Stranger Things re-review: 2025 my verdict on season 1 episode 3 & 4 as rewatch continues
Our Stranger Things 2025 re-watch continues with season one 📺🚨
- Our Stranger Things re-watch continues with episode 3 & 4.
- Discover my verdict on Holly, Jolly and The Body.
- Find out which episodes will be re-reviewed next week!
Grab your bicycle, walkie-talkie and left-over Vietnam War supplies because it is time for another trip to Hawkins, Indiana.
Last week marked the start of my Stranger Things re-review and you can read my thoughts on the first two episodes here. This week we continue with season one and reach the half-way mark of the show’s original 2016 run.
It is a pair of episodes that feature some of the most iconic moments across the whole show - bet you haven’t looked at Christmas lights quite the same ever since. But got me wondering what Stranger Things is about - what are the Duffer Brothers interested in telling us.
If you haven’t already, go and watch Stranger Things season 1 episode three and four and then come back and read my thoughts. Let’s continue with our weekly re-review and take a trip to the Upside Down.
Chapter Three: Holly, Jolly
Synopsis: An increasingly concerned Nancy looks for Barb and finds out what Jonathan’s been up to. Joyce is convinced Will is trying to talk to her.
Holly, Jolly is an episode of television that feels very interested in the idea of being seen - and more importantly not being seen. It is a throughline that can be found across all of the different plotlines over its 50 minute runtime.
We pick-up from the end of the previous episode with Barb waking up in the Upside Down, having been grabbed from the swimming pool. She calls out but cannot be seen or heard by Steve and Nancy back in the normal world - but the Demogorgon is watching.
Her disappearance goes pretty much unnoticed back in Hawkins, beside Nancy. Even her own parents don’t seem to have realised something is wrong and the rest of the school certainly hasn’t taken note.
Meanwhile Nancy herself feels watched by her peers, potentially judged for her hook-up with Steve. It feels like all eyes are on her, while no eyes are on Barb and her absence that day.
Joyce is unable to convince Jonathan that the blinking light-bulb is Will. In another twist on the theme of being seen/ unseen, she is the only one who can see her son’s attempts to reach out.
And it is her willingness to keep the belief and “see” her son that is rewarded by one of the most iconic moments of the whole show. The Christmas lights in the living room - turned into a ouija board of sorts.
Barb’s disappearance raises the idea of people who slip out of sight and disappear unnoticed and this is a motif that is echoed in Joyce’s plotline. Mike’s mum Karen visits the Byers home and while not fully paying attention to her young daughter Holly, she is almost snatched into the Upside Down after wandering into Will’s room and is only saved by Joyce.
Meanwhile we get glimpses of Eleven’s time at the mysterious institute in which her psychic powers were formed and harnessed. She is constantly observed by Papa (Dr. Brenner) but the only time he seems to see her as a child in need of parental affection is after she uses her powers to injure a bunch of orderlies.
In the present, there is a sense that Mike, Dustin and Lucas don’t yet see her as a part of the group - and maybe just see her as a tool. Dustin demands more demonstrations of her powers, Mike grows irate when she doesn’t lead them directly to Will.
It all comes together with the episode's climax when a body is found - but we the audience do not fully see who it is. Just that it is wearing the same puffer gilet as Will was in episode one.
Holly, Jolly may not have the novelty of the first episode, but it feels thematically coherent in a way that makes it a really strong instalment.
Side note, once again let’s give Winona Ryder her flowers because her performance as Joyce manages to infuse her with so much humanity that she never feels like a caricature.
Chapter Four: The Body
Synopsis: Refusing to believe Will is dead, Joyce tries to connect with her son. The boys give Eleven a makeover. Nancy and Jonathan form an unlikely alliance.
We reach the halfway mark of Stranger Things’ first season with this episode and it got me wondering: what is the show about?
It has lots of trimmings and genre trappings. The 1980s setting, the Stephen King/ Amblin vibes, government conspiracy and cosmic monsters.
But what is Stranger Things about? What is the story that the Duffers want to tell amid all the bells and whistles?
Despite this being perhaps the weakest episode so far, it is perhaps the one that really crystallised in my mind what this show is about. Stranger Things is a story about finding your people and discovering how far you will go for the ones you love.
If you think about why you love Stranger Things - why we all do - it is those character combinations that just fizzle and pop. This is jumping ahead a bit but Steve and Dustin for example.
The Body is an episode that starts to really put the focus on that - it is the first time Nancy and Jonathan properly interact with each other, for example. Eleven gets to go to the school with the boys and become a real part of the group.
Hopper’s connection to Joyce and the Byers pushes him to follow his gut and find the truth about the “Will” pulled from the water.
But it is that last part that also is the weakness of the episode - even on first watch, you know that Will is not dead. It wouldn’t make dramatic sense for him to be killed off-screen.
So the episode spends a lot of time on a plotline that feels like it is just spinning wheels. But at least the fake body wasn’t dragged out for more than one episode and the idea of Stranger Things is starting to come firmly into focus - at least.
What do you think of episode three and four - do you agree with my re-review? Let me know your thoughts by email: [email protected].
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