The Endless Adventure Finally Ends

And now we’re here, the end of the line for Stranger Things. Except, not really. There’s apparently a stage play that sometimes is put on, so fans of the series that haven’t yet caught that could try and see it if it ever runs again. There’s also the already in development animated spin-off Stranger Things ‘85, which is actually a prequel to the main show (and I’m not even certain how that would work when the main meat of the story for these characters all starts when Eleven arrives so… what story is there to tell?) along with, apparently, another spin-off coming eventually, maybe. We shall see. What that really means is that this is currently the end of the line for these characters on the journey that started back in season one, but this is hardly the true end for Stranger Things no matter how you slice it. Not yet anyway.

But hey, let’s accept this as the end, at least for now. Was it a good ending? Having sat through all the seasons of the show, and watched the various storylines, partial and full, that were put out in chunks as NetflixOriginally started as a disc-by-mail service, Netflix has grown to be one of the largest media companies in the world (and one of the most valued internet companies as well). With a constant slate of new internet streaming-based programming that updates all the time, Netflix has redefined what it means to watch TV and films (as well as how to do it). did its weird Netflix thing, I really don’t think this ending does justice to the series. That’s not to say the series does poorly by most of the characters, or that the series doesn’t try its hardest to avoid any comparison to Game of Thrones season eight. It’s just that I don’t think there was any real way to usher this season, and thus the series, out on a high note when the very start of the season was this compromised. Things started out rough, and then the middle batch of episodes were a lot of table setting and moving pieces, such that this final, two hour long episode, had a lot of heavy lifting to do to rush us to the end and then give all the characters their happily ever after. There was no way it was going to work.

So let’s get into it. I said in my last review that this review would be our spoilery look at the last season, and I’m not going to beat around the bush any further. We have one last movie to summarize eight episodes of content, and five seasons of a series, so we need to get through this and see what worked, what didn’t, and why this was probably the least satisfying season of Stranger Things we’ve gotten (so far). And let’s begin with Eleven’s journey.

What is the point of Eleven’s story? She was a girl who spent the first chunk of her life living in a lab, an experiment to make her telekinetic powers more powerful such that she could be used as a weapon. When she escaped the lab and found her friends – Mike, Dustin, Lucas and Will – along with her father figure, Hopper, it was like she was getting exposed to a whole new world. Her journey, across the four seasons, was to make her human, to let her experience life and to see that there was more to her than being a weapon. And then the last season takes her away from all her friends, forces her to train her powers to be a weapon, and then teaches her that she doesn’t deserve happiness with the people she loves, she either has to die or flee and pretend to be dead so the government never looks for her again. What is the point of that?

This is what happens to her in the first half of the finale. After reuniting with her “sister”, Kali, her sister then says, “if the government gets you, this whole experiment will start again.” The one person that has a personal connection to her, that should be someone promoting her, tells her to kill herself over and over. Maybe the creators had her say this as a way for us, in the audience, to go, “well, she’s clearly wrong so Eleven should ignore her,” but then Eleven listens, agrees, and uses what her sister says as a plan. It’s likely that the creators didn’t think about how this would work as a five season story (because they clearly didn’t have a five season plan for this show when it started) but that’s the message given. Don’t be human, go off and die, either for real or at least have an emotional death that amounts to the same thing. It’s a terrible end for a character who, by all accounts, is also wasted this season.

Outside of Kali telling Eleven to die, there isn’t much else that our heroine gets to do this season. She’s the character that gets trotted out whenever the show needs someone to raise their hand and use telekinesis. It’s a trope that people have mocked for four seasons before this, but this fifth season makes it painfully clear that the creators don’t know what to do with Eleven outside of having actress Millie Bobby Brown raise her hand menacingly at bad guys. Eleven started out as one of the most interesting characters in the series but season five reduces her down to almost nothing. A blank face, a raised hand, and a lack of humanity. It’s the exact opposite of where she should be at the end of her journey.

Not that the series seems to know what to do with most of its characters at this point. Stranger Things has too many characters, between the younger kids (who are now teenagers), the teenagers (who are now young adults), the next cast of even younger kids (who you have to think will get their own spin-off soon), and all the adults, government agents, monsters, and everyone else. It’s no longer a sprawling cast; Stranger Things has almost as many characters, factions, and rival groups as a season of Game of Thrones. And yet that series had the grace to steadily bump people off to make way for new characters. Stranger Things seems weirdly committed to keeping everyone even vaguely important alive.

Despite this being the (supposed) last season of the show, and with all the characters taking on the mega-big-bad Vecna, only one character actually dies this season, and it’s the one character no one cares about: Kali. This tracks since once a season, basically every season, someone expendable is introduced so they can be killed off to “raise the stakes” each time. It was Barb in the first season and, most recently, Eddie in season four. You can predict it, too, as soon as they come on screen. The second the show brought back Kali I said to myself, “this is who we’re going to kill,” and I was right. She added nothing, no one liked her, she was a loose end from one episode that everyone in the audience hated. Killing her was the easiest thing in the world. It was a freebie. Killing her, in point of fact, didn’t raise the stakes at all.

I’ll be blunt: one of the four main boys should have died. Even more bluntly, it probably should have been Will. I’m not saying killing him was a good idea once he came out as gay on the series, since that just feeds into the “kill your gays” trope. Instead of having him be gay (so as to avoid that) I would have had him sacrifice himself to use his powers to damage Vecna in some way. Vecna has seemed all but immortal, always coming back when beaten down and stronger each time he arises. Will developed his powers this season (although likely he should have gotten at least a hint of them a season or two back so that storyline could more organically grow) so it put him in a prime position to strike a real blow against Vecna. His story started with him getting kidnapped and used as a pawn by Vecna, so there’s a sweet symmetry to him fighting back and giving his life to save the friends that came to save him all those years ago.

Of the main characters Will’s death makes the most sense from a core storytelling standpoint. Mike is the storyteller and narrator as well as Eleven’s boyfriend. If Eleven were to have a life after all this, she’d need to have it with Mike. Dustin is a fan favorite and is basically coated in plot armor so he can’t die (plus if they killed him they’d lose their “genius kid info dump” character). Lucas is tied up in Max’s storyline and, like with Eleven, after all she’s been through Max needs Lucas. So that leaves Will. His sacrifice would make sense and it would give his character a kind of closure.

Not that other characters shouldn’t have died as well. Both of the Wheeler parents are torn apart by demogorgons in the first half of this season, and yet they somehow both survive despite adding nothing to the plot at that point. Steve might also be another fan favorite but I don’t feel like he served much purpose this season and killing him would certainly help to make Vecna feel like a real threat. And after their very sweet breakup with Johnathan realizing he had to let Nancy go because they were just too different, him sacrificing himself to save her would have been a nice notch as well (although that would mean that Joyce would lose both her boys in this story so… that does feel pretty harsh).

But that’s the thing: Venca doesn’t feel like a threat this season. Among all the issues with the way his story is told this time, one thing stands out most: he gets outsmarted by 10 year olds. More than once. He not only doesn’t kill anyone (government agents kill Kali), but he also isn’t smart enough to be able to outplay his opponents. Vecna is like Miles Bron in Glass Onion; five seconds after he sets up his elaborate plan the kids are already ruining it. Whatever threat Vecna seemed to be after four seasons it was completely muted by a bunch of school children without any of them suffering at all. That’s really dumb.

Venca needed to be a threat. He needed to kill a couple of important people early in the season to show he meant business. Then someone, like Will, needed to realize that the only way to defeat him would be to make him vulnerable. Only then could they then carry out their plan of going across the Upside Down, transferring planets, and defeating him in the Abyss where he gained all his power. And if another person or two died during the battle, that only seems right considering how dangerous he’s supposed to be. But in desperately trying to keep everyone alive, and give everyone of these characters that the creators clearly can’t let go of a happy ending, they defanged Vecna. Like the Night King on Game of Thrones, he was seriously built up only to get taken down like a chump.

But note, after Vecna dies the last episode is only half done. This really could have been two episodes the way it plays out: one for the battle against Venca, and then one for the afterward. We get to spend time with all the surviving characters (not Eleven, so is either really dead or in hiding and I believe she is just hiding since the ending writes an out for her). We see the original kids graduate high school and then have one last D&D game. We get to see the older kids talk about their life in college and make plans to see each other again. We get to see Hopper and Joyce get engaged. It’s all very sweet stuff, all good endings for good characters. I don’t know that I needed a full hour of this as it does really begin to drag by the end of it but, hey, it’s a sweet ending for the survivors.

I think if the season that preceded it were better, this last, wrap up addendum would be great. It would feel earned. It would be the kind of ending we’d want for characters that had been through a harrowing journey that came out the other side. Those that made it could then live for those that didn’t. But this journey didn’t feel harrowing and Vecna didn’t feel like a threat that they had to recover from. He was just a dude they took out on a distant planet like it was another Tuesday for them, and then they all went home and had cake.

Stranger Things doesn’t earn its ending. That is what really kills it for me. It wastes eight really, interminably long episodes building up a villain who never really materializes, only to kill him off like he’s nothing, and then we’re supposed to be sad and happy, filled with a sense of longing because this is the last we’ll see of them. Good. I’m tired of this show and I really don’t want to come back. I don’t like having my time wasted and this last season of Stranger Things was the biggest time waste I’ve watched in some time. At least Game of Thrones had the grace to end disastrously badly. We can talk about how terrible that season was and laugh about its downfall. Stranger Things didn’t do that, it just slid into unending mediocrity.

I don’t fault anyone for liking this show. The first couple of seasons were pretty solid (the occasional failed backdoor pilot episode notwithstanding) and it had good vibes and good characters even if it didn’t always hit the mark for me. But this last season is just so boring. It has its characters run around a lot, and they certainly explain things to us a whole bunch about the show’s big ideas, but nothing really happens and I just don’t care anymore. Maybe the spin-offs will happen, maybe they won’t, but I feel comfortable using this as my exit from the shop. I’m getting off this ride because I have better things to do with my time then watch something this aggressively bland. Stranger Things wastes all its potential in this last season and that’s an unforgivable sin I don’t think any show can recover from, ever.