‘Stranger Things’ reveals first look at final season, and I am already mad

On-set photos from the season of Stranger Things have sent us all careening down a corridor of memories and shock, and we are not alone, as the rest of the internet appears to be right there with us.

Dear reader, hold on to your hat because the first season of Stranger Things was released eight years ago. That disturbing fact is compounded by the harsh reality that the cast is now far beyond the ages of the average high schooler, except for the unfortunate souls of certain underfunded school districts.

The photos feature a variety of cast either being very serious in promo shots or very unserious in candids. A particular damning shot shows Caleb McLaughlin, Noah Schnapp, Gaten Matarazzo, and Finn Wolfhard in the school cafeteria. Poor Schnapp looks like a concerned uncle who really needs to talk to you about your aluminum siding.

Matarazzo is sporting a mullet of fine proportions, but the only problem is that the show has gone on so long that the mullet has come back in fashion. Young men all around the globe have lost all self-respect and are now all business in the front, party in the back.

You are too late, Stranger Things. You have waited for too long, and the moment has ed you by. Your once fresh-faced cast of kids can pretty much legally drink. They can soon vote. Hell, they are getting married.

One of the candids features Matarazzo in a car with Joe Keery, Natalia Dyer, and Charlie Heaton, the older group of “kids,” and all those actors around now orbiting or moving past 30 at escape velocity. Their characters, at least, have escaped high school, so that is not quite so jarring.

Internet commentators have pointed out that they look tired, which is perhaps a little cruel because don’t we all look tired right now? Are we not all feeling the weight of this moment, the impending arrival of a television series that is likely getting here just a little bit too late?

The show that once tickled our nostalgia and made us think the 1980s was not just sad brown tones and very lax health and safety laws is now preparing to just make us feel older, to add to the harsh ticking of the clock that reminds us, much like these once young actors, that we can only ever go forward, and never back?

As much as I have enjoyed Stranger Things, it’s about time that Netflix and the Duffer Brothers released the cast and allowed them to run wild in the hills above Hollywood with the rest of the young Hollywood set.

Then, the next stage of the process can truly begin as we place our bets on who will have the best “post-Stranger Things” career. My money is Caleb McLaughlin going full-on Jesse Plemons, building a slow body of work until he becomes, almost under the radar, one of the best actors working today.

I suspect some of them will stumble and fall, but we will always have the memory of watching them growing too old for their roles because, for some reason, Netflix was cool with people taking three years to record eight episodes of television.