Wren Comeau
Staff Writer
The world renowned show Stranger Things ended its nine-year run this past New Years. This anxiously awaited final fifth and final season prompted many predictions and theories from its fans, while sparking vicious debates about the fates of the beloved characters. However, after watching the final episode, much of the fandom expressed disappointment and even outrage on how the show decided to end things. Some people were so upset that they believed it all to be a trick by the show and that there would be a secret ninth episode released on Jan. 7 which would wrap everything up nicely.
Now that this date has passed and the “conformity gate” theory was proven false, was this final season actually worth the wait? I think to really determine if this finale lived up to the hype, it’s important to recognize the things that make up a good finale. This includes overall character development, thematic resonance, emotional impact and a satisfying closure.
The characters really make the story, so it’s important that they change and develop over the course of a long-running series. Since the first season, the character of Will Byers has been hinted as being gay. As the seasons progressed, Will struggles to come to terms with this part of himself, due to him both being different from his friends and the negative stigma surrounding gay people in the 80s. This all came to a head in the seventh episode of season five “The Bridge,” where Will comes out to his friends and family.
While this scene was a very heartfelt and intimate moment, an issue that a majority of fans, including myself, have with this scene is the sheer amount of characters present. This scene was a point of contention for many fans, with one Reddit user drawing on their own experiences to call this moment unnatural.
“I was a child in the 80s and I was around gay people a lot, but I didn’t feel like people back then ‘came out’ like this,” user Free1887 said. “I feel like the scene was based on how celebrities come out in more recent times. Everyone wouldn’t have looked as stiff had they decided to line up just to give him a hug.”
There are 12 characters jammed into this moment, some of whom have never even spoken to Will before this. It seemed like all these other characters were rushed into this scene to get their reactions to Will’s confession. This is really disappointing because this moment has been built up to for so long and the conclusion to all that development was just anticlimactic and a poor use of the opportunity for representation in media.
Another character that has had a controversial development is Kali, or “Number 8.” She first appeared in the season two episode “The Lost Sister” as one of the other children who were experimented on by the government alongside Eleven. At the end of episode four of season five, Kali is reintroduced to the story after being absent for eight years as having been recaptured by the government and experimented on in the Upside Down.
Many fans, including myself, were excited for the return of this character, as audiences were confused by her abrupt disappearance after season two. As Kali’s involvement in season five deepened, it felt like she was building up to be a suprise villain or traitor that was working with Vecna. In an article with Parade magazine, Linnea Berthelesen, the actress who plays Kali, believed that Kali’s involvement in the story was more about survival than hurting people or gaining power.
“It was always about Eleven,” Berthelsen said. “It was about finding a way to be worthy of unconditional love. Sometimes it was the wrong means to get there, but at the end of the day, she was always trying to protect Eleven.”
In regards to whether she sees her character as a villain, Berthelson said she thought she was “more as a burned child.” I agree with her take and believe that the hate towards her character showed a deep lack of understanding of Kali’s traumas, even if her actions were oftentimes ruthless.
While the characters are important, the themes are just as, if not more, important. One of the overarching themes throughout the series is the power of friendship and how loyalty overpowers evil. I think that the show does a great job of supporting this theme, as the characters have carried on this feeling of connectedness between them, and how they relate to the plot.
“Everyone contributes in some meaningful way,” series co-creator Matt Duffer said. “In that sense, it also feels very much like the climax of a Dungeons & Dragons campaign, where every character has a special skill, and they’re able to bring it to this final fight.”
Another theme that comes up is the negative consequences that unchecked power has on society. Season 5 introduced the character of Dr. Kay, who I believe best illustrates this concept through her obsessive devotion towards capturing Eleven. Linda Hamilton, the actress who portrays Dr. Kay, spoke about the importance of her character to both this season and the overall series.
“Her sole interest and focus is finding Eleven. So everything else, all the loss of life and all of the cataclysmic stuff that is happening around her, does not shake her,” Hamilton said. “She is very much the master of the game and treats them like they’re insignificant.”
The last element to consider is if the show provided a satisfying closure. This aspect definitely received many mixed reactions from fans, with some saying they liked the way it ended, and some saying it felt disconnected and unfinished. In my personal opinion, I think the ending was a bit sloppy in terms of providing a clear explanation of what happened to Eleven.
Rather than having a clear outcome for her character, her fate is left up to the interpretation of fans, where she either disappeared along with the Upside Down or she’s living out the rest of her life traveling alone. Whichever way you look at it, neither of these conclusions feel appropriate for Eleven.
For her entire life, she was treated more like a weapon instead of a person. It would have been great to see her break free of that fate and finally have the chance to live as a normal girl without having to worry about otherworldly monsters or being kidnapped by the government. But while everyone else is able to reap the rewards of all the pain and suffering they were put there for five seasons, Eleven is used as a sacrificial lamb to let the Duffer brothers flex them getting the rights to use “Purple Rain.”
Eleven’s ending and the rest of this final season overall feels cheap and inadequate. For how long this series has been running and with how much people have fallen in love with this story and its characters, there should have been more time and care put into the substance of the show, rather than just the CGI monsters.
