This season received mostly good reviews. On Rotten Tomatoes, for example, it holds an approval rating of 89% based on 153 reviews with an average rating of 7.85/10.

The site's critical consensus says: "Darker and denser than its predecessors, Stranger Things' fourth chapter sets the stage for the show's final season in typically binge-worthy fashion."

One of Rotten Tomatoes' best-regarded critics, Shirley Li of The Atlantic, said that, "Amid the show's ballooning scale and scope, Stranger Things finds an unexpected anchor not in its ensemble of fan favorites but in its latest villain."

The fans seem to be happy too. To find out about their opinions, we contacted the moderators of the subreddit r/StrangerThings which has a whopping 747k members; if there's any community that can paint an accurate picture of what regular viewers think about the fourth season, it's this one.

"Most fans believe [the first set of Strangers Things season 4] is one of the top seasons," the mods told Bored Panda.

"We enjoyed it very much as well," they added. "Season 1 is still the best in our eyes but season 4 comes in second place."

Out of everything that has happened in this season so far (SPOILER ALERT), the mods think that the "most talked about has to be Will Byers' sexuality and if he will reveal any feeling he might have to Mike and who will die in the second set; a lot of speculation that it might be Max, Nancy, or Eddie."

Additionally, the mods of r/StrangerThings noticed that a lot of people want to know how Eleven will get out and help stop Vecna. "The first set of the season left us on a cliffhanger that we are all eagerly waiting to see resolved."

There were a lot of issues around the production of the fourth season. The main one was the pandemic, which caused filming to halt and then begin again in October of 2020. Gaten Matarazzo, who plays Dustin Henderson, told Us Weekly in December 2020 that it definitely changed the way things worked on set.

"It's definitely an unorthodox form of shooting," Matarazzo said. "Everyone on set has been very diligent about wearing their PPE. Even for our off-camera work, we keep our masks and goggles on. Lots of distancing. Separation during lunch, and transport from base to set."

So where was this “unorthodox” filming happening? Well, there were quite a few locations that were needed for the show because some of the biggest characters, Eleven and Byers, have moved across the country to California when the season opens. Dustin, Lucas, and Max are still in Hawkins, Indiana, and Hopper is not disintegrated— but he is trapped deep in Russian territory.

Scenes set in Hawkins were generally shot in Atlanta, Georgia, but Decider reported that the scenes in California were actually filmed in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Eleven and Will are attending a fictional school called Californian Lenora Hills High School, and those scenes were filmed at Albuquerque’s Eldorado High School. Other scenes took place at Albuquerque's Roller King skating rink and in Los Lunas, New Mexico.

And for that extra Eastern European flavor, Hopper's jail scenes were shot in Lithuania’s centuries-old (though no longer operational) Lukiškes Prison, while the other Russian scenes were shot in and around the wintery country's capital, Vilnius.