Stranger Things 5: It All Comes (Upside) Down to This

Ten years ago, a little boy vanished into thin air and a superpowered girl appeared in the woods, and ever since, audiences have loyally (and patiently) awaited new chapters of Stranger Things, eager to be immersed in the story of Hawkins, a small town in the grip of an ineradicable evil. With each season, our heroes bonded over their real-life D&D campaign, learned more about the supernatural threat they were facing, and lost friends in often horrific ways. They survived US and Russian militaries, supernatural monsters, evil scientists, and terrible bowl cuts. Through it all, the coming-of-age story of the core friend group endeared fans, as they watched their favorite characters experience their first romance, first job, and that classic first infiltration of a Russian spy cell.

Now the final season is upon us. Every season leading up to ST5 has managed to raise the stakes (and the body count), with the characters repeatedly banishing the threat of the Upside Down only for its monsters to come back stronger than ever. But with season four ending on the group’s first major loss and Vecna’s rifts tearing Hawkins apart, the stage was perfectly set for a final thrilling underdog victory. Will El and friends defeat Vecna once and for all? Can they permanently close all gates to the Upside Down? Can Stranger Things up the ante one last time?

Every time we think we’re out, the Upside Down tears open a rift and drags us back in.

The answer is a resounding… sort of. While the Upside Down’s origin story gets ever deeper and key characters have standout, satisfying arcs, unfortunately, some emotionally empty subplots and a frustratingly noncommittal ending mean ST5 doesn’t quite stick the landing.

The first four chapters, released as Volume 1, were pretty darn good. After establishing the characters’ continued search for Vecna despite the heavy military presence in town, the plot really kicked off with the abduction of Holly Wheeler. Our characters quickly splintered off into familiar groupings, all working an angle on the same end goal: to identify and sabotage Vecna’s master plan. Max’s was an especially welcome face to see joining this hunting party; though still trapped in Vecna’s memories, Max played a pivotal role by being the only one to actually find Holly and unveil the truth of their situation, essentially steering the nightmare from within.

The action pieces of Volume 1 were particularly thrilling, showcasing the gumption of new and old characters alike. For instance, as awful as it was to see Mrs. Wheeler struck down, she proved herself to be an absolute badass, with not one but two well-earned hero moments this season (protecting Holly, then Max). The Turnbow Trap episode was also an excellent display of all that the characters had learned about their enemy over the past four seasons, even if the plan to track the demogorgon was, in hindsight, doomed to fail. But of course, the hands-down winner of best action sequence and character arc is Will the Wise, who finally embraced his fear and self-doubt and transformed into an honest-to-god sorcerer. Turning his greatest weakness into his greatest strength, Will channeled his ever-present connection to the hive mind, tearing apart some demogorgons and dramatically saving all of his friends in so doing. Cutting together his victory with a montage of all the happy memories his friends used to break the Mind Flayer’s hold on him in season two (e.g., building the fort with his brother and meeting Mike on the swing set, all set to Robin’s encouraging words of self-acceptance) was a meaningful touch.

After all, this series has always upheld that the characters’ main strength (outside of El’s literal supernatural abilities) lies in their love for and support of one another. From Hopper destroying the sonic weapon dampening El’s powers to Lucas playing “Running Up that Hill” next to Max’s hospital bed (talk about a neverending song) to Mike inspiring Holly with her “heroic” D&D character, the team’s ceaseless stream of physical and emotional support has kept them and their hopes alive through time and interdimensional space. At each character’s lowest point, their friends are at most a walkie-talkie away; and that’s only if the mere memories of their loved ones aren’t enough to help them power through the darkness, grief, and shame that Vecna feeds on.

With Will embracing his newfound power and Dustin on the verge of a crucial discovery in the Upside Down’s Hawkins lab—and despite the crew being unsuccessful in thwarting Vecna’s mass kidnappings—Volume 1 ended on a real high note, opening up the floodgates to hope for continued great character arcs in the remaining episodes. Volume 2, however, took up these storylines with mixed results.

If you thought the children’s minds and bodies being trapped in different places was hard to wrap your head around, just wait for the wormhole, exotic matter, and the Abyss to enter the chat. The mythology of the Upside Down seemed to have been fully revealed in season four, with the revelations about Vecna’s origins and his subsequent orchestration of the ever more extreme incursions into Hawkins. But as it turns out, that was only half the truth. The full truth is that the Upside Down was itself a wormhole, a bridge between our world and that of the demogorgons, displaying elements of each (i.e., a vine-covered, red-lightning-stricken Hawkins). Vecna’s endgame, as Dustin correctly theorized, was to weaken the connecting points of this bridge in order to bring the Abyss crashing down on top of our world, presumably so that he could extend his reign of terror to all those he considers inferior.

Volume 2 wasn’t without its high points. Max’s escape—both from Vecna’s mind world and from the demogorgons hunting her Jurassic Park-style in the Hawkins hospital—made for a riveting sequence, especially with the Will-via-Vecna scream of “run!”, a spine-chilling callback to Will’s warning to Joyce via the Christmas lights in season one. Credit where credit’s due to the worldbuilding of Stranger Things, because though forays into the once-horrifying Upside Down became almost casual this season, the demogorgons remained a terrifying, formidable force, despite being the first monsters introduced in the series.

Wills’ arc continued to pay off as well, with him trading a major action scene for a major emotional one. Though Vecna overpowering him yet again shook Will’s newfound resolve to not let fear control him, he realized there was one last deeper, truer fear he was carrying. His coming-out had been a long time coming, with roots of Will’s feelings of being different, of being left out, of liking Mike perhaps more than a friend, growing since season one. Having his mother, brother, and all of his friends accept and embrace him created a beautiful moment amidst the chaos, laying the final groundwork for Joyce to trust Will as a peer instead of trying to protect him as her child—an arc echoed by Hopper and El.

Last but most important, ST5 nailed the scene we’d all been waiting for: the final showdown with Vecna. Yes, the reveal that Henry was infected by the Mind Flayer was immediately undercut by his “no, I choose to be evil” declaration, leaving no time to weigh his innocence before they began their attack. And yes, the battle was not as heart-pounding as the Volume 1 finale at the military base, largely because it ended so quickly that Vecna’s defeat felt almost too easy. And yet, the groundwork for this had also been laid. Our scrappy crew had been close to vanquishing Vecna before, and this time around, they not only took the battle to his turf (the Abyss), but they attacked him on all fronts simultaneously—Will hijacked his mind, El went toe-to-superpowered-toe with him inside the lair, and the rest of the crew engulfed the Mind-Flayer-lair-come-to-life in flames from the safety of the cliffs above (with nary a thought toward the defenseless children trapped inside that fire-engulfed lair, one might point out).

Of course, it was only right for Will and El—the two characters who have suffered the longest at the hands of Henry/Vecna—to unite in the takedown of their terrorizer. And Joyce “stay away from my son” Byers being the one to finish him off was an equally satisfying, if gratuitous, development, if only because each strike of her axe, intercut with the most heart-breaking victims lost to Vecna in previous seasons, brought fans the closest thing to retribution we could get.

Unfortunately for the rest of Volume 2, particularly the finale, there was too much time spent on story arcs that just weren’t well developed or didn’t seem to matter. For instance, in contrast to Will’s well-founded emotional reckoning, Jonathan’s character development continued its backward trajectory from last season, wasting screen time with his ridiculous engagement plans with Nancy; his only accomplishment this season was catching Steve when he fell off the radio tower. Steve, meanwhile, when he wasn’t furthering the love triangle nonsense, spent his season “being done with” Dustin, whose usual levity was sorely missed while he grief-spiraled after losing his other older male friend Eddie (similar to, but far less plot-relevant than Max dealing with Billy’s death in season four). The tension within those team-ups overstayed its welcome, leaving Robin and what little we saw of Erica to carry the comedic facet of the show.

The entire subplot surrounding Kali and the military, meanwhile, never fully took off. The military came across as more of an annoying obstacle on the way to a real villain like Vecna. It wasn’t until Kali showed up with the news that the pregnancy trials had restarted (thus explaining why Dr. K was hunting El) did the threat of them feel anything more than fleeting. Kali, meanwhile, trudged along the back half of this season like a dark cloud over El’s head. Any hint of intrigue at her re-introduction to the show (seeing as she only previously appeared in the much-loathed S2E7) was quickly wiped out by her doom-and-gloom energy and general lack of usefulness. As with Jonathan, it’s hard to see where Kali’s contributions to the plot couldn’t have been accomplished in her absence, with the exception of her (possible) final act. Hopper leaving her behind as the military closed in and Murray not realizing later that she was missing truly speaks to her impact on this season.

And that brings us to what will surely be the most controversial element of the finale: El’s “believe whatever you want” survival. Now, plot armor is no longer guaranteed in a series finale, and while it was surprising that no major deaths befell our cast (despite some close calls), getting El’s arc right was of critical importance. Like Will, El had four seasons’ worth of trauma to overcome and a hero’s journey to embrace; she sacrificed herself time and again, pushing past fear and pain to save the Hawkins family that had saved her. So the moment she vanished into the collapsing wormhole landed like a gut punch, and the remaining 45 minutes of every single other character bragging about their happy ending fell on deaf ears, as many viewers doubtlessly spent the time impatiently awaiting El’s return, much like they did during the hiatus between the first two seasons when her fate was similarly up in the air.

In the final minutes, when Mike finally shares the full story, El’s fate is not presented as the merely bittersweet “here’s what really happened” but as the unnecessarily and frustratingly noncommittal “l choose to believe this is how it ended for El.” (To this reviewer, there is no doubt El survived. She had to expect that the military would be waiting for her with the sonic weapons upon exiting the Upside Down, and she had once before successfully faked her death to evade government agents who wanted to experiment on her. To all those who doubt that Kali could have survived long enough to carry out her part of the plan, rest assured that cinema has a long history of fatally wounded characters eking it out past any remotely logical expiration date in order to pull a final lever, press a final button, or carry out a similar, final act.)*

The final D&D game, intentionally or not, acknowledged how lackluster such an anticlimactic ending is. Max, Lucas, Dustin, and Will are bereft and upset when it seems they’ve devoted so much time and emotion to a campaign, a story, that ends with a loss. But whereas the friends remember to call on a mage and so achieve their assured victory within the game, the audience is deprived of such certainty where the main character’s fate is concerned. While El cutting off contact with the only family she knows and starting a new life is already a little disappointing to those of us who wanted to see her and Hopper ride off into the father/daughter sunset, it is a logical decision given her history of being hunted and imprisoned. What doesn’t fit with what fans know of Stranger Things is this “what really happened? You decide!” element, especially given the drawn-out future plans of all other characters that made it to air. Without this lingering uncertainty, the ‘passing of the torch’ to Holly and friends in the final scene would have been a fitting ending—life continues and more nerds play games, this time free of any all-too-real interdimensional threat at their heels.

Given the scope and pace of the final season, there are sure to be a slew of unanswered questions and plot holes. Can people get hurt in a mind world or not? How exactly does gravity work in the Upside Down? Are we really supposed to believe twelve children held enough “psychic power” to fulfill Vecna’s planet-moving plan? And on it goes. But the ending was not so egregious that it wipes out a fantastic five-season run of a mysterious, thrilling, heartbreaking, heartwarming, gasp-inducing, all-around enthralling original story. Like a puppy who made a bit of a mess, the laughs, the battles, the setbacks, the waffles, the resilience, the trust, and the victories of Will, Mike, Lucas, Dustin, Max, El, and the entire Hawkins family outweigh any imperfections of the series. Stranger Things was worth the watch, and more than worth the journey. That’s a conclusion I know to be true.

Stray observations:

• I always knew Erica was a badass, but my goodness, remind me never to get on her bad side. Especially when she has access to narcotics.

• The full movie version of Home Alone: Demogorgon edition? Yes, please.

• They really never notice when Will is having an episode until he collapses, do they? That guy should wear a bell.

• These kids are gonna be scarred for life where flickering lights are concerned. And all the more horrifying experiences, too. But the lights thing will be harder to explain.

• The season wouldn’t be complete without a giant, mysterious art project by Will.

• Vecna 2.0 looking like GoT’s Night King meets Groot.

• Has Mr. Clark been the real hero this whole time?

• Let’s have a moment of applause for the set designers who had to create not just more vine-covered sets, but also the melted building.

• I just think this needs to be said. Why is everything in Vecna’s lair so sexual?

• There’s no way the water in the tank of the Upside Down lab would be clean.

• I know children are famously resilient, but wow do those kids owe Holly a huge apology for pushing her down the stairs. Talk about no remorse!

• Hot take: Vecna’s living room memory being next to his high school play memory was too convenient. There, I said it.

• The biggest facepalm of this season is hereby awarded to Lucas for yelling, “how are they finding us?” while he was running around with a boombox blaring Kate Bush.

• There’s got to be a parallel universe where the final season of Stranger Things involved Kali being in league with Vecna (which would make Hopper’s tank-shooting scene make more sense), the core cast tricking the military and Vecna into taking each other out, and El getting to stay in contact with her friends and family. And she gets all three waterfalls!

• But seriously, who out there is choosing not to believe the “El is living on a waterfall farm upstate” option? (Other than April)

• For anyone looking for more Stranger Things, there exists a theatrical prequel for Henry’s character called The First Shadow. And because good things are never allowed to end, there will also be an indirect spinoff of this series, which I predict will be focused on Susie.

• Finally, congratulations to Steve, who finally survived a season without being beaten to a pulp.

*An embittered update:

I still maintain it shouldn’t be left up to the viewer to decide, but it’s become increasingly clear in the days since the finale that Eleven did indeed die in the wormhole. From a practical standpoint, El was absolutely selfless enough to remove herself (and thus the last vestige of the Mind Flayer’s powers) from our world to ensure no future children would be abused like she was. (Which I suppose means when she was upset at Hopper planning to sacrifice himself earlier on, she was actually taking notes.) Also, Kali would almost certainly have been dead from the bomb exploding in her building before completing her El-lusion, regardless of her gunshot wound. (There remains the problem of the sonic weapons seemingly not affecting El, but so it would seem that one of these impossible situations has to be surmountable.)

From a theoretical standpoint, Eleven represented “the magic of childhood” to the Duffer brothers, so she had to leave one way or another in order for Mike and the others to fulfill their coming-of-age story. According to one of their post-finale interviews, the Duffer brothers acknowledged the tension in the writers’ room, torn as they were between “Eleven has been through so much and she deserves to live” and there not being a realistic path for her to lead a normal life. The ambiguous ending was thus their version of a middle ground (because compromises are famously so satisfying), inviting the now-grown kids and the audience to tell themselves a tale to make them feel better, since El will always exist in our hearts and minds.

But then the Duffer brothers mentioned something that frustrated me all over again. They said, El couldn’t be present in the final scene “unless we invented some nonsense where her powers were somehow removed again or something like that.” So you’re telling me that though it’s already been established that 1) El can lose access to her powers after fighting a physical manifestation of the Mind Flayer and 2) Vecna’s kidnappees can purge themselves of the Mind Flayer’s particles, there was no version of the finale where El’s abilities vanished with the chopping off of Henry’s head or the bonfire held over the Mind Flayer’s body, or where her psychic link was severed with the destruction of the wormhole? Where she emerged from the Upside Down unaffected by the sonic weapons because her blood no longer held any supernatural elements? Far from being "nonsense," it is at least as plausible as the alternative fates presented in the episode, and would give El as saccharine an ending as all other characters received, all while preserving the creators' precious figurative "moving on from the magic of childhood" storyline.

To that I say: you can keep your waterfalls. I choose to believe El was chilling in Mike’s basement blanket fort during the final scene, just waiting to pop out and pull a prank, before following her friends up the stairs and into her government-conspiracy-free adulthood. And that closed door representing a link to their collective childhood? Yeah, she would have left it open three inches.