I remember thinking when I watched Season 4 of Stranger Things in 2022, “Oof. They should have stopped there.” If they had increased the pace a little and been more definitive with the ending, they could have done it, and it would have felt complete. Instead, an interdimensional rift split open Hawkins to create a cliff hanger to a final season that somehow the creators were going to fill with stuff, despite the series feeling like it should have ended.
When Season 5 finally came out, I started by rewatching all previous seasons, as I did whenever a new season was released. I started late though and then ended up spoiling myself by watching a couple of my go-to commentators complain about how bad Season 5, and one episode in particular, was before I had even started watching the season. Still, when Red Letter Media and Sydney Watson had the same reaction for the exact opposite reasons (RLM leaned toward the season being pointless, action-packed nonsense while Sydney Watson leaned toward the season being pointless, mundane nonsense), there was still some hope to form my own opinion.
The first episode is a bizarre mix of 80s nostalgia and stopping Vecna. Despite the rift splitting Hawkins and its military occupation, the characters pretend to have a normal year in high school. Somehow, I made a connection to the final Harry Potter book. Unlike episode one of Stranger Things 5, which attempts to be another year in high school in the 80s and also defeating Vecna, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows wasn’t about another magical year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and also defeating Voldemort. Too much had changed by the end of the previous book. Too much has also changed by the end of Stranger Things 4. Stranger Things 5 does quickly abandon the pretense of normalcy, but that means it also abandons what made the show charming: 80s nostalgia combined with a science fiction, fantasy adventure. Season 5 can’t have such charm because the right-side up is so devoid of 80s normalcy. Nobody is nostalgic about military occupation or making plans to infiltrate the upside down in a bunker. In contrast, Harry Potter never loses its charm despite the drastic change of pace in the final book because its charm is magic in general, not tied so strictly to Hogwarts.
Will’s sudden super power to defeat Vecna kind of works and kind of doesn’t. Unlike One, El, or any of the children raised in isolation in Hawkins Lab, Will didn’t have to do anything to attain or unlock his powers. He didn’t even have to come out as gay. So, his abilities appear to manifest from nowhere and also belittle El’s experiences. It also kind of works. Vecna made his first official appearance in Season 4, and Will was nowhere near Vecna or his minions for the entire season. His abilities could have always been dormant, and Will has had a fair amount of suffering. For how much Will suffers from his experiences in the upside down in the first two seasons in particular, he never has a moment of power over the monsters that tormented him. From this perspective, it feels fitting for him to develop super powers. This could have been done more cleverly though rather than simply turning him into a second El or One. For example, he could have been given a second opportunity to spy on Vecna or the Mindflayer except this time, he’s the one in control and feeding crucial information to El and the others.
All I can think when I see El in that wetsuit with the triangle cut out of the neck is, “What a stupid costume.”
Nancy has killed monsters before, but she’s also perfectly fine with killing people? When did this happen?
The final episode reminded me of Inheritance by Christopher Paolini, the final book in the four-part Inheritance series. I know this show is supposed to invoke 80s nostalgia, but for some reason, my thoughts kept going to books that I read in the mid-2000s. Anyway, Inheritance had something like 120 pages of pure epilogue. In a similar vein, almost half of the two-hour finale of Stranger Things is epilogue. After Vecna and the Mindflayer appeared defeated, I was shocked that there was still an hour of the episode remaining. I remained shocked when El said goodbye to Mike and disappeared, and there was still 50 minutes left.
While getting to those last fifty minutes was as full of filler as I feared it would be four years ago, however, it felt fitting for all the characters and brought back the 80s charm that made the series great. I’ve never seen the end of Game of Thrones, but I doubt this was comparable or worse, especially (tying this back to books) when the book series Game of Thrones is based on will never have an ending at all.