Stranger Things Ending Didn't Turn The Show Upside Down, But It Finished With Its Soul

As I sat in a packed movie theater with a group of friends ahead of the finale of Stranger Things, many thoughts went through my head while the trailer reel showed the upcoming Joe Keery apocalyptic vehicle that has Steve Harrington opposite Liam Neeson. Was Joe Keery about to be a true breakout cast member alongside Sadie Sink and season four standout Joseph Quinn? That remains to be seen, but some questions that I was eager to have an answer for ahead of my next episode of the 2:17 Horror Podcast were more straightforward and would be answered by the end of the night. Would they stick the landing? Who and how many characters other than the obvious Vecna are never returning to Hawkins? How would these characters defeat Vecna and the mind-hive? Should I run to the lobby and use the concession voucher attached to entry to go grab a cherry Icee in honor of Dr. Alexei? From here on out, use this as your warning that everything except the Icee will be coming up again (and no, I did not go get one), and doing so in a fashion that will spoil the finale for you.

My biggest fear when watching a series finale is that the show is going to be ruined for the rest of time. You have your iconic finales that stick the landing: The Sopranos fading to black in the diner. You didn't know if Tony lived, but you did know it was the end of his perspective in a way that encapsulated the anxious and sudden nature of the perspective he carried throughout the show, or The Mary Tyler Moore Show where the hug is just such a perfect bow for its time. You have your finales that ruin the show for a vast majority of people: Seinfeld's widely panned social commentary trial that went against the fabric nature that the character's aren't bad people as much as they challenge the social contract, or the How I Met Your Mother finale that in a vacuum is what they had built toward for the better part of a decade, but ultimately felt unearned because they immediately split the two couples they had spent every episode in the season setting up for the future at a wedding. Then there's the finales that are truly spectacular but the show wasn't enough of a cultural phenomenon to elicit a lasting response, as I type that with the Amanda Schull-Aaron Stanford 12 Monkeys in mind. Of course, this completely ignores middling finales that feel like they pander, a la David Schwimmer screaming 'LET HER OFF THE PLANE' at an answering machine. With the monoculture all but eradicated in a world where algorithmic streaming has specialized what each person is watching individually, it's become a lot more difficult to capture the zeitgeist. That alone made it imperative that Stranger Things finishes more Breaking Bad than Game of Thrones, an unfortunately arduous ask after a somewhat rocky reception to the season up to this point, at least relative to the first four.

Season five certainly wasn't a perfect season. The Duffer Brothers not only felt less economical with their time, but as though they were also cramming two or three seasons worth of story arcs throughout eight episodes. From a personal standpoint, I very much enjoyed the season for what it was, but I do think it was the weakest of the bunch. The focus shifting from Will and El's story to Holly's story was one of the shrewdest they could do because there were only so many things left to explore as the primary story, and frankly, Noah Schnapp and Millie Bobby Brown were the least interesting parts of Stranger Things by the end of it. Beyond that, the expansion of the Holly Wheeler character further fleshed out Nancy, and by extension both Steve and Jonathan, and Max, as it's the plot device that brings Max back into Hawkins. For what it's worth, Nell Fisher was the stand out of the season, too, delivering an absolutely dynamic characterization to an afterthought side character who had a lot more of a didactic angle in season five. For an actor as young and inexperienced as Fisher, whose only real notable credit up to that point had been Evil Dead Rise, she goes opposite Sadie Sink, easily the strongest of the younger part of the ensemble by quite a large margin, and not only holds her own, but oft-times upstages her. The authenticity found in the way Fisher balances the uncertain and horrifying nature of Mr. Whatsit with the feigned confidence needed to convince the other children to follow her lead is a tightrope act that is so well done that you never question whether she'll fall. The season entirely hinged on whether the audience buys into the younger Wheeler sister, and that did go better than anybody probably could have anticipated.

But the finale itself was not without its questionable decisions. Outside of some clunky dialogue for Mike and Eleven, the latter of which had very little to begin with, probably a combination of her the social inexperience of the character and the emotional range, or lack thereof, of Brown who has seen her role continually decrease throughout the show, it was fun enough. It had the same energy as the rest of the show, but its the actual plot that brings it down quite a bit. This entire show had felt as though it had been building to a showdown with the mind-hive, Vecna, and Henry, who is revealed to simply be Vecna's vessel, inside of the Upside Down. As usual, the visual effects were state-of-the-art for television standards, even more stunning inside of a cinema. The issue is that the question of if the three with powers had enough energy to survive, and if they could keep everybody else alive. When this battle ends halfway through the finale, and all of the main characters still with their plot armor in tact, there's just very little emotional pull to gravitate toward. Natalia Dyer and Joe Keery are great in Stranger Things and truly maximized their minutes with characters that seemed to just fluff out the cast in season one, making them just as much, if not more, the fabric of the show throughout its run despite little plans for them. But how many times can those two, Jonathan, Dustin, and Lucas, who have no actual powers to fight the monster, escape the monster?

On that same token, the second batch of season five releases hit the 'Eddie died for us and you won't take risks' thought line hard. The show began with Steve fighting for those he wanted to protect, but throughout the show he is the pragmatic one. Combine this with his budding friendship with Dustin and Eddie, the moment for Steve is in death, and a scenario where the main members die so that Will and Eleven have nothing left to lose, and thus expend their last bit of energy defeating Vecna and saving the town could have started with Steve sacrificing himself trying to save Dustin, wrapping a neat bow around the Steve arc. But they didn't do that. Steve lives. In fact, everybody but El, and even that has doubt cast upon it, lives. But I didn't hate it, either, simply because Joyce is the ultimate killer of Vecna.

The entire first season was a comeback vehicle for Winona Ryder. Ryder had done some work over the ten years prior, notably stellar support role in Aronofsky's Black Swan being the standout, but had very little career movement after her Saks incident that ended her incredible run from Beetlejuice to Girl, Interrupted. She made it count commanding your attention as a grieving mother whose child had disappeared, keeping a very delicate edge as a seemingly psychotic mother talking to Christmas lights just trying to find a glimmer of hope amidst the stranger things (pun intended) going on in the town. There is no character that went through more suffering than Joyce Byers, who saw the suffering of her children and both of her partners while being the only person helpless to do anything to change their situation. There's a catharsis of the people in Joyce's life watching her end all of their suffering that feels entirely earned, and would have felt earned had she had only dealt with Bob's death, or all of Will's struggles, or the PTSD of Hopper's disappearance and presumed demise after going through the same thing with her child, yet she had gone through all of that, and it's that moment where even though it's not the direction I would have gone, I respect how it turned out.

The bigger problem is that it was followed up by two key things: their capture and eighteen months worth of an exposition dump. The capture made sense, but it just didn't feel to have any stakes after they had defeated the shows big bad. It's like when Supernatural (there's a finale nobody likes that I love, and maybe that's a future editorial. Talk about a show willing to get rid of its plot armor when there's no longer a requirement for its existence) ends season five by defeating Lucifer. Yeah, the show isn't over, but the entire show had built to them defeating the devil, and now they're just supposed to lose to a guy who was just a crossroads demon and got a promotion? The capture in the finale of Stranger Things, in its defense, did lead to the one death, and it was a big one, as Eleven sacrificed herself to wipe out the lab permanently, and everybody just like her. It's a good emotional pull for Hopper and Mike, especially the former with the crux of his character being that El was essentially a surrogate for the daughter he had lost before the timeline of the show began. Hopper's inability to protect his daughter destroyed him, and the inability to protect his adopted daughter is designed to show his growth in the aftermath.

This felt like a good ending point, but they didn't stick to it. We go eighteen months into the future, and get an update from Rockin' Robin, played by the always enjoyable Maya Hawke. But this exposition dump did nothing to solidify the ending outside of a nice, touching tribute from Dustin toward Eddie. I'm always down for a Maiden needle drop.

I don't think it presented plot holes as others seem to, such as Max graduating after spending so long in a coma. She was so far ahead of her grade level before then that as a character it makes total sense that she was able to catch up with a year and a half to go. But I don't think that this told us anything of how the characters actually live their future, or, more interestingly, adapted to life after the Upside Down. There's a great scene between Hopper and Mike, but otherwise we get no insight into how these characters acclimated back to life, suffer with the thought that maybe they weren't successful, cope with the death of Eleven, or for Will finds a normal in...normalcy. Ultimately, it feels like a poor use of the time the finale did have when they could have gone deeper into other parts of the show.

This was an episode that could have just been a season finale, especially when they went out of their way to add some ambiguity to El's fate. I do think El is gone, and that the story that Mike tells is his way of dealing with the pain, but it's also one that would fit the show if it were real. There didn't seem to be any real finality for these characters in the finale, and that's where it really hurts it. You could theoretically bring it back next year because in a world with demogorgans and the abyss, and the ability to control the mind of a monster through your own mind, I struggle to believe Vecna is the only threat to humanity. A good finale should feel like the destination point for these characters. I didn't get that.

But its saving grace? The full circle moment after graduation. The original group: Lucas, Mike, Dustin, and Will, alongside the addition of Max, playing Dungeons and Dragons, just like when the show began. As Mike told the story of the games adventure, the realization hit the viewer that it mirrored the adventure the boys went through. The show that is Stranger Things was one long, drawn out, sometimes a little contrived but always enjoyable, adventure for the boys that served as their own Dungeons and Dragons. The show definitely had its moments where it struggled staying focused, but the entire time it had its essence of a group of misfit children yearning for acceptance, finding the solace within each other, and being a group of kids lost in the cultural excess of the 1980s that we wanted to hang out with. For those few moments at the very end, as Mike says goodbye to his childhood with one final game of D&D, we get to hang out with those kids as if it's one last snapshot of a bygone era lost in time one final time nine years after its why we checked it out in the first place. Then we get the moment where Holly, finally being able to regain her childlike innocence, runs down with her new friends making the tradition her own.

I'm not naive enough to think this universe is over, even with the Duffer Bros departing for Paramount until at least the end of this decade. However, this is Netflix's biggest IP by a wide margin and there's a lot of directions you can go. Who knows, maybe we get a '90s focused show that plays by the same rules already established. Hopefully if we do get something along those lines, it isn't too derivative. But, this is the end of Stranger Things as what it is, and while I don't think they got it right, and I definitely wouldn't have written the ending the way that I did, I do think the moment it all led to was in service of a story that hit the emotional beats just right, and that's exactly what made the show such a force to be reckoned with in the first place.

A perfect finale? Certainly not. It didn't have anything definitive or anything that says 'we're done.' But it's one that ended up leading to a moment that found the core of the series, and the longer I sit with it, the less I dislike it. Maybe in time I'll love it.

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