From the beginning, Stranger Things has always owed Stephen King a huge debt, with the influences of many of the horror master’s masterpieces being keenly felt on the Netflix hit.
It, Firestarter, Stand by Me… the list goes on. So, it’s a good thing that King has always been a big fan of the series, having reacted to it on social media whenever a new season drops. But his response to the just-released season four, volume 2 has to be his most notable yet, as it offers the highest praise imaginable.
Yes, it turns out the latest episodes of Stranger Things are so unsettling that even the man who gave us The Shining, Pet Sematary, and Salem’s Lot to name but three is too scared to keep watching. King took to Twitter to share what he thought about ST4‘s penultimate episode, which he labelled as “so good, and yet so full of dread, that I’m almost afraid to watch the last one.”
Since deploying this tweet, King has yet to supply us with an update so we can only assume that he did indeed hold off on watching the final episode because “Chapter Eight: Papa” creeped him out too much. We can only imagine what creators the Duffer brothers, who have never been shy about being massive King fans, are feeling right now. To have the icon himself like their show is one thing, but to actually frighten him is a whole lot more impressive.
King first made his feelings about Stranger Things known back in 2016, calling the experience of viewing season one like “watching Steve King’s Greatest Hits. I mean that in a good way.” More recently, he praised season 4, volume 1 as “really cool”, although he blasted the concept of splitting the run into two halves as “kind of lame.”
With the season four finale going harder than arguably any Stranger Things episode before it, it would be interesting to get King’s thoughts on it, once he’s rustled up the courage to actually give it a watch, that is.