TOP 10 REASONS Why The STRANGER THINGS Finale Was Disappointing

Five seasons, several main characters, ten years…and all we have is a finale that is a complete letdown. It is almost as if the writers were not ready to say goodbye yet and have left a door open for a potential spin-off. 

The Stranger Things finale was highly anticipated. Netflix crashed. The finale was screened at some cinemas. Fans exchanged their usual NYE celebrations for a movie night and yes, you could call the finale, clocking at more than 2 hours, a movie. 

If you were wondering why it was a 2-hour finale instead of 2 episodes, here is the reason: the first half deals with defeating the monster. The second half is a wrap-up of all the storylines. But it isn’t even a good wrap. 

Had the second half been a separate episode, it would have received a lower rating. 

But let’s steer back to the finale storyline. Did the finale live up to the hype?

Here are the Top 10 Reasons it did not.

1) What happened to Eleven? 

Eleven, Jane Hopper, or whatever you want to call her, could have been the most interesting character in the series, considering she has literal superpowers. But all she gets to do is shoot out an arm and scream at the monster. Blood oozes out of one nostril, and she never wipes it off. 

At the end of every season, she either disappears or loses her power. 

Unfortunately, she may not be the best-written character. 

In the finale, the actress playing Eleven looks uninterested. It’s almost as if she is sick of fighting CGI monsters, but it is a job that pays well. 

She is seen sacrificing herself to “fix” the world. But her boyfriend Mike has a theory that she used her sister Kali to make up an illusion so that everyone thinks she is dead. 

Mike envisions her in a scenic place where she can finally live in peace after living for years in hiding. 

So…is she alive? She was the main character. Can the writers make up their minds about whether or not she is alive?

2) None of the main characters dies

The poor fans! There were polls and dozens of posts and comments about favorite characters being off-ed. While many were praying their favorite characters survived, several were disappointed that the stakes were never high. 

Literally all the main characters survive. The fandom can’t decide whether to be relieved or disappointed. 

Imagine fighting otherworldly monsters, having a literal world fall over the real one, only for everyone to survive when there were some characters who were on the edge. 

Fan favorite Steve Harrington even falls off the tower, but the screen turns to black, and in the next instant, miraculously, his nemesis Jonathan saves him. 

While fans breathe a sigh of relief, are we even sure Jonathan was standing anywhere near Steve to save him? Seems highly convenient that he has the strength to pull a full-grown man with one arm. Jonathan doesn’t even work out! 

But hey, at least Steve makes it, right?

3) Two hours of nothing

Yes, there are several actors and characters in the show who have fought for equal screen time. Which means, many of them get monologues. How exciting for us viewers! 

There’s a lot of discussion going on, a lot of characters willing to make sacrifices, and then, of course, more discussions. The action happens much later, and the CGI can be slightly distracting at times. 

The second half of the episode or movie, whatever you want to call it, is about the aftereffects of what happened when the monster is defeated. 18 months later, Hawkins has healed. It’s still the 1980s, so everyone has easily found paying jobs. 

Max, who was in a coma and couldn’t move her limbs, is now skateboarding. The kids have graduated, and Dustin pays tribute to his late friend Eddie by flipping off the principal. 

His abuse of the graduation ceremony, his teachers, and the principal is lauded. It’s not disrespectful to flip off the principal, is it? 

Character stories are clumsily wrapped up, leaving a window for a spin-off. It all depends on which set of characters the fans want to see more of. 

Will it be the original group of kids who still play D&D, or the college dropouts and seniors who decide to meet up every month to discuss their boring adult problems? Seinfeld or Friends, they are not. 

4) The Love Triangle that goes nowhere

While Lucas and Max are going strong, none of the other couples make it. 

Will has an obvious crush on Mike, who is in love with Eleven. Will moves on with some random character at a bar. Eleven is assumed dead. 

Steve and Jonathan were initially vying for Nancy’s love, but in the end, both men decided that Nancy was too special and they only wanted her as a friend. 

Five seasons of will they,won’t they, and it ends with Steve not even wanting to glance at Nancy in the finale. 

Didn’t he explicitly state that his whole dream of six nuggets included Nancy? And now he’s over her?

Jonathan also seems much happier with the breakup. So why string along fans for ten years only to show that Nancy ends up with no one?

And do we ever get an explanation of what happened to Vickie and Robin? Nope. 

At least Hopper and Joyce get engaged. 

5) Will has powers? Why?

Volume 1 in Season 5 ends with an epic ending. Will has powers! How exciting! The little helpless kid from season one had powers all along, and he can control Vecna. 

If you thought the finale was going to be epic because of that inclusion, guess what? Will has five minutes of screen time to talk to Henry/Vecna before his part is over. 

He couldn’t do anything after all, and Eleven has to jump in to save the day, again. 

So why did they even give Will these cool powers, where he can twist and crack Vecna’s limbs? What a waste. 

Imagine how epic it would have been to see Eleven, Kali, and Will take down Vecna. 

6) What happened to Joyce Byers

From being a desperate mother who believed her child was alive, to traveling all the way to Russia to save Hopper, Joyce Byers was relegated to being a background character in the finale. 

All she was given to do was react to characters. Will, using his powers to get into Vecna’s mind, looks shocked. Jonathan? Is that even her son? Joyce is barely shown interacting with him. 

Fortunately, she is given the privilege of chopping Vecna’s head off, and even that feels like an afterthought. It’s like the writers forgot they had the charming Winona Ryder in the cast, suddenly remembered, and decided to insert one scene to redeem themselves. 

The final episode is unmistakably an insult to Winona Ryder’s talents. 

7) The Pointless Death

 

Remember Kali? She was Jane’s “sister” and part of one of the lowest-rated episodes in the history of Stranger Things. She was brought back for the epilogue, but not to make the finale powerful, but to kill her off. 

There had to be one death at least, right? And the writers were terrified of offending the fans. But Kali wasn’t showcased enough to have fans who would have protested, and so she was killed off. 

She didn’t even have to be. She was almost saved. But the writers felt that the finale would be dramatic if there was a death scene, and so they let’s kill off that one character who isn’t liked very much. In fact, let’s make her sort of unlikable by introducing a plot where she tries to convince Eleven to sacrifice herself. 

While Eleven’s fans protested this twist, Kali’s fandom hadn’t even formed yet. 

So off she goes. No one weeps for her. Eleven has already forgotten her in the next moment. Hopper feels little remorse for abandoning her in the first place. 

All in all, it was a pointless and unnecessary death. She could have been alive and with Eleven, living a life in Iceland or whatever. 

8) The Unexplained Lore

Vecna needed twelve children. Mind you…12! And they had to be of a certain age. Plus, he needed to merge both worlds. The Upside Down was a wormhole between two worlds. 

So…why did Vecna need 12 children? Why not four? And why did he want to merge the worlds? Because he thought our world is broken?

His motivations are never explained properly. Vecna is shown to be ultimately corrupted by a piece of rock and made to believe that his world is broken and needs to be fixed by destroying it, apparently. 

Since it is never explicitly stated, we must draw our own conclusions about why the villain was actually a villain. Wait, maybe he wasn’t even a villain after all. 

Also, why was the Upside Down stuck in 1983? What was the significance of that?

9) The Town that Moves On

Graduations take place on time. The town has been rebuilt. Everyone seems to have gotten amnesia about the time the ground cracked open. Another world was crashing down on top of Hawkins, but the people of Hawkins, parents of the kids included, are blissfully unaware of all this. 

There is a memorial in the town square, but only Mike seems to care enough to sit next to it. 

There could have been a scene to show the town’s people showing some remorse over Eddie’s death or something, but nope. 

We see a majority of the residents at the graduation, applauding a teen flipping off the principal. The parents have a new hairdo. That’s it. That’s what their part in all of this is. 

10) The Military subplot

Let’s get another screen icon into the mix: Linda Hamilton. But let’s also give her a role that shows she is inept at her job. 

The writers have done it again. They get good actors to play mediocre characters. 

The military in Stranger Things is incompetent. They are easily defeated by a group of kids with homemade weapons. Linda Hamilton, who plays Dr Kay, gets to do nothing but watch her men fail and get scammed by teens. 

It’s almost as if the show had a huge budget and didn’t know what to do with all the extra money, so they decided to introduce the Military subplot only to add nothing to the story. 

In the end, Dr Kay is just gone. The military flees the town. 

Also, what happened to Dr Owens? Is he still in military custody? Is he alive?

So there we have it, the supposed epic conclusion to a show that many fans have grown up with. Ten years. A decade. And all we get is a finale that barely does justice to its fandom. 

Perhaps the fanfiction would be a lot better?