Stranger Things: The Finale
The is the end. Stranger Things 5 (Netflix, 2025).
After five inconsistent season, fans are going to miss Stranger Things.
Back in 2016, Stranger Things premiered on Netflix and became an instant fan favorite. It’s taken 10 years to get from season one to five, with some long breaks in between seasons, but it all has come to an end. The mostly unknown cast, of which many were very young when the series started, have become household names. The characters they played have grown and changed in tremendous ways and saying goodbye to them, and the show, has been more than a bummer.
If you haven’t seen the ending, be warned, spoilers ahead.
Audiences expected some kind of blood bath that would show beloved characters dying. Oddly, people are disappointed that more characters, or main characters, didn’t die. Before the finale was released, there were rumors that five key characters were going to die and it had supposedly been confirmed by the Duffer brothers, creators of the show; my money was on Eleven, Steve, Nancy, Hopper and Lucas. But when no one of note, except Kali and Eleven (allegedly) died, it threw people off. I was also surprised that almost everyone was still alive at the end. I think it would’ve added more emotion to the finale, and it would’ve fulfilled people’s expectations.
Fans were disappointed that there weren’t more deaths, but that’s kind of a modern concept. I was talking with one friend who said that the ending is very 80s, in terms of almost every character having a happy outcome. Seeing as how the show takes place in the 80s, it’s fitting when you think about it. I hadn’t really considered this aspect, and I have to wonder, what’s so wrong with a happy ending?
Another point of contention that fans are grumbling about is the fact that the fight scene with Vecna, where he’s finally destroyed, didn’t last long enough. I have a different take on that. For one, Vecna had been weakened beforehand through Henry. Henry had already been in a physical fight with Eleven where he got tossed around, he got his face smashed in by Holly, and then he had to go through the emotional trauma of watching his memory in the mine shaft when his childhood was essentially stolen from him. All of these events before the final fight could have easily affected his strength. Not only that, but there was an entire group of people fighting against him both outside of his body and inside of his mind. How long is a fight supposed to last?
Jamie Campbell Bower as Henry (Stranger Things 5).
On that note, I want to give Jamie Campbell Bower, the actor who played Vecna/Henry, his flowers. He did such an amazing job in seasons four and five, but his true chops were most apparent in the finale. I’m always so in awe of actors that can express different extreme emotions in one scene. In his final moments as Henry, Campbell Bower goes from rage, to terror, to devastation, to rage again as he is shown his tragic childhood memory.
The emotions on his tearstained face, the utterances of his last lines as Henry, and the physical depletion in that moment was such beautiful acting! For a moment I felt so incredibly sad for this character and the realization that he was just a boy that was turned into a monster. An actor that can make audiences feel for their character, even if they’re the villain, is a hardcore skill. I truly believe that Campbell Bower was the star in this final season and should be nominated for an Emmy.
The last controversial thing I want to discuss is Eleven’s death, or maybe not? When I first saw the finale, I was sure that Eleven had sacrificed herself in order to give her loved ones a normal life. If she had lived, she and her friends would be hunted forever. It wasn’t until I started looking at fan theories and rewatching the final scenes between Eleven and Mike that I began to reconsider her apparent death. After looking at all of the evidence, I have to say that I’m now convinced that she didn’t really die. As the characters said in the final scene of the show, “I believe”.
Did Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) survive the finale of Stranger Things 5?
Here’s the thing though, fans would have preferred that the Duffers had made a more decisive choice in either really killing Eleven off or making it super clear that the death was an illusion. This whole leaving it up to people’s interpretations shit irks me. Most people that I’ve talked to about this have agreed that the ambiguity is a turn off.
The aftermath of the finale has caused a ton of debates. I spent a decent amount of time talking with my students about what their thoughts were about the finale, and most of them were bothered by the points I discussed. Many of them noted that they were mostly sad that the show was ending. One of them said, “It’s like my childhood is over,” which is exactly what happened with the characters in the show.
Even though the finale has faced its scrutiny and left some fans unsatisfied, the series as a whole has been more than memorable. Fans went from watching these tiny humans battling things unknown and known, to cheering on the young adults they became as they defeated the ultimate villain. I think that Stranger Things will live on for many years, and its fan base will never stop believing.