In the end, Stranger Things committed the ultimate TV crime Strange things

WWe’ve all had a few days to watch the Stranger Things finale now, and the reactions have been mixed. For every die-hard fan who found themselves in floods of tears at the end, there was a disgruntled TikToker who listed all the plot holes the episode left unfilled in its race to the finish line. In other words, how you felt about Stranger Things as a whole may have determined how you felt about the way it ended.

Which, despite any concerns you might have about the ending — and we’ll get to that shortly — seems like the best way anyone could wrap up the series. There was no tonal axis. There is no such thing as a dinosaur-style grimace; No “it was all a dream”-style St Elsewhere; There’s no Blake 7-style final bloodbath. Stranger Things is dead as it was alive – full of spectacle and emotion (and a chronically impractical mythology, and too many characters).

By achieving this, Stranger Things manages to hit it right in the middle. Will this final episode become as beloved as Breaking Bad, or as widely discussed as The Sopranos? Absolutely not. But at the same time, it avoided the pitfalls that drove Dexter and Game of Thrones into the dust.

Looking back, I did two things very well. The first is that it manages to cut back on the ridiculous sprawl that topsy-turvy previous episodes, which spread an infinite number of characters across a seemingly infinite number of locations, dimensions, and dreamscapes. It was so bloated that no one could ever get anything done because they had to keep reminding each other where they were and why.

This represented cleaner storytelling. It was a group of characters facing off against a huge crab, and the crab lost. Everyone got a moment in the spotlight. Especially Winona Ryder, who beheaded Vecna ​​after spending half a decade getting paid to stand in the margins and appear confused. The final battle looked amazing and felt appropriately high stakes. Fans who have spent the last decade watching Stranger Things go full bloat must have been thrilled.

The second plus was remembering that this was initially a show about kids. The ending was full of pre-pubescent flashbacks — a particularly clever move. Since Stranger Things debuted, we’ve all watched as the young actors have grown and grown, both physically and in terms of notoriety. Seeing flashes of them young and innocent, unaware of the tsunami of global fame that was about to hit them, was undoubtedly very touching. Plus the 18 month time jump at the end gave everyone the chance to play closer to their age for once. You can only imagine the tears of relief Caleb McLaughlin must have shed knowing he won’t have to wear that flat wig in some scenes.

Then again, what was the most memorable moment in the end? Maybe the moment she glanced at the clock and realized she still had 30 minutes to go.

At that point, we had already reached the denouement, with each character given their own elegiac send-off. Steve became a teacher. Dustin became relatively obnoxious during his graduation. Erica honed her bomb-making skills. Joyce and Hopper get engaged. The army politely slipped away and did not bother anyone again. And eleven are either dead or not dead, depending on your personal preference.

And it went on and on and on, the endings piled on top of each other so extravagantly that the actual meat of the episode became a distant memory. He made the last Lord of the Rings movie seem like a model of restraint. There were a lot of endings to this episode, and I briefly considered offering a rating for it, before I realized that would require me to watch them all again, and honestly, who has the time?

But, even though it was punishment, it felt worth it to the hardliners. After all, that’s who the finale was for: the millions who took this weird little mish-mash of ’80s references, initially designed to be a one-season wonder, and developed it into such a monster that the new episodes literally broke Netflix.

So, did Stranger Things land a hit? Well, no, because in the grand scheme of things, that’s not a landing at all. It’s now 2026, and the biggest crime an entertainment company can commit is letting an established IP die. The Duffers have confirmed that they are indeed working on a Stranger Things spin-off, and if that’s too far off, an animated series (Stranger Things: Tales from ’85) will be released this year. Simply put, he abandoned the concept of a Stranger Things ending. Although there was still money to be extracted from her, he would not allow that to happen.