but that they play very consistently with the possibilities that the coming of age of their niche project offers them for an independent narrative cosmos, for an "Expanded Universe" as we know it from "Marvel" or "Star Wars".

They know that this development means more than just fan fiction and an impressive range of merchandise ranging from the Demogorgon monster as a stuffed animal to doormats that say "Enter the Upside Down";

particularly brave fans can shop the 1986 vintage collection from famous surfwear brand Quicksilver, which the characters are wearing in the new season.

Above all, it means that Stranger Things is now its own reference system, its own language, an ensemble of heroes in its own right with powerful superpowers.

Courage and cohesion are part of it, forgiveness and memory, crude half-knowledge, wild theories and an openness to the inexplicable, walkmen and electric guitars.

And a glimpse of the horrors the future holds for them.

This is possibly the greatest strength of the Duffer Brothers: how confidently they use their characters, how fantastic they are in storytelling and character design, how textbook their sense of humor, timing and pathos is.

Even those skills seem to have been stolen from somewhere, but they're putting them together into a puzzle of their own.

It's like watching a magician whose tricks you know and still get fooled.

Eighties revival

You can see that in the use of music, in the astonishing ability to revive what was actually already a top hit of the eighties by giving the songs a dramaturgical function, like Limahl's "Neverending Story" in the third season.

It would be too much of a spoiler to reveal which song works its magic this time, but the scene is one of the loveliest of the first seven episodes.

You can see it in the dynamic between the characters, such as the unlikely friendship between the lisping supernerd Dustin and the womanizer Steve, which at times almost feels like a spin-off within the series.

And as in the previous seasons, you can also tell by the knack for new characters that you immediately take to your heart like old acquaintances.

This time it's a loud-mouthed heavy metal freak who covers up his shyness as a fright, and a permanently stoned Latino who only looks like the Comic Relief on duty at first glance.

And you even get to know the other test candidates from the secret laboratory where Eleven developed her superpowers a little better.

One of them plays a crucial role.

With this, the Duffer Brothers are throwing the door to the future of their universe wide open.

The story of Eleven and her friends, Netflix has announced, will end after season five.

But there are at least ten others of their kind.

Stranger things

, out May 27 on Netflix.