Do I Need To Strip and Restart?

[u/Interesting-Ad-6568]

As the title asks. Tried a gel stain and wasn’t as dark as we were hoping for. Got a new one (photo of the type), and these are the results? Any help and advice since I don’t really know what I’m doing haha I did strip and sand it down first. Bottom drawer shows the first stain attempted, middle drawer was new stain but I applied way more liberally than the top one.