You saw that spoiler warning up above, right? Good. Let’s get into it.
Full disclosure, Pandas, (and you’re free to disagree), yours truly is a big fan of Stranger Things, but I still think the very first season is the best of what the Duffer Brothers—showmakers Matt and Ross—had to offer when it comes to Hawkins.
Season 5 was, from my personal perspective, a mess. But! The finale managed to redeem not only the last season, but it also (sort of) neatly wrapped up the entire saga.
To be clear, the Stranger Things finale didn’t really do anything wildly unexpected or overly original. It really felt like the creators of the show were playing things safe. And that makes sense. After a decade of building the characters in Hawkins and diving into the Upside Down (and beyond), it’s hard to conclude the story in a way that will satisfy everyone. (I keep remembering Lost and Game of Thrones here.)
Could the finale have been more powerful? Of course. Does it disappoint? No, not really. It’s solid for what it is. And I’d argue that the second half of the finale, where you see the aftermath of the showdown with the Big Bad Evil Guy, is better done than the first.
The finale wrap-up, where you get to see what paths all of the courageous characters living in Hawkins are taking after finally taking down Vecna for good, felt the most satisfying.
Yours truly thinks that where Stranger Things truly shines is in seeing the contrast between our protagonists’ daily lives and the cosmic horrors they have to deal with.
When it’s all non-stop action in Hawkins, ironically, things are pretty darn bland. And I have issues with the quality of the CGI, too.
So, after an entire fifth season of poorly written dialogue, frantic running around without doing much of anything, and characters not quite behaving like themselves, it was nice seeing them go back to their roots. And you realize how much they’ve changed and grown up.
Stranger Things is at its best when it takes the time to humanize its characters, reminding you that, hey, they’re actually likeable (if flawed) people who are worth rooting for.
This is something the showrunners might have partially forgotten throughout season 5, in which we mostly got unnecessary bickering between friends, boring exposition, and villains whose evil power levels seem to change as much as the plot demands.
It’s been said that Netflix shows are now written in a way that the audience can still follow along even while they’re scrolling something on a second screen. And, barring the solid finale, season 5 felt exactly like that. It felt like the magic and mystery were long gone, and the showrunners had to stagger their way through a bunch of filler, with barely anything left in the tank, to wrap the story up.
I’d gladly rewatch the finale, just as I’d love to return to season 1 of Stranger Things. But I’d be lying if I said I have any desire to watch any of the other seasons. Aesthetics aside, they’re far blander than a tale about cosmic horror has any right to be.
According to showrunner Ross Duffer, the idea that Stranger Things begins and ends with a Dungeons & Dragons game had been planned for a very long time.
“It felt right to go full circle. This is about this group of characters saying goodbye to their childhood. That basement, specifically the Dungeons & Dragons game, represents their childhoods [and it’s] how we first met them as an audience. To say goodbye to it, you have to play one last time,” he told Netflix.
