Stranger Things season 5 is best when it’s at its silliest

The stakes — and the action — have never been bigger in Stranger Things’ fifth and final season. While a single Demogorgon was a terrifying threat in season 1, there’s now a whole army of extradimensional monsters. The series premiere, “The Vanishing of Will Byers,” is rewritten in the season 5 premiere to turn the abduction from a bizarre, singular incident to a key part of a dark plot. Yet for all the escalation, the series, which premieres with a first batch of episodes on Nov. 26, remains at its best when the Duffer Brothers embrace the throwback kid-focused silliness that has always made the show so fun, pausing the battles to just let their weird characters riff off each other.