Since first debuting over 10 years ago, Stranger Things has been nothing short of an absolute game-changer for Netflix. The series may not have been the streamer’s first TV hit, but it was the first original title for Netflix that truly became a global phenomenon. It broke numerous records over the course of five seasons and has cemented itself as perhaps the most iconic show in Netflix’s history. Now, it’s breaking new ground with a release that many fans feared wouldn’t ever arrive.
This summer, Arrow Video released the complete Stranger Things series on Blu-ray and 4K UHD for the first time. For several years now, Netflix has avoided physical media almost entirely, save for a few exceptions. Even the titles that do manage to get some kind of physical release are usually movies, as TV moves further away from the box-set days of old. Well, now that we’ve seen what the Stranger Things complete series from Arrow looks like, it feels like a new standard has been set for streaming shows, and hopefully a lot of other titles will follow suit.
‘Stranger Things’ 4K Set Is a Must for Fans
If you’re not familiar with the folks over at Arrow Video, they are some of the very best around when it comes to physical media releases. Arrow is a name you can trust, much like Criterion or Kino Lorber. So when Arrow announced that it would be partnering with Netflix and the Duffer Brothers for a Stranger Things 4K release, it was music to the ears of fans.
What’s even better is Arrow and the Stranger Things team easily met expectations — and in some ways totally surpassed them. The discs themselves, as expected, look absolutely phenomenal. You may not know it if you’re not a big physical media person, but watching a 4K disc and streaming the same thing with a 4K subscription don’t often result in the same picture quality. Streaming compresses the images quite a bit, so even the 4K version doesn’t often look as great as it should. This Stranger Things 4K release shows you just how vast that difference can be.
Stranger Things is a show that utilizes a lot of darkness, and often brings in bolder neon lighting to create a sharp contrast. On Netflix, the darkness of Stranger Things can be overwhelming at times, and even a little difficult to see without the image being severely brightened up. When the bold and bright colors come in, the contrast gets fuzzy and loses quality. The 4K discs solve those problems and make Stranger Things look better than it ever has before.
So much of the first season of Stranger Things takes place in darkness, and it looks incredibly sharp on these discs. There’s also a great amount of detail and contrast that appears in Season 4’s iconic “Running Up that Hill” scene that you don’t really get when you watch it on streaming. It’s Eddie’s big guitar showdown at the end of the season, however, that really highlights just how much we were missing watching the show on streaming.
‘Stranger Things’ 4K Set
Arrow Video released Stranger Things on both 4K and Blu-ray formats, and each format got both a standard release and a limited edition box-set. There’s no difference in the picture or sound quality between the regular and limited editions, so if the show itself is the only thing you care about, the standard release is absolutely worth it.
The limited edition, however, goes above and beyond for collectors. In addition to its exclusive artwork and individual season slipcovers, the Stranger Things set comes in a sleek box that looks great on the shelf. Other odds and ends packed inside the box include an exclusive Hellfire Club dice, reversible posters, exclusive art cards, stickers, writings from the filmmakers, and more. It’s a treasure trove for fans, reminding us just how enjoyable these physical media releases can actually be.
Lots of Special Features
One of the other added benefits of getting physical formats for these shows is the ability to show off a lot of the behind-the-scenes content that isn’t on a platform like Netflix. All five seasons of Stranger Things have an entire disc dedicated to special features, giving us access to interviews, featurettes, and documentaries that take us deeper into the Upside Down than ever before. Watching the features, you can quite literally experience the cast growing up before your eyes.
This is the kind of release that TV fans have been begging to make a comeback, and Stranger Things is the kind of hit that will drive a lot of fans to buy copies. Fortunately, the set delivers in every possible way, setting a new standard for physical TV editions. Here’s to hoping more are on the way.
- Release Date
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2016 – 2025-00-00
- Network
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Netflix
- Directors
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Matt Duffer, Ross Duffer, Andrew Stanton, Frank Darabont, Nimród Antal, Uta Briesewitz
- Writers
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Kate Trefry, Jessie Nickson-Lopez, Jessica Mecklenburg, Alison Tatlock
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