There are many questions that should finally be answered when season five of Netflix’s smash-hit series Stranger Things drops next week. But perhaps the biggest of them all is, simply, do people still care?

That may seem a ridiculous question to ask of a show whose most recent season remains the streamer’s third most-watched series of all time (with the equivalent of 141 million full-season views), but it’s been 3½ years since that season ended, and 9½ since the first season debuted. In an era of increasing options and diminishing attention, expecting people to hang around to see how it all pans out is a big ask.

We’re in uncharted territory here, but Netflix is betting big that people do still care. According to industry newsletter Puck, each of the eight episodes in this final season cost around $US50 million ($70 million) to make. While she did not confirm that figure, content chief Bella Bejaria recently told Variety: “We want to spend as much money as it is to realise the vision of what’s on the page.”

That vision is the work of the Duffer Brothers, Matt and Ross, 41-year-old identical twins, and over the course of five seasons it has grown more elaborate while at the same time remaining true to its core.

As has often been remarked, at its heart is a deep nostalgia for 1980s pop culture – the music, the fashion, the ridiculous haircuts and the (relative) innocence of a pre-digital world. And above all, the movies of the time. Cinema, TV, direct-to-video; cars, girls, high school, stoners; horror, horror, horror. This is the stuff that fuels Stranger Things, and it has earned the show legions of fans across all ages.

For all the playfulness – and there is plenty – the show grapples with some serious themes. It has always flipped between light and dark, but as it has progressed, the latter has come more into focus, perhaps a reflection of the fact that the kids who tuned in for season one are now in their late teens or early 20s. Not unlike the cast…

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Duality is a recurring theme. There are good parents – Joyce Byers (Winona Ryder) and, with a little coaxing, Jim Hopper (David Harbour) – and there are bad. Some are merely incompetent or uninterested (like the clueless Ted Wheeler, father of Nancy and Mike); some are violent, like the stepfather of Max (Sadie Sink), whose cruelty has clearly been a formative influence on his son Billy (Dacre Montgomery); and then there’s Dr Martin Brennan (Matthew Modine), the scientist who insists the young subjects of his experiments call him Papa. His behaviour is amoral and cavalier at best, outright evil at worst. Either way, it amounts to child abuse.

That duality extends to the whole world of Stranger Things. On the surface, there’s Hawkins, a benign slice of middle America, where kids can jump on their BMX bikes and cycle around town at all hours, where doors go unlocked at night and where the school dance is still the biggest event on the social calendar.

But underneath is the Upside Down, a world of darkness, where the repressed emerges in terrifying form. Guilt, anger, fear, resentment: this is the fuel of this realm, and as it builds, it threatens to break through into the dappled world above.

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It’s a dichotomy as old as time, and one that David Lynch explored so brilliantly in his work, especially Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks. Stranger Things never gets as twisted as they do, but it nudges at it, particularly in the later seasons. And it draws on notions of Hell (and Purgatory, which even gets mentioned by name in season 4) as well as parallel universes and the mythic universe of Tolkien to great effect.

Watching the series of course demands a huge willingness to suspend disbelief. Most horror – certainly anything dealing with the supernatural – does that. This show mingles its horror with elements of sci-fi, Cold War espionage, paranoid conspiracy theories and a healthy dash of geek culture (Dungeons and Dragons role playing, ham radio, maths and science) in service of a storyline that is sometimes baffling, frequently improbable, but never less than wildly entertaining.

But the sheer duration of its life has created some elements of disbelief that are harder to suspend. And none more so than the casting.

While the narrative from pilot to finale spans years, the key cast members have aged by more than twice as long. Kids who were meant to be 11 or 12 at the outset are now played by actors in their early-to-mid 20s. Not since Luke Perry’s forehead crumpled like the San Fernando fault on Beverly Hills 90210 (he was 24 when he started playing a 16-year-old, 29 when the show wrapped) have we been confronted with such an act of cognitive dissonance on screen.

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Still, after spending so much time with them, we’re invested in these characters, no matter how age-inappropriate they now look. We want Nancy to find happiness, whether with Jonathan or Steve. We want Steve to fulfil his heroic destiny without meeting a grisly end, a la poor Eddie. We want Max to make it, and Will to survive whatever fresh hell Vecna has in store. We want Joyce and Hop to make it as a couple, and Eleven to find some peace, just as soon as she’s brought it.

But our relationship with the show isn’t just about what’s happening on screen; there are off-screen elements too. And they are complicated.

Millie Bobby Brown is still only 21, but she is already well into the inevitable arc that has seen her go from unknown to movie star (the Enola Holmes and rebooted Godzilla-Kong franchises), to subject of abuse (sexually explicit faked images flooded the internet soon after she turned 18). More recently, she has become a figure of derision for some over her decision to adopt a child with husband Jake Bongiovi, son of the singer Jon Bon Jovi.

David Harbour, meanwhile, has become a figure of derision in a whole other way, as his ex-wife Lily Allen dumps on their marriage in the most public way imaginable on her album West End Girl.

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Though she has described it as “auto-fiction” (a blend of autobiography and fiction) and never actually names Harbour, the big man cops a shellacking on the record as Allen delivers a (very one-sided) account of their open marriage.

Adding to his woes was a report in The Daily Mail (not so far verified by any other sources) that Brown has accused Harbour of bullying behaviour on set. True or not, it’s no wonder he hasn’t been doing interviews (the odd red carpet chat aside) for this final season.

Titillating as all that scuttlebutt is, though, it’s unlikely to damage interest in the final season. In fact, it may do the opposite, driving a surge in interest from people who had never really given the show much thought.

The real fans, meanwhile, will only care about one thing: Can the Duffer Brothers and everyone involved in this landmark series stick the ending? Here’s hoping.

Are you looking forward to the final season of Stranger Things? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

Stranger Things season five airs in three tranches, with the first four episodes streaming on Netflix from November 27.

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