Stranger Things series finale

There was a time when people were more horrified by a “sad” ending than they were a happy one. To the point that happy endings in mainstream movies (and, later, TV series) came to be referred to as a “Hollywood ending.” This term eventually becoming more derisive than it was laudatory. A way for “legit” artists outside the studio system to denounce the schlock that the Hollywood machine is so often associated with (especially post-Golden Age and post-New Hollywood). But, over time, and as the twenty-first century has worn on, a shift toward contempt for a happy ending over a sad one has occurred. And never was that so clearly exemplified by the reaction to the series finale of Stranger Things.

Despite Matt and Ross Duffer (a.k.a. The Duffer Brothers) being transparent with fans about how the much-anticipated ending to the show wouldn’t be some kind of bloodbath that saw the sacrifice of many main characters, there still seemed to be a lot of “hope” for the contrary to be true. But it was Matt Duffer who specifically stated, “I’ve said this before: the show is not Game of Thrones. I’m hoping it surprises people. But there’s no Red Wedding, if that’s what you’re asking. That would be depressing.” Evidently, however, more people found it depressing that there weren’t enough “lambs led to the slaughter,” as it were. Vexed even further by the fact that the one supposed major death of the final, movie-length episode, titled “The Rightside Up,” was somewhat “walked back” by the end, depending on what one wants to believe. And it’s obvious The Duffer Brothers did want to leave a few “up to your own interpretation” paths open to viewers. Who instead took that “gift” as a slap in the face, expecting an ending that was more “twisty-turny” and death-filled. Thus, in response to not getting that, fans have written off the finale as being “too safe.” And while it’s an understandable accusation, there is something that’s actually bolder about their decision to 1) not kill off multiple characters and 2) to offer an ending that isn’t as much of a quagmire as people were expecting/hoping for.

Though, to be fair, The Duffer Brothers did, for a while there, seem as if they were setting up some kind of time travel-related plotline, particularly when, during season four, episode seven (“The Massacre at Hawkins Lab”), Nancy (Natalia Dyer), Steve (Joe Keery), Robin (Maya Hawke) and Eddie (Joseph Quinn, who, incidentally, did have a role in a Game of Thrones episode) go into the Wheelers’ house in the Upside Down and find that it is “frozen in time.” A revelation that Nancy unearths when she realizes that her diary entries stop at November 6, 1983—the day that Will (Noah Schnapp) disappeared. With this new information imparted, Ross Duffer assured, “The biggest [question] we set up in the Volume One [, Season Four] finale [is] how the Upside Down is stuck in time on the day of Will’s disappearance. That’s something we don’t answer in Volume Two, and that is really the key plot point, the key question that is going to drive our final season as we try to wrap up this story and give the rest of the answers out.”

Alas, that supposedly “key plot point” is something that The Duffer Brothers don’t really answer at all in the end, even though it was given a major setup—with a potential payoff that could have taken the form of all of Hawkins’ ills being solved by time travel, “resetting,” if you will, everything before Will disappeared. Which would have also resulted in fan favorite Barbara “Barb” Holland (Shannon Purser) having never died at all (and yes, her absence/lack of vindication in the series’ final episode was also a disappointment to many).

And while, in the present, a “time travel solution” is abhorred almost as much as a happy ending, in this case, it would have been a welcome reward for spotting all those apparently meaningless “Easter eggs” (including the frequent name-checking/parading of Back to the Future and A Wrinkle in Time) along the way. Not to mention how it would have spared The Duffer Brothers for being called out for some of the more glaring plot holes wrought by the finale, perhaps most notably, Max (Sadie Sink) being able to graduate from high school at the same time as the others despite being in a two-year coma. Though it wouldn’t have spared the story from one of the biggest callouts, which was that Vecna’s (Jamie Campbell Bower) “protectors”—the Demogorgons, Demodogs and Demobats—were nowhere to be found during the final battle between the Hawkins gang and the Mind Flayer/Vecna as one. Even if there is also a theory that the Mind Flayer used those “pieces of himself” to turn into the massive entity he became for the proverbial last stand.

Yet it seemed even the most atrocious plot hole could have been forgiven by fans if only The Duffer Brothers would have landed their conclusion with, you guessed it, more sadness. A craving/desire that might very well be indicative of a larger phenomenon at play: that no one believes in happiness (de facto, happy endings) anymore. That to sell anything else is so disingenuous as to be totally incomprehensible. Moreover, in the decades that have passed since the internet/social media has become pervasive, it has caused a certain hardening of emotions within people. Turned them cold, more schadenfreude-prone. Ergo, more lustful to see the “public figures” (whether real [e.g., celebrities] or created [e.g., Eleven]) they supposedly “love” come to harm. Besides that, it’s a reason to find fault with a show that had been called essentially “perfect” up until the last season. And, as Madonna once noted, as much as the masses love to watch an ascent, they also relish witnessing a fall. So for Stranger Things to “land with a thud,” as it’s been screamed repeatedly through the echo chamber of the internet, is in keeping with that form of human nature, the one that wants to see carnage and failure happening to someone else. And that form has been in existence since, bare minimum, the time of ancient Greece, when the Olympic Games and combat sports first became a “thing” (with the ancient Romans then perfecting it through their gladiatorial battles).

As for the “it was all just a game they were playing” theory suggested by the end credits, Ross Duffer stated to Metro back in 2023, “That would be the equivalent of, ‘That’s all a dream.’ No, I assure you that is not how we’re going to end the show.” But it kind of feels as though they did want to leave that option open as yet another “up to the viewer’s interpretation” component.

For those lamenting the “low stakes” of it all and how it wasn’t “tragic” enough, that final scene of Mike (Finn Wolfhard) looking longingly at the new crop of youths that have taken over the game, including his own sister Holly (Nell Fisher), should really be enough of a gut punch. For, like any genuine 80s-era movie, Stranger Things is, at its core, a mourning for innocence lost. A reckoning with how nothing gold can stay. Not even the show itself, which, according to the fans who have shouted it from the mountaintops, devolved and deteriorated by its final season. Maybe that’s, in and of itself, the “sad” ending for the show—to be looked upon this way.