Annie Analyzes Stranger Things Finale

The highly-anticipated final season of Stranger Things, a sci-fi Netflix original, aired its last episode on December 31st. After finishing the fifth and final season of the ten-year tv show, many fans expressed disappointment in the ending. Some even believed it was a fake finale and that a surprise episode would be released on January 7th. While I recognize the plot holes and areas of bad writing, overall I think the season was a success and wrapped up the show nicely.

Netflix released the first volume, or episodes one through four, on November 26th. The episodes were “The Crawl,” “The Vanishing of Holly Wheeler,” “The Turnbow Trap,” and “Sorcerer.” Each episode was between an hour to an hour and a half long, and I found the first volume unclear and somewhat pointless. The first episode began abruptly, and I found it confusing to understand. It picked up 18 months after the previous season, fall of 1987, and forced fans to piece together what had happened during the time jump.

Once I figured out what was going on, I felt nothing really happened and scenes with little action were dragged out. It wasn’t until the final episode of volume one, “Sorcerer,” where the show felt exciting like in previous seasons. This episode had the most substantial plot development of the volume, connecting to earlier seasons by reintroducing Kali and revealing Will’s powers through his link to Vecna.

Credit: Prestige

Volume II was released around four weeks later on Christmas day. The episodes released were “Shock Jock,” “Escape from Camazotz,” and “The Bridge.” I thought the episodes in this volume were much more engaging and introduced new ideas redefining what the upside down actually is, contradicting what the characters thought they knew. They used a Wrinkle in Time to explain the big plot twist that the upside down was not its own dimension, but a worm hole. To me, these episodes in combination with volume I’s “Sorcerer” redeemed the underwhelming first three episodes. By this point, everything was finally coming together, but the show still had much to resolve with only one episode left.

The eighth and final episode, “The Rightside Up,”  aired on New Year’s Eve and runs just over two hours. It ended up being my favorite of the season, largely because of its nostalgia and the numerous flashbacks to the early seasons when the kids were younger. I was pleasantly surprised that this episode addressed most of the areas I had questions about, offering satisfying explanations. While not everything was fully resolved and I wondered what happened with the government’s involvement, I appreciate that the series ended on an ambiguous note with Eleven’s fate.

Ultimately, despite fans' criticisms and disappointment, the final season of Stranger Things offered the sense of closure I had hoped for. Even now that the main series has ended, its substantial imprint on pop culture over the last ten years remains permanent.