Spoiler warning!!
On New Year’s Eve, the highly anticipated finale of “Stranger Things” was released on Netflix, but it didn’t entirely meet the expectations of the show’s massive fanbase.
As someone who grew up with the show and waited over three years for season five, I was disappointed to say the least. This season’s release schedule set up three volumes over the span of about a month. After the first came out I was convinced it was going to be the best ending in TV show history. I learned very quickly that this would not be the case.
There are numerous factors that go into why, mainly the rushed writing and overall lack of complexity, but the strongest is how the Duffer Brothers handled the ending of their main female lead, Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown). Since they left it up to the audience’s interpretation, one of two things could have happened: she sacrificed herself in the upside down, or she escaped and is living in isolation outside of the country.
Neither of these possibilities are particularly empowering, as the Duffers claimed the ending would be. Either they gave a message that the only way for a young girl to break the cycle of abuse is by killing herself,or that same girl would have to leave the life she had built to save everyone else.
In her final moments, the Duffers showed a montage of her relationship with Mike (Finn Wolfhard), essentially reducing her character to this one-dimensional role of a girlfriend. They even compared her to the magic of childhood, saying she always had to go so the others could “move on” with their lives. To me, her ending reeks of misogyny and is extremely distasteful.
Aside from this, the writing choices in this season felt unusually rushed and confusing, despite having three years to complete it.
A blaring example of this is the ultimate demise of the show’s main villain, Vecna. It took all of 30 minutes and an axe to kill him, barely touching on his backstory or reasoning for doing anything he did. This completely contradicts the prequel stage play “Stranger Things: The First Shadow,” especially since it explored Henry Creel’s (Vecna) childhood after those initial months living in Hawkins, which was supposed to connect back to the plot of the original series.
Another case that stands out is Will’s coming out scene. What could’ve been one of the best examples of queer representation instead turned into a joke, opening mass amounts of homophobic reviews and comments in media.
All this combined led to fans making their own theories that would help cope with the ending. One of these is “conformity gate,” which is the theory that a new episode would come out because Vecna didn’tactually die and was still controlling the narrative. Believers of this theory thought it would explain some of the plot holes and trashed character arcs seen in the supposedly fake finale.
The Duffers and some cast members confirmed this to be false, but the fact that fans convinced themselves the ending was fake because the writing was so bad should say something.
In the new documentary “Stranger Things: One Last Adventure,” the Duffers were seen having both ChatGPT and Reddit tabs open. This has led to fans now speculating that they were used to write the scripts for Season 5.
I was extremely let down by the ending of this show, especially knowing the potential it still had even before Volume Two was released. Part of this could come from the insanely creative fan theories which proved to be better than the show itself, but I think it’s mainly because the end didn’t even come close to the incredible work we’ve seen from them in the past.
