Speaking of Max, if one love triangle wasn't enough, the Duffer Brothers decided to introduce a second. So much more could have been done with this character and this is why I am particularly disappointed. The Duffer Brothers are evidently aware that the love triangle trope is problematic, and to be honest, exhausting, - so they realise that when introducing a new female character specifically for that purpose, they must try to disguise this. Hence, along comes Mad Max. She’s tough, she skateboards, she’s really good at video games, hey wait a minute… she’s almost exactly like a boy? This is another example of the Stranger Things writers thinking that the best way to keep female viewers engaged is to make all of their female characters overtly strong and masculine, a problem most evident in Eleven. The fact that they have to repeat it with Max shows they’re running out of ideas, come on now guys. Making Max so unfeminine reveals not only that the writers are critically misinformed about the ways in which women and girls can be strong, but that they have a deep internal sense of misogyny. A female character can only enter the male-dominated friendship group when she acts like a boy. Let’s face it, it's the high scores at the arcade that really get the boys wanting to befriend Max. Whether this is simple ignorance or a deeply engrained prejudice, we as viewers cannot be sure, but it is concerning as the entire show seems to support the fact that men and boys cannot be friends with the opposite gender, unless they’re dating them. Or, when girls act like them (and even then, they are repeatedly denied information that is crucially important to the show, ie. Will’s trip to the upside down). What a horrific way to boost little Dustin’s ego even more.

